The New Year’s Day edition of The Wall Street Journal asked a big question in a big headline: “Can Southwest Airlines Buy Back Its Customers’ Love?”
While other airlines rebounded from extreme winter weather and service disruptions, Southwest—always top-rated, with a famously loyal following—melted down. It canceled more than 2,300 flights, stranding passengers and their baggage around the country over the Christmas holidays. The U.S. Department of Transportation is putting the entire event “under a microscope.”
Most believe Southwest will, in fact, be loved again. Tickets were refunded, travel expenses were reimbursed, and approximately 25,000 frequent flyer miles were doled out to each stranded customer. Whatever. That’s not why you should pay attention to this tale.
The object lesson that matters? WSJ’s CIO Journal followed up, reporting that “balky crew scheduling technology” caused the disaster. Airline staff who used the system had been frustrated by it for some time, but couldn’t get executive attention. A scathing New York Times op-ed on December 31, "The Shameful Open Secret Behind Southwest’s Failure," blames the strong incentives to address problems by “adding a bit of duct tape and wire to what you already have.”
Balky tech that frustrates staff: Sound familiar?
Two years ago, ZDNet reported the average enterprise managed 45 different tools to secure their environment. A few weeks ago, the Silicon Valley Business Journal said the number has jumped to 76, with sprawl driven by a need to keep pace with cloud adoption and remote work. Security teams are spending more than half their time manually producing reports, and pulling in data from multiple siloed tools.
The cybersecurity skills gap isn’t going anywhere. And the most tech savvy generation in human history—Gen Z, the latest entrants to adulthood and ..
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