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By Root 619 0

businesspeople. They became rigidly inflexible in how they did business even when confronted with ever-mounting losses. They kept doing the same things over and over again, with the same dismal results, sliding in and out of bankruptcy, making the same promises of better management and improved efficiency. In truth, some within the industry have blamed the whole situation on the ease with which airlines were able to operate while bankrupt. It is indeed a complicated business with an interlocking mixture of public and private interests. Nevertheless, from my viewpoint the only strategy airline management seemed to be trying was to continue to seek cost-cutting wage concessions from their workers. (In my experience, in the absence of other strategic changes, the truism is true—you can never cost cut your way to profitability.)

Then along came an innovative, flamboyant entrepreneur named Herb Kelleher. He founded a new airline that resembled the established airlines in only one respect—he transported people on airplanes. He changed almost everything else. To begin with, his whole fleet was just one kind of airplane, the 737, so service on the aircraft was simplified and streamlined. He changed the way routes were laid out and the way seats were assigned. He changed pricing and even went after different customers. The result? Southwest Airlines made profits in an industry that some investors had already pronounced hopeless. (It remains to be seen as this is being written whether Southwest can remain profitable in the face of today’s ever-rising fuel costs and the resulting cost-cutting measures.)

To fail, then, be inflexible. However, I want to be clear about this: Flexibility is not a virtue in and of itself. Neither is it a shield for the fainthearted to hide behind in order to waffle around and never make a hard decision. Flexibility and the ability to adapt is an essential attribute of leadership that goes beyond simple managerial, operational skills, or technical competence. I believe that flexibility is a continual, deeply thoughtful process of examining situations and, when warranted, quickly adapting to changing circumstances. It is, in essence, the key to Darwin’s whole notion of the survival of the fittest. Flexibility. Adaptation.

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and it breeds reptiles of the mind.”

—William Blake

I’LL ADMIT, some organizations have been able to resist change for generations. I remember talking with Bing Crosby when he was working with us. He was certainly one of the most widely loved and successful entertainers of his time. He also owned shares of the Minute Maid Company. After The Coca-Cola Company acquired Minute Maid, we persuaded Bing to do some commercials in the late 1960s. Bing was an avid golfer, and asked us, because of Robert Woodruff’s long association with Augusta National Golf Club, if he could become a member.

The response given to Mr. Woodruff by the czar of Augusta National was: “We don’t take show folk!”

But businesses cannot afford such idiosyncratic resistance to change, and, indeed, even the most recalcitrant business leaders would certainly never actually characterize themselves as inflexible. More than likely they would pay lip service to a philosophy of change, expressing the usual platitudes about how they embrace change and welcome it. But in fact it is easy to get stuck in the comfortable rut of the status quo. Why? Well, change of any kind is difficult. Think of your own lives. Making a move to a new town can be absolutely wrenching.

But an even greater contributing cause of inflexibility in business is embodied in my next commandment—and is also a symptom of it.

Commandment Three

Isolate Yourself

THIS IS SO APPEALING. And it’s so easy. There are just a few things you need to do to create your own executive bubble. Start with your surroundings. Build your own bubble. There’s nothing like a physically isolated fortress to keep the riffraff away, so get yourself a great big office in some remote corner of the most remote