Know when not to innovate

Southwest Airlines still grows, while others reduce capacity. Their secret? They stay away from fads and keep things simple, which reduces costs and maximizes assets while not building excessive customer expectations. Portfolio.com

This nicely done article - Know when not to innovate, Southwest's Seven Secrets for Success Portfolio.com had some great insights into the 'thinking' within this organization. We admire the leadership – because they stay ‘focused’ on what their core business is and continue to execute their business plan even during such difficult times. At the same time, they had innovative visionary thinkers that were looking out to the future to see which factors – fuel – may have a potentially negative impact on their ability to achieve their goals. It is so refreshing to see a company’s leaders that ‘embrace’ change, stay true to what made them great, and continue to nudge forward during tough times. Too often we see many situations where leaders start throwing everything out there in an effort to spur growth which ‘abandons’ their core business. While we are all for innovation and change, we also believe that you should never abandon your core business and never change just for the sake of making change. Change just needs to make sense and add value to your company. And we all need to be aware of how change affects not only our customer but also the impact that it has – both positive and negative, on our employees.

Enjoy the read….