Horrible Management at Airlines in the USA

It is actually laughable how obvious the problems with USA airline management are. Just go fly the cheap airlines in Asia: Firefly, Tiger Air (AirAsia I haven't flown but am not sure is a good comparison, though many people like it)... Even Malaysia Air offers some very cheap short haul flights. Then you have airlines like Singapore Air which is like professional athletes being compared to primary school athletes (that the American managers are - United, Delta, US Air...).

I flew on a 30 minutes flight (something like $20), with full food service in Malaysia. A week later I fly on American from NYC to Washington DC and due to the "short" flight time and about 5 minutes of the seat belt sign being lit due to turbulence the beverage service was canceled for our "safety." The failure of the executives of American airlines is staggering. I really can't imagine how USSR style management circa 1980 could be much worse. Yet somehow none of them bother to just give up, stop their MBA lead idiocy and just hire a bunch of people that know how to run airlines from southeast Asia. They all just want the answer to be in their spreadsheets not their utter failure of management.

Singapore Airlines has amazingly attentive flight attendants. That is the system in place. It is not a personal issue. It is a management issue. Yes their on some in the west who don't want to serve others, it might be an American airline has hired a few wrong people for the job. But mainly I think they have utterly destroyed flight attendants will with their horrible management systems that create day after day of angry customers and no way to fix the issues as a flight attendant.

I believe you take most flight attendants in the USA and put them in the Singapore Air system they will be great. It might also be a few are just not cut out for being a flight attendant (I have not question the horrible job managers have done has lead them to drive away good employees and therefore make some bad hiring decisions because they can't get the people that should be in the jobs to work for their horrible system). My guess is take most of the Singapore Air flight attendants and put them in the American system and they would quit. But if they stayed, after a year they would likely be not much different than their co-workers - unable to make the poor systems provide good results for customers, extremely frustrated...

It really is staggering how American airlines have decades of horrible management yet their are obvious examples of how to do it right a plane flight away and they can't get out of their own way to adopt decent management practices.

Reaction to: Bangkok Airways and the Power of People

Most of the Asian airlines I flew had the typical chaos boarding of USA airlines but done much more effectively. I still think they would be much better off adopting a Southwest Airlines style (Southwest Air is unique but you can do something similar even with assigned seats). One kind of did. They had you go in different lines after they checked your boarding pass - quite an affective strategy I believe (they could put first class, people needing more time... arrange people in sections of rows)...

Related: Airline Quality - CEO Flight Attendant - Southwest Not Delta or United - United Breaks Guitars

Does a Good Lean System Need Six Sigma

With a good Lean system in place, do we still need Six Sigma? (the broken link was removed)

There is no Lean Team, but everyone in the organization thinks Lean. Employee satisfaction surveys show steady growth in satisfaction; profitability is increasing; cost are decreasing; less work pressure... The one problem still exist is ensuring JIT delivery from the suppliers network.

Can Six Sigma help the organization to accelerate or further improve this situation?

Good six sigma efforts (even 15 years ago) and lean share many of the same tools and principles that come from earlier TQM and such like efforts. There are some tools that are primarily associated with six sigma (like design of experiments). But those tools far precede "six sigma" even in their application in business. And those tools could certainly be useful in most lean organizations. There is no reason they couldn't just adopt those management tools.

Given that just in time was developed and made popular by Toyota and Deming long before the term six sigma was coined it certainly can be done expertly without six sigma tools. Six sigma tools can certainly help in my opinion, though.

I wouldn't weigh the benefit of any tools or methods or principles based on what category people places them in but instead I would build a management system based on the need of the organization. My preference is for Deming methods which form the foundation of lean and I also am a big fan of design of experiments (which most Deming and lean efforts do not use).

My father taught me design of experiments and Deming methods as a child and both have always made a great deal of sense to me. He wrote with George Box and Stu Hunter, what is seen by many as the premier design of experiments textbook, Statistics for Experimenters and he taught management improvement based on Deming's ideas, statistics, successful evidence based management principles... for decades.

These tools and methods all can be used together. A blog post of mine from 2005 on lean, six sigma, Deming, operational excellence and other management ideas.

Speaking Up and Taking the Risk

Not speaking the truth to power (the broken link was removed)

For the future. Be very, very, very, very, very cautious about sharing honest opinions with a boss unless you have a good relationship and the boss has proven that he or she actually wants the truth and handles it well. In my experience some bosses want it, some never want it, and some want it in some areas but not others. When in doubt, mumble."

I give my honest opinion almost all the time. It does definitely get you in trouble. It also can help you and help the organization a great deal. I have become more willing to not bother wasting my time with "power" that has no interest in actually improving things.

I am not interested in working in a place where we are not pushing toward evidence based management and seeking real situational awareness not avoidance and burying heads in the sand.

Related: The Lazy Unreasonable Man - The Importance of Management Improvement - Performance without Appraisal

One way I have always looked at it is you will be targeted if you speak up. So if you want to avoid that just be like most others and don't speak up. But if you can make things better by speaking up you will gain allies. This isn't perfect though and it counts on people being smart enough to notice that you are helping them even if occasionally you force them to look at things they would rather avoid.

At one time I could tell after a while that a boss of mine didn't really want to know how they could improve. So they asked me, I told them they didn't really want to know. They said, yes they did. So I told them. They then moved into a new job and told the new boss watch out for this John Hunter, he will be far too critical and not accept how things have to be done, he is a troublemaker.

The new boss called me in and talked to me about the kinds of problems that she saw and some reports of what I had been saying should be done. She asked me some more questions about what could be done to improve things. Then see decided to have me report directly to her 2 days a week to work on getting the organization to change. The organization obviously was failing and they needed change and the huge resistance to change was something she thought required people that were not going to just go along with what had been done and attempt to resist all change.

I took several lessons from this. One my judgement was right, trust what you see in the actions of a boss, not just their words. If you are mostly worried about protecting your job just say what you can tell your boss wants to hear. If however, you are willing to stand up for your beliefs and think you can provide good value you can take the risk and try and improve the organization.

Even if your boss tries to sabotage you it may not work. This is very risky - it was pretty unlikely the new boss would have been so open to new ideas. But she was brought in from the outside specifically because of the continued poor performance fostered by the culture of pretending everything is basically good and blaming employees for failures instead of improving the system... I have always felt free to take risks and if the boss didn't like it then I could look elsewhere. This isn't the best strategy if you are most concerned with keeping your job - it can easily create problems.

Google's Fight to Keep Talent

Google and Pay Raises: Turns Out, She's a Lot Like You.... (the broken link was removed)

Google attempted to do what your company either 1) has done, or 2) would do if you had the means:

1. You would try and buy your way out of a retention problem by giving everyone an across the board raise. Turnover is hard to figure out and stop. Sometimes you just have to throw money at everyone and hope that the turnover stops. It rarely does.

Google is managing people, just like every other organization, so you would expect lots of stuff would be the same. I don't actually recall other companies giving everybody a 10% raise (Google probably has more money than your company). I agree, that this is not likely to do much to turnover.

The possible impact in Google's favor is forcing others to pay so much that they can't afford to do so, and shrink or even go bankrupt. Especially small organizations. Yes they will use options, but salary is also part of the requirement.

I think also, anyone taking away that Google's other moves don't matter is making a huge mistake. Google's moves to create a great culture, let people work with other great people is helping Google. The draws of leaving for so many great people are high. If Google were to be less proactive in other areas the problems retaining people would be much harder. Some people seem to take the idea that people are leaving Google as a condemnation of their tactics. I think that is the wrong thing to take away.

Related: Google's Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm - Google's Innovative Use of Economics

Country Boundaries are Becoming Less Important

Knowledge workers are the new capitalists by Peter F. Drucker

knowledge workers are highly mobile within their specialism. They think nothing of moving from one university, one company or one country to another, as long as they stay within the same field of knowledge.
...
Money is as important to knowledge workers as to anybody else, but they do not accept it as the ultimate yardstick, nor do they consider money as a substitute for professional performance and achievement. In sharp contrast to yesterday's workers, to whom a job was first of all a living, most knowledge workers see their job as a life.

I agree with Drucker. Singapore, Shanghi, Rio De Janeiro, Stockholm, Hong Kong, Berlin, Tokyo, Paris... and many more are going to be destinations for those that grow up in the USA. The numbers of people moving out of the USA in the next 30 years for jobs in the top 10% of the income bracke,t will be many multiples of what it was in teh last 30 in my opinion.

The USA has great advantages. China and Inida do too. But so do many other locations. The USA probably has more ability to absorb mistakes and I still feel it is the best situated, but the gap is much much smaller than it was 30 years ago.

Related: USA Losing Brain Drain Benefits - Long Term Economic Growth - Technology Centers of Excellent and Economic Growth - Keeping Out Technology Workers is not a Good Economic Strategy

Lean Thinking for a Scary Economy

The Role of Lean in the "New Normal" World (the broken link was removed)

The "New Normal" often means we are hanging on, and feel our best days are behind us. For the first time in the USA, many feel their children's future will be filled with less opportunity than they experienced.
...
We need to embrace the "New Normal" as a both a challenge and an opportunity. [North Carolina University] IES is working to help organizations move toward making "circumstances" that will generate true job growth in this "Flat World".

The improvement aspects of lean manufacturing are very beneficial. And the quick response to the market (reduce inventories, pull...) are very beneficial. Both help in any economic climate and are useful today.

I actually think some even more beneficial traits exist in lean thinking for the current economic climate. Lean, the way Toyota practices it, is not about optimistic hopes (focusing on great potential gains) but instead on minimizing risk. I can't find it now, but I believe Taiichi Ohno was clear that he was very focused on making Toyota safe for the long term. Not chasing after quarterly or yearly profit targets.

While many focus on Toyota's quick changeover, pull systems..., and rightly so the importance of long term thinking is huge. When you are focused on long term benefits - you don't take huge risks. You don't over leverage your company. Long term thinking along with respect for people means you focus greatly on avoiding a situation where your company into a position where you have to have layoffs. If that means you leave some potential profits on the table in rabid markets - fine.

I own stock in Toyota and am very happy I do.

The economic future is still bright. But it is also more demanding. The huge amounts of relative wealth the USA enjoyed from 1950-2000 is becoming a thing of the past. Riding on the success that came automatically from that wealth will not work. Improvement is needed to succeed.

Related: Bad Management Results in Layoffs - Managing Our Way to Economic Success (1986) - CEOs Want Health-Care Reform

Work on System Improvements for Best Results Not Problems with Individuals

The Deification of Deming

When people discuss how best to change an organization, Lean proponents will invariably cite Deming and argue that since he has shown that 94% of the potential for improvement is in the system there is little point in working with organizational culture.
...
If lean is ever going to become more mainstream people must start treating it less as a religion with its own gods and more as a collection of insights that have to be carefully tailored to the context you are working in.

Also "94% of the potential for improvement is in the system there is little point in working with organizational culture" is about the opposite of the point he was making. His point would better be stated that there is little point in working on "problems with individuals."

Working on "culture" can mean many things. And often it is just a big waste of time. But the reason for that is not due to systemic/common cause versus special causes.

What Dr. Deming was suggesting is you need to look for systems improvements (which could be cultural - a culture that operates with data based decision making, an understanding of variation...). I think the red bead experiment illustrates the point he was making - any focus on fixing the employees on that system is futile if you don't change the system.

Related: Blame the Road, Not the Driver - Common cause variation - Deming on Management

SPC - Charting and Improving Results

Everett Clinic Video, Redux – The Need for SPC Thinking

Looking at 5.x% and comparing it against an arbitrary goal does little to tell us about the health of the work system. Is 5.x% the typical average performance? Is that much higher than usual?

This is a great opportunity to use the methods of Statistical Process Control. The main management decision is to decide "react" or "not react" to that daily data point. SPC helps us with this (again, Wheeler’s brilliant little book explains this far better than I can in a blog post).

If we choose “not react” because 5.x% is lower than the goal, we might be missing an opportunity for process improvement. Generally, it’s better to present more than one data point – even if you don’t do full-blown SPC, you should present a run chart.

Well put. A simple run chart can be very helpful. One of the uses is to identify special causes. And then to use special cause thinking in those cases. What is important about special cause thinking? That you want to identify what is special about the data point (instead of focusing on all the results as you normally would). What is important about doing that? You want to do it right away (not a week or a month later). Keeping the chart lets you identify when to use special cause thinking and react quickly (to fix problems or capture good special causes to try and replicate them).

You have to be careful as we tend to examine most everything as a special cause, when most likely it is just the expected result of the system (with normal variation in the data). Special cause thinking is not an effective strategy for common cause results.

Related: Quality, SPC and Your Career - Statistical Engineering Links Statistical Thinking, Methods and Tools