Kinda like now. This company loves positive spin, and they're brilliant at manufacturing it.
Perhaps it would be appropriatel to acknowledge that DL creates and maintains an image which it has cultivated throughout its lifetime and one which the majority of its employees embrace.
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Hardly any American brustles at the notion that a company can create an external culture about its product. Does anyone realistically believe that drinking a Coke will make you happy? Yet that is what they advertise and they are the most recognized brand on the planet.
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Somehow the notion that a company would create an internal culture is anathema yet the evidence is overwhelming that the strongest companies in the world - and you can look at specific companies within any industry - are those that create strong cultures that extend to employees. We need only look at the airline industry and see how successful culture is as part of the success of B6, CO, VX, and WN.
CO took a group of employees who had been demoralized by two rounds of BK and turned CO into one of the greatest turnaround stories in American business... and the results were apparent in CO's bottom line until the day they were acquired by UA.
DL is doing nothing different with respect to culture than what CO did post-BK - and in many respects CO just reinvented the historic DL culture that a couple generations of DL execs decided wasn't very necessary... with a corresponding decline in DL's performance.
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The Spirit of Delta was a voluntary effort by a group of employees who were fiercely loyal to the company and managed to convince most of their peers to give up some of their paychecks in order to see an airplane in special livery (DL has very few anyway) operate for 20 years testifying to the difference in DL's culture.
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Those who resist the idea of conformity behind DL's culture might consider that one of the most successful marketing companies in the world is Disney who has incredibly strict guidelines for its marketing and that control includes how employees act at any time when they are associated with the Disney name.
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Disney employees give up a lot of their personal identity for the sake of representing the Disney Company... yet they have no shortage of people who want to be a part of their organization.
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As consolidation in the airline industry continues, it will become increasingly clear that airlines that do not have a strong brand and culture are the ones that fall by the wayside while a greater and greater percentage of employees in the industry belong to companies that have figured out how to win in the marketplace and to have their employees play key roles in the process.
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As AA continues to work through its restructuring, it is increasingly apparent that turning the company around depends on engaging a workforce that like CO's was battered by two rounds of restructuring - up against competitors that had far more strength and resources.
AA's ability to turn the company around is dependent on being able to create a culture of service and winning that is on par with what other notable marketers throughout American industry have created.
