Kelleher says that culture is the source of competitive advantage at Southwest. Kelleher acknowledges that Southwest does a lot right. The only thing they can't copy is our culture. Southwest has a culture a lot of companies would like to copy. There are few trappings of power and little bureaucracy.
Employees get things done quickly, have fun, move fast, and work together.
New ideas are easy to bring forward and quickly shared. The result is a workforce that is fiercely committed to Southwest and fiercely dedicated to the customer. Atlanta companies are also finding that culture can provide a recruiting advantage in a tight labor market. Fred Cassidy, Vice President of Human Resources at Advance Technology Corporation, a rapidly growing Atlanta-based software company, believes that a company culture explicitly built on the values of Innovation, Character, and Excellence gives him an advantage with high tech recruits. He reports that he is now getting added points with recruits when he explains that ATC will be using a company-wide 360 degree evaluation to assess how well each person demonstrates the values of the company culture in their daily work life.