Ten-Million-Dollar Education, Not Termination

“What I remember is a story about Thomas Watson. This is what we have followed at Southwest Airlines. A vice president of IBM came in and said, “Mr. Watson, I’ve got a tremendous idea.” (Of course, this was long ago; the original Mr. Watson.) “And I want to set up this little division to work on it. And I need ten million dollars to get it started.” Well, it turned out to be a total failure. And the guy came back to Mr. Watson and he said that this was the original proposal, it cost ten million, and that it was a failure. “Here is my letter of resignation.” Mr. Watson said, “Hell, no! I just spent ten million on your education. I ain’t gonna let you leave.” That is what we do at Southwest Airlines.8”

“Winston Churchill did: “Courage is going from failure to failure with enthusiasm.””