Having been involved in many transition periods during my career it never ceases to amaze me when yet another corporate transition causes trials and tribulations. I think we all have personally discovered that most problems, in almost anything one does, happen at the interface of one process with another. Mitigating such trials and tribulations is possible, as most transitions are predictable and controllable should some forethought be given to the situation, but that never seems to happen until it is too late.
As an example, over the last many years my job responsibilities have made me a frequent flyer and due to where I live I’m most often a customer of one particular airline. This lifestyle puts me in airports 8 to 10 times a month. Therefore, I get to sample this airline’s operations frequently on an ongoing basis. The best outcome of such an experiment is to not notice anything unusual. That is akin to the “no news is good news” theory. You just get where you want to go pretty much on time, with some degree of comfort with the physical plant and with fair treatment from staff.
Over the last few years (since the last time this airline had financial issues) travel was reasonably good as measured by metrics such as friendly staff, on-time travel (weather and uncontrollable events excluded) and on-board amenities. It takes awhile but somewhere along the line you come to the realization that certain bad events seem to recur and that things have changed for the worst - trials and tribulations have begun. As a data point, after years of not being delayed due to mechanical difficulties I have over the last 6 months been delayed 4 times myself and been at the next gate to other flights experiencing mechanical problems at least 3 or 4 times during the same period. I have had an air conditioner not working with the pilot stating, “not to worry it will cool off when we get off the ground” and I have had to sit in a seat with a seat belt much too small because it was meant for a different size seat. Now, I am not complaining about the fact that the pilot decided to delay to enable something to be fixed, instead I am making the observation that someone should be looking at the preventative maintenance program because it doesn’t seem to be delivering what it did in the recent past.
As another data point, the staff has become in some instances less friendly and accommodating. Last week I watched in awe as an out-and-out shouting match occurred between a customer and a gate agent. Lately, you also seem to get a lot of snide comments from the staff either over the intercom when making announcements or during meal services, etc. Overall the staff-customer interface is starting to become a bit frayed. Please understand that these are just observations that are not scientifically validated nor are they statistically accurate, but these observations do seem to indicate a decline in service. I am not alone in this view because when I speak with other frequent flyers the same thoughts are being expressed.
So what could be the cause of these service slippages? I don’t know for certain but I think it is because this airline is now in a transition period. Transitions mean change, and the management of change, or the lack thereof, has caused many a good idea to deliver less than the originally anticipated result. I once worked for a very large communications company that wanted to expand into the computer product area. They bought an old line computer company to round out the product line. There was little transition planning in this move, it seemed as if both management groups thought the merger of cultures would just happen. Well, it didn’t, and after a year or two of arguments, missed milestones and much acrimony the end result was the dissolution of a deal that held so much promise when it was consummated.
The moral of my tale is to manage change during transitions much closer than you manage normal operations. Closer management includes identifying things that can affect a transition that you don’t usually consider during typical day to day operations. Then and only then will Transition not be associated with its troublesome cousins, Trial and Tribulation.
