Most everyone who met Herb Kelleher, the larger-than-life cofounder and longtime CEO of Southwest Airlines, has a story about his or her initial encounter with the man, so I’ll begin this reflection on his legacy with mine. It was the late 1980s. I was a newly minted editor at HBR, fresh out of business school, and I was attending a big, prestigious (and, to be honest, rather boring) conference on corporate strategy in New York City.

The Legacy of Herb Kelleher, Cofounder of Southwest Airlines