Southwest Airlines’ meltdown over the holiday season was inevitable. According to Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, “We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
Murray said the airline’s operations haven’t changed much since the 1990s. “It’s phones, it’s computers, it’s processing power, it’s the programs used to connect us to airplanes – that’s where the problem lies, and it’s systemic throughout the whole airline,” he said.
Larry Lorenzo a Southwest Airlines pilot for more than 35 years, wrote, “Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow-motion train wreck for some time. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.” He continued, “A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.”
Don’t be a Southwest! Do these five things instead:
- Have a technology plan. In addition to a strategic plan, associations today should have a technology plan. A comprehensive plan is essential to guide challenging decision making. (See below for one association’s plan.)
- Budget adequately. Based on research of other sectors and associations’ need to catch up, I recommend spending 7-8% of total gross revenues on technology, including staff. (See pages 148 & 149 in the anniversary edition of Race for Relevance: 5 Radical Changes for Associations for more on this.) Some associations are actually spending double digits in order to get caught up.
- Focus on user experience. Aim to provide your members with an outstanding customer experience. Doing so will guide your decisions.
- Invest in continuous evolution. It used to be enough to ask the board for money for upgrades on a periodic basis. Now, you should be spending annually to invest in state-of-the-art technology and to keep things running smoothly.
- Prioritize cyber security. The American Dental Association experienced a cyberattack in April 2022. The assault forced the organization to take affected systems offline, including its website, telephones, email and webchat and necessitated hiring third-party cybersecurity specialists. I can’t imagine the stress on staff or the financial cost of the disruption.
I’m proud to say that the technology chapter was entirely reworked and updated for the anniversary edition of Race for Relevance. If you’d like to read about fully adopting a “digital first” mindset—including a compelling case study—you can get the book here.
Whatever you do, don’t neglect your infrastructure. Otherwise, you, too, could be a Southwest!