The Southwest Airlines Way

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C H A P T E R

Create Boundary Spanners

One thing this job will do for you is form a personality. You’ve got to talk to so many peo- ple. If you don’t like people, you’ll either be miserable or get out of the job real fast.

—Operations Agent, Southwest Airlines

MA N Y D I F F E R E N T E M P L O Y E E S play a critical role in coor- dinating flight departures at Southwest Airlines—pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, ticket agents, baggage handlers, mechanics, and so forth. One role, however, is particularly central for coordinating flight departures— the operations agent. In the airline industry, the operations agent is at the center of communication among the various functional groups that are working to get the plane unloaded, serviced, reloaded, and on its way. The tasks of the operations agent include collecting information about the pas- sengers, bags, freight, mail, and fuel going out on a particular flight, mak- ing calculations about how much of each can be loaded and where they should be loaded, consistent with weather and route information. Before the plane arrives, during its time at the gate, and after its departure, oper- ations agents gather and process the needed information from each of the other functions, make adjustments as needed, and communicate those adjustments back to each of the functions. In so doing, operations agents bring together and reconcile sometimes conflicting perspectives among the various departments regarding passenger needs, commitments to freight and mail customers, and the requirements of flight safety.

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Gittell, Jody Hoffer. Southwest Airlines Way, McGraw-Hill Trade, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/erau/detail.action?docID=4654913. Created from erau on 2022-09-17 04:20:48.

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Operations agents in effect serve as “boundary spanners,” managing the flow of information across functional boundaries. Organization design theorists tell us that boundary spanners are particularly impor- tant for coordinating work when employees perform very different tasks and as a result have very different perspectives about what needs to be done.1 The boundary spanner has traditionally been seen as a mecha- nism for collecting, filtering, translating, interpreting, and disseminat- ing knowledge across organizational boundaries.2 However, we learn in this chapter that an effective boundary spanner does more than process information. An effective boundary spanner is also engaged in relation- ship building, developing relationships of shared goals, shared knowl- edge, and mutual respect among fellow employees to facilitate the coordination of work.

Still, boundary spanners are costly because they require an entire workgroup whose primary task is coordination.3 One way to reduce the cost of boundary spanners is to reduce their staffing levels—and increase the number of projects or flight departures they are assigned to coordi- nate. Since the mid-1980s, many airlines have been doing just this— attempting to make operations agents more efficient by relying more and more on computer interfaces to bring together the information required to dispatch a flight. And indeed, these new systems allow operations agents to be more efficient. With information technology, operations agents can be located centrally and can coordinate up to 15 departures at a time. Operations agents read a computer file into which each function has input the relevant information, make contacts when there is a dis- crepancy or need for further information, then make the necessary judg- ments and decisions before dispatching the flight. However, the quality and detail of communication is not very high in this arrangement. The operations agent is remotely located and is forced by workload to rely almost exclusively on the computer interface.

Operations agents had traditionally served as a source of social cohe- sion across functions in the stations. Operations agents used to be well- known personalities because they came into face-to-face contact with each function during the preplanning or implementation phase of each depar- ture. The on-site operations centers where they worked used to serve as “watering holes,” as one of the few locations where members of diverse functions, such as pilots, fuelers, baggage handlers, mechanics, and cus- tomer service agents, could congregate comfortably. In their efforts to

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reduce the staffing levels of operations agents, airlines lost the personal interactions that built strong relationships across functional boundaries. Only Southwest Airlines has recognized this unique role of the operations agent, and staffs the job generously to permit it to be done well.

Boundary Spanning at Southwest Airlines

Moving in the opposite direction of the rest of the industry, Southwest increased the staffing of the operations agent to even higher levels than the other airlines had traditionally used, allowing the operations agent to play an even greater role in the flight departure process. Each individual flight was assigned its own dedicated on-site operations agent, who engaged in face-to-face contact with each function before, during, or after the turnaround of that flight—then went on to concentrate on another incoming flight.

As noted above, the job of an operations agent involves a great deal of information processing. A Southwest supervisor explained the basic tasks:

A couple hours before the flight arrives an operations agent is assigned to the flight. The agent gets a release from dispatch in Dallas. [The release] tells if the plane needs anything, how much fuel due to weather conditions and time of year. The ops agent writes that down and computes the total amount of weight that plane can take. The ops agent tells the ramp and freight agents what’s going out, and they say what they have to put in. The gate and ticket agents take the information, and decide [how many passengers] can go.

The ops agent is dealing with the ticket agents, is phoning everybody. There is constant communication between the groups. There are passengers who need special care, for example. We interact with pilots and flight atten- dants about the weather, information from the families, anything.

Then when the plane arrives, the ops agent sets up the jet way, gets everybody out and everybody boarded. He gets the cargo slip which says how much stuff has been put on board and where, then computes the weight and balance and hands that information off to the pilot. After the door is closed, the ops agent pulls back the jet way.

The information processing tasks in this example are not very dis- tinctive and could certainly be more highly automated, as they have been at other airlines, allowing for a far greater workload than one flight at a

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time per operations agent. And yet the boundary spanning role at South- west is highly regarded, and it is often credited for playing a critical role in achieving reliable flight departures. According to Donna Conover, Southwest’s executive vice president of customers:

The operations agent’s job is important. It’s their responsibility to coordinate the flight. You need someone quarterbacking the flight departure. We are unique in that our operations agents are assigned to lead only one departure at a time. It’s a good investment.

According to a Southwest pilot:

Dispatch doesn’t have the time to dedicate to each individual departure. The operations agent is the team leader when the airplane is on the ground.

And, according to a customer service agent:

The operations room is the heartbeat of the airline. It’s totally the heartbeat. They are real selective about who they put there. They want people with smarts. That’s a part of our overall coordination—what makes it work.

The centrality of the operations agent role at Southwest Airlines is supported by Southwest’s promotion policies. Employees typically come into this job after serving on the ramp and in customer service, bringing the perspective of both key areas to the job. The operations agent job is also considered to be a necessary step before becoming a ramp or cus- tomer service manager, because of the broad, cross-functional perspec- tive one gains from being an operations agent.

But why? What is so important about this role that Southwest staffs it at one flight departure per agent, while other airlines staff it at three to fifteen flight departures per agent? Upon closer observation, it became clear that the operations agents at Southwest play a critical social role as well, helping to build relationships across functional boundaries. At Southwest, unlike at the other airlines, the boundary spanner role in- volves face-to-face interactions with every party involved in the flight departure process. It is not coordination from a distance, conducted pri- marily through a computer interface, as other airlines have tried to achieve. It is coordination with a human face.

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Benefits of the Boundary Spanner Role

Relative to the other airlines included in this study (United, Continental, and American), Southwest employs far higher levels of staffing for its boundary spanner role.4 This study, which was outlined in detail in Chap. 3, included two American Airlines sites, two Continental Airlines sites, two Southwest Airlines sites, and three United Airlines sites. A statistical analy- sis of boundary spanner staffing showed that dedicating boundary span- ners to a small number of flights is associated with higher levels of relational coordination. Dedicated boundary spanners also contribute to improved flight departure performance, particularly faster turnaround times, greater staffing productivity, fewer customer complaints, and better on-time performance.5 To observe the effects of boundary spanners on relational coordination, we can plot boundary spanner staffing for each of the nine sites against relational coordination. Exhibit 10–1 suggests a clear impact of boundary spanner staffing on relational coordination.

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* Each circle denotes one of the nine sites included in the study. Boundary spanner staffing is measured as the number of boundary spanners on staff per daily flight departure. Relational coordination—coordination carried out through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect—is measured as the percentage of cross-functional ties that are strong or very strong, based on an employee survey. Relational coordination in turn has a positive impact on quality and efficiency performance, as illustrated in Exhibit 3–4.

Relational Coordination

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28% 62%

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Exhibit 10–1 Impact of Boundary Spanner Staffing on Relational Coordination*

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Boundary Spanning at United Airlines

At United Airlines as at Southwest, operations agents play a boundary spanner role, but at United they are not assigned to one flight at a time, nor are they expected to leave the operations center and go down to the ramp or the gate to interact with other employees. Rather, they are expected to stay at their computers and coordinate multiple flight departures simulta- neously, using the computer interface and the telephone and PA system as needed. Some ops agents are equipped with cameras to watch the aircraft, and so have at least a partial view of what is happening on the ramp.

The United Shuttle’s operations agents are organized in the same way, but they have somewhat higher staffing levels per flight than do United’s non-Shuttle operations. Operations agents for the Shuttle are not equipped to play the same boundary spanner role that Southwest operations agents play, but they can approximate it more closely than their non-Shuttle counterparts at United, because of their more gener- ous staffing levels. In effect, even though they are located at a distance from the ramp and gate, they have the staffing levels to devote more indi- vidualized attention to each flight departure.

Due in part to the Shuttle’s boundary spanner staffing (and other practices highlighted in this book), the United Shuttle achieved signifi- cantly higher levels of relational coordination compared to United’s non-Shuttle sites (55 percent versus 42 percent of cross-functional ties were rated by employees as strong or very strong). Exhibit 10–1 shows how these higher levels of relational coordination are related to bound- ary spanner staffing levels. The United Shuttle, denoted by UAL3 in Exhibit 10–1, has higher levels of relational coordination than its non- Shuttle counterparts (UAL1 and UAL2), corresponding to its higher levels of boundary spanner staffing. In addition, as we saw in Chap. 7, the Shuttle outperformed its non-Shuttle counterparts at United on both quality and efficiency dimensions.

Boundary Spanning at Continental Airlines

Continental’s operations agents at the Boston station are equipped to play the role of boundary spanner to some extent—operations coordina- tors and load functions are located together in the operations room at each station. Their job does not involve a direct interface with every function, but their location as well as their active role in load planning

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produces a great deal of face-to-face contact with pilots, ramp agents, fuelers, and mechanics.

The boundary spanner role at Continental’s Cleveland station is dif- ferent from that at the Boston station. The Cleveland operations center has a greater division of labor. Operations coordinators maintain contact with pilots and central dispatch. Load planners organize information from central dispatch and the various departments to ensure that passen- gers, baggage, and freight are loaded properly. In addition, maintenance, ramp, and customer service representatives sit in the operations center to provide a link between operations and their departments. Load planners work in a separate room and do not have ongoing contact with the rest of the operations center staff.

Exhibit 10–1 shows Continental’s moderate staffing levels for its boundary spanners, relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspond- ingly lower levels of relational coordination.

Boundary Spanning at American Airlines

American Airlines traditionally had operations agents who played the boundary spanning role. An American pilot in Boston described an oper- ations agent who had retired:

Sal could identify a problem and he could solve a problem. Ops agents used to be this way. They used to have a leadership role. But their authority was changed. Nobody has that job now.

In addition to playing a central role in information flow and prob- lem solving, operations agents at American traditionally had served a social function. Because of the central location of the operations center, where the operations agents worked, “The ops center used to be the watering hole, the place where everybody came together to hang out between flights.” The operations center was one of the few locations at American that were regarded as neutral ground, where functions that were divided by status could share the same space, whether they were cabin cleaners, caterers, fuelers, mechanics, ramp agents, gate agents, flight attendants, or pilots.

However, American began to downsize its on-site operations centers starting in the mid-1980s and to move their staff to a central load house

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in Dallas, where load agents coordinated 10 to 15 flights simultaneously, with the use of a computer interface. By the mid-1990s, American Air- lines had moved farther than any other airline toward reducing the staffing levels of operations agents. According to a load house manager:

At any one time, a load agent is prereleasing up to four trips, about four trips are one hour from departure and quite active, about four are in the last five minutes, and three have just left. We utilize our people very well.

These off-site load agents have remained the center of communica- tion for the flight departure process in some respects. However, given their off-site location, their low staffing levels per flight, and their reliance on a computer interface, they lack familiarity with the particular features of the flights they coordinate and lack time to dedicate to each individual flight. According to the same load house manager:

Our biggest problem is communication—getting them [employees at the airports] to talk to us, tell us what’s on the airplane.

From the standpoint of the stations, the problem is more basic: “We don’t understand their process, and they don’t understand ours,” said the Los Angeles station manager. Reports of inadequate communication were common. A customer service supervisor complained about the lack of information from ops:

Here you don’t communicate. And sometimes you end up not knowing things. . . . Everyone says we need effective communication. But it’s a low priority in action. On the gates I can’t tell you the number of times you get the wrong information from ops. . . . We call it the creeping delay. The hard- est thing at the gates with off-schedule operations is to get information. They are leery to say the magnitude of the problem.

As the boundary spanning role was taken from operations agents at American, the role fell upon the gate agents. Gate agents became responsible for communicating with the other functions, and were made to feel responsible for delays. However, gate agents found themselves in this role by default rather than by design, and without explicit recogni- tion or support for that role. Gate agents received no training for the

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boundary spanning role, and were not selected with an eye to playing that role. According to a manager of gate agents:

We find that a lot of the responsibility for communication with the flight attendants and the ramp falls on our gate agents. We have assumed the responsibility of coordination at the point of departure. It has just evolved that way. Certainly not because of the caliber of our employees.

As an American pilot pointed out:

Nobody has the job now. The gate agents do it by default.

In addition, gate agents at American Airlines do not occupy a key posi- tion in the job ladder, unlike the boundary spanners we observed at Southwest Airlines.

Exhibit 10–1 shows American’s low levels of boundary spanner staffing relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly low levels of relational coordination.

Southwest’s Boundary Spanners in Action

Let’s follow two of Southwest’s operations agents as each coordinates a flight departure.

Steve Collins, Southwest in Baltimore

Steve Collins was busy making the preflight preparations for his incom- ing flight, Flight 110 to Manchester, tracking its progress on his com- puter screen, making calls and sending messages to various functions, asking for wheelchairs, extra help for certain passengers, and so on. Everything seemed quite technical and somewhat impersonal. Then, when he heard the announcement from the ops coordinator that Flight 110 was “in range,” i.e., 10 minutes from landing, Steve gathered his materials and switched into another mode. He headed out to the tarmac, greeting ramp agents who were getting the baggage loading equipment in place, ready to service the incoming flight; greeting the fueler, who was preparing to refuel the incoming flight; greeting the provisioning crew, who would provide food and beverages for the next flight. He

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exchanged pleasantries with several of them, checking to see if they needed anything.

Steve then climbed up the stairs to the jet way and greeted the pilots and flight attendants who were waiting there to replace the incoming crew. He knew two of them, and engaged in an animated discussion for several minutes about where they had been and where they were headed. He then greeted the skycaps who were waiting with wheelchairs for two incoming elderly passengers and noted that one additional wheelchair would be needed. Steve then ran up the jet way to greet the gate agents, to ask how many passengers had checked in, and to ask whether there were any special needs or problems. He then ran back down the jet way to prepare for the arrival of the incoming flight. As he took his position at the steering control for the jet way and watched the aircraft pull up to its parking position, he turned and said: “That’s what I love about this job—every flight is like a reunion!”

When the doors of the aircraft opened, there was yet another reunion. Steve greeted the flight attendants like old friends, exchanged some observations about weather delays and passenger loads, asked if there was anything they needed, then stepped into the cockpit to greet the pilots. Meanwhile, passengers began to disembark from the plane, and he returned to the gate area to greet the passengers who were lined up and waiting to board the outgoing flight.

Steve took his position at the entrance to the jet way, picked up a micro- phone and announced, “OK, we are now ready to board Southwest Air- lines Flight 110 to Manchester, Flight 110 to Manchester. We’ll start with our preboards. Please have your boarding passes ready!” Steve took board- ing passes from a couple with two small children and let them board first. He took the boarding pass of an elderly man in a wheelchair, pushed him down the jet way to the aircraft, and handed him off to one of the flight attendants. He folded up the stroller and wheelchair, tagged them, and placed them in a position where the ramp agent could easily find them.

Jogging back up to the jet way door, Steve took the microphone and said, “Now I’ll take everyone with boarding passes 1 through 30 please.” He began gathering a green boarding pass from each passenger as they filed by. Steve finished with the first 30 passengers in about 2 minutes, then paused and sorted the green cards in numerical sequence. He then stepped into the jet way to check on the boarding progress of passengers 1 through 30. About a minute after having finished with passengers 1

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through 30, he announced he was ready to board everyone with passes 31 through 60. Steve gave a quick smile or hello to passengers as he took their boarding passes, answering questions as he kept people moving.

After taking the last boarding pass and putting the cards in sequence, Steve handed them to Lisa and confirmed that 97 passengers had boarded. He returned to the end of the jet way and retrieved the clip attached to the end of the rope tied to the railing. The clip contained the fuel invoice, the cargo bin loading schedule with the actual number of bags in each bin, and a lavatory service record stating that the appropri- ate cleaning had taken place. Now he had all the information he needed. He made the final trim calculations based on actual passengers rather than reservations, the 18,000 pounds of fuel, and the actual baggage count and bin allocation. Steve handed one copy of the loading schedule to the captain and kept one for himself.

By this point in the boarding process, the window and aisle seats had all been taken and only the center seats remained. A flight attendant took the microphone. “This is a full flight and we want to get you home as soon as possible. Those of you sitting down who are avoiding the eyes of those standing, please make eye contact—they want that seat beside YOU!” As the last passenger took his seat, Steve picked up the cabin loudspeaker microphone and said, “On behalf of the Baltimore ground crew, I’d like to apologize for the delay this evening, and wish you a very good trip up to Manchester!” He replaced the microphone and said good-bye to the flight attendants and the pilots, then closed the door, and steered the jet way back from the aircraft. The plane started to push back 30 seconds later, and Steve gave the traditional salute to the captain through the win- dow. It was 9:15, just 20 minutes since the aircraft had arrived at the gate.

After entering final data about the flight into a computer, he checked the screen to confirm that he had no more flights to work this evening. Steve and Jim, the lead ramp agent for Flight 110, walked down to the break room. Members of Southwest’s People Department had been serv- ing root beer floats in the station all evening in recognition of the sta- tion’s hard work, and Steve had heard that some were still left.

Brook Smith, Southwest in Phoenix

After she steered the jet way into place, Brook Smith opened the door of the plane, said a warm hello to the flight attendants, then walked right

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into the cockpit. She gave the captain the weather packet for his next flight and the release that included all the information needed for take- off. Then she talked to the flight attendants to tell them what to expect on the next flight out—how many through customers, how many termi- nating customers, and so forth. “They need to know so they can plan luggage storage,” she explained. She picked up some papers from the floor while she was talking, and the flight attendants were busy doing the same. Brook left the plane to let several waiting Southwest employees know whether there would be room on board for them. There was a mechanic whom she listed as a “must go”—because he was going some- where to fix a plane. “He is a must go,” she explained, “so we can utilize the other aircraft. It doesn’t help to have them sitting on the ground.”

Then Brook walked up the jet way to talk with the gate agents, and checked in with them to find out the number of passengers expected to board. She walked to the door of the jet way and announced that children and people who have difficulty boarding should move into the preboard- ing area. She allowed them to board first. Then she told passengers with boarding passes 1 through 30 to board. She took each plastic boarding pass, smiled at every single customer, and said thank you.

Almost all the passengers were smiling, though it was not apparent why. There was a general feeling of speed and efficiency rather than the usual feeling of “hurry up and wait” that one gets when boarding an air- plane. These passengers seemed to feel confident that they were in good hands and that their hurrying would pay off. They seemed not to mind being hurried.

Brook got everybody through the gate, then walked the boarding passes back to the gate agent. She walked down through the jet way into the plane and spoke again with the flight attendants and the captain. She went to her station at the end of the jet way and pulled the freight, bag- gage, and fueling numbers up on a string, where the ramp agent and fueler had attached them to a clip. She began to fill out her master load form in pencil, doing rapid calculations of weight and balance. The total came out just about 20 pounds below the maximum allowed on this plane.

Passengers were still getting situated in the plane. The captain came out to stretch his legs and talk to Brook. The gate agent called down the jet way, saying a passenger from the last flight had left his book on board. Brook went on board to inform the flight attendants. The pas- senger was allowed to come down, reboard the plane, and claim his

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book. The mechanic who was flying to go fix another plane boarded and went into the cockpit to speak with the first officer. Brook showed the weight and load information to the captain, who then boarded the plane and helped the flight attendants stuff more luggage into the overheads. The flight attendants said thank you. Brook waved good-bye to every- body and a flight attendant announced over the speaker that it was time to push off. The passengers applauded. Brook closed the door and they were off—1 minute late.

After the plane pushed back, Brook put the boarding passes into order, from 1 through 137. She talked with the gate agents and then walked back to the ops room, where she prepared a dispatch report for the down-line city (the city to which the airplane was headed next) and explained what had gone on.

“The gate agent was checking in the flight all that time. She deals with the passengers. The up-line ticket agent puts the information in. Thirty-six people were standing by for this flight. The weight was close to the maximum, but if it went over a little, I could have called dispatch. They might change the ultimate weight. You would call them if you had to. But you do the preflight planning to avoid the problem.

“You could delay the freight if the load was too large. We have 72 hours to get the freight there, and we usually get it there the same day. If we had to pull something, we’d pull company materials first. I get this dispatch report out ASAP so I don’t screw the down-line city, so they can plan. Because we appreciate getting ours on time.”

One of Brook’s coworkers, Robert, who was stationed at the coordi- nator’s desk, was intent on communicating with the pilots on the incom- ing flights and assigning them to gates. A poster on the wall read: “Administrative thought of the week: If you have knowledge, let others light their candles off it.” There was an open window between the oper- ations room and the ramp agents’ break room, where there always seemed to be people congregating, talking and asking questions. Rock ’n’ roll was playing on the radio in the ops room; everybody was in khaki shorts, intent on their work but having a good time, it appeared. The supervisor, Bob Curbey, was at a computer terminal, keying in the infor- mation that appears on the airport monitors for customers to read. Peo- ple from different functions walked freely around into each other’s break rooms, and into the ops room. Brook finished sending her dispatch report, then checked in to see when her next flight would be arriving.

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The Boundary Spanner as Relationship Builder

In this chapter we have gained a more holistic perspective on the bound- ary spanner. Boundary spanners act as gatekeepers of critical information, and as such are influential in determining how the environment is per- ceived.6 Boundary spanners interpret and translate information for other organization members7 in a variety of settings, including research and development,8 new product development,9 mergers and acquisitions,10

and patient care.11 However, we have seen that the boundary spanner works not only by sharing information but also by building relationships. By developing a web of relationships across boundaries, the boundary spanner constructs a broader sense of shared identity and vision among previously divided parties, creating opportunities for collective action among them. The actions of an effective boundary spanner can con- tribute to creating more permeable boundaries, which leads to enhanced coordination and improved performance. This relational role played by boundary spanners has also been demonstrated in a very different context from flight departures—mergers and acquisitions—where “building con- nective tissue”12 and “forging social connections”13 are seen as critical contributions that boundary spanners can make.

Summing Up

Boundary spanners play a critical role in coordinating work processes, but the boundary spanner is most effective when the position is conceived to be more than an automatable conduit for information exchange. When the boundary spanner role is generously staffed, the boundary spanner can develop a web of relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect across functional boundaries. Coordination that occurs within this web of relationships is more effective and leads to improved performance of the flight departure process.

This new understanding of the boundary spanner as a builder of rela- tionships suggests a different way of thinking about staffing levels for the position, and a more skeptical view of the possibility of using information technology to replace the boundary spanner. We have seen that reduced staffing levels result in less effective coordination of the flight departure process, due to weaker relationships of shared knowledge, shared goals, and mutual respect across functional boundaries. We have also seen that

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information technology has been used in some airlines to dramatically reduce staffing levels for the boundary spanning role. But the substitution of automated communication for boundary spanners may sacrifice the exchange of complex information and the development of shared under- standings across functional boundaries, a loss that is not apparent from a purely technical point of view. Though information technology can be a facilitator, it is not expected to be an effective substitute. When a job is mediated largely through a computer or a telephone, an important ele- ment of social interaction is lost.14 The loss of social interaction weakens relationships, and weakens critical performance parameters. These limita- tions on the effective use of information technology exist because coordi- nation is not simply about the transfer of information. Instead, coordination requires the construction of shared meaning in order to facil- itate collective action. As we see at Southwest Airlines, boundary spanners can play this role, building relationships of shared goals, shared knowl- edge, and mutual respect across functional boundaries.

138 T E N S O U T H W E S T P R A C T I C E S

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