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Southwest Airlines is famous for pioneering the 10 minute turn around – the ability to deplane and board a plane in 10 minutes. This ability helps an airline make more money, because the more the planes are in the sky, the better the company is doing. What few people realise is that this innovation was born out of struggle. In 1971, Southwest was running low on cash and needed to sell one of its aircrafts to stay in business. This left them with three planes for a flight schedule that required four. They had two choices: they could scale back their operations, or they could figure out how to turn the airplane around in 10 minutes and thus was born the 10 minute turnaround.

Whereas most other airline employees would have simply said it couldn’t be done, Southwest people went on to figure out how to perform the unprecedented and seemingly impossible task. Today, that innovation is still paying dividends. Because of increased airport congestion and larger planes and cargo loads, Southwest now takes about 25 minutes to turn their plans around. However, if they were to try to keep the same schedule, but added even 5 mins to the turnaround time, they would need an additional 18 planes in the fleet, at a cost of nearly a billion dollars.

Excerpted from ‘Start with Why’ by Simon Sinek