Southwest Airlines lost its heart.

Time, transparency, and intentional stakeholder engagement will help address headwinds.

In 2014, Southwest Airlines launched an advertising campaign to articulate how their airline differed from others in the industry. The award-winning campaign used the tagline “Without a heart, it’s just a machine.”

Since its rollout, the phrase stuck with me. It became the mindset I brought to projects and to teams. Initially, I struggled to find the connection between the phrase and project management, but upon reflection, the beating heart was clear — stakeholders.

Stakeholder engagement is the fulcrum on which everything turns and considering stakeholders in every brand and project decision is critical to long-term success.

Stated differently, without paying attention to the heart, the machine will fail. This applies not only to the project itself but to the project selection governance.

In October 2021 and, most recently, in December 2022, Southwest Airlines reminded me why I wrote Stakeholder Engagement Essentials. These dates represent mass flight cancellations largely because of outdated technology and insufficient operations.

As a people-first brand, Southwest Airlines needed to prioritize projects that enabled the…