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The Conference Board Review® Article
Flying the (Occasionally) Friendly Skies
By Matthew Budman
Ex-CEO Jim Parker explains how Southwest Airlines thrived even in the wake of 9/11.
Soft-spoken and self-deprecating, with a gentle drawl, James F. Parker doesn't fit the model of the hard-charging American CEO. And that role isn't one he ever intended to play: He served as Southwest Airlines' general counsel for fifteen years before flamboyant co-founder Herb Kelleher tapped him as his successor. A few months after taking the reins, Parker found himself facing the worst crisis in memory, as the September 11 attacks threw the airline industry into total disarray. He got Southwest through it, keeping the company in the black the whole time, and served another three years.
Then, at 57, with the company in fine working order, Parker surprised observers by leaving Southwest abruptly. Since 2004, he's kept quiet, living in Dallas, serving on one corporate board and the MIT Leadership Center's advisory council, and declining reporters' requests for comment on his former employer. He is usually careful to speak in past tense about what his company did. When Parker retired from the airline industry, he really did retire.
Southwest's emphasis on low prices and employee engagement has always been "an open secret," Parker says, but he offers an inside view in a new book, Do the Right Thing: How Dedicated Employees Create Loyal Customers and Large Profits (Wharton), which draws lessons from his quarter-century in the industry — and argues that Southwest owes its enviable bottom-line record to its workplace culture. Parker, who turns 61 on January 1, spoke with TCB Review managing editor Matthew Budman during a visit to The Conference Board's New York offices.
In the summer of 2001, when you took charge at Southwest, CEOs were, as you say, "the rock stars of the day." Did the Enron collapse change how you felt about being a CEO?It didn't change my perception of what my job was, but it clearly changed the public's perception of CEOs. Enron and the ensuing corporate scandals did a lot of damage to public views of American business and certainly of the highest levels of leadership of those companies.
CEOs really had been like rock stars. It was the entrepreneurial movement of the '90s — people like Sam Walton — that was changing the world: Bill Gates changed the way America did business; Herb Kelleher led the deregulation movement. During the Renaissance, it was artists and thinkers making an impact; during the New Deal, the best and brightest people went into government; and in the '90s, it was the private sector that was making things happen.
Did you feel pressure to be as colorful as Herb Kelleher? The New York Times described your personality as "plain yogurt to Mr. Kelleher's Tabasco sauce."
I couldn't be as colorful as Herb. People would ask me, "What's it like to follow a leader like Herb Kelleher?" and I would just say that all I can do is be what I am and do the best I can. Finally, one reporter asked me, "How would you compare your charisma to that of Herb Kelleher?" I thought for a second and said, "It's like comparing a 60-watt bulb to the light and energy put out by the sun." I told Herb that, and he said, "What makes you think you're 60 watts?" I always tried to just be myself.
You write about how you never meant to join "the stifling world of corporate America," but you couldn't have been all that bad a fit for it.
I got lucky. The whole story of my life is being in the right place at the right time.
Comments? Write a letter to the editor.
Return to the January/February 2008 The Conference Board Review® issue.
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