A few weeks ago American chef, Anthony Bourdain, began a Twitter rant against American Airlines. The reason? Yet another delayed flight.

@Bouradain’s complaint wasn’t just about the delay but also about the way that American Airlines handled it.

As American Airlines tends to do, it left stranded passengers without useful information about the status of the flight.

The passengers just had to sit there and wait.

The Twittersphere was humming and passengers were in rebellion mode. This can’t be a good for the brand, especially for an airline that’s in bankruptcy.

How American Airlines Stole Christmas Twice

Don B. wanted to fly from Los Angeles to Seattle on Christmas Eve, 2012. He was looking forward to spending the holidays with his family whom he hadn’t seen in some time.

In October he made reservations for himself and a friend using American Airlines‘ online reservation site.

The site was difficult to use, froze up and lost his data a number of times.

It took Don, a veteran web developer, five tries to successfully enter his information, but finally the reservations went through, and confirmation was sent to his email address.

The day before the flight Don tried to check in online, but he got an error message saying simply that he’d have to check in at the airport.

There was no indication of what the problem was. He thought nothing of it and went to the American Airlines counter to check in the next day.

No Information Available

The person at the counter reiterated that there was a problem with his reservations, but she couldn’t give him any information. He would have to call American Airlines central reservation desk and speak with them directly.

Since they had no direct phone line that he could use, he had to use his cell phone.

Only when he called did he find out the problem: both seats were in his friend’s name (remember the glitchy reservation web site?).

Don’s friend could travel in whichever of the two reserved seats she wished, but he would have to buy a new ticket if there was room on the plane (of course there was room – he had two tickets!)

Don asked to speak a supervisor. The supervisor’s opening salvo was a scolding to Don for the quality of the cell phone transmission. The call went downhill from there.

Don explained that the error was with American Airlines’ web site. They were obviously aware that he was the main passenger, since all travel information was addressed to him, and not to his friend with the two seats.

Cancelled!

But the supervisor, unrelenting in her abrasiveness, said, no matter, the onus is on the customer to catch the error. He could still fly that night, however, he would have to buy a new ticket. Don said OK. But the price she quoted was far in excess of what he’d already paid.

He ended up passing on her offer and missed the Christmas family reunion.

There’s more. Don’s son, who had flown to Seattle for Christmas, decided to come to Los Angeles to visit Don. He got up at 4:00 a.m. to board the 6:30 a.m. Alaska Air flight that took him to San Francisco and would connect to his 9:30 a.m. American Airlines flight on to Los Angeles.

A few weeks ago American chef, Anthony Bourdain, began a Twitter rant against American Airlines. The reason? Yet another delayed flight.But @Bouradain’s complaint was not only about the delay but also about the way that American Airlines handled it: as American Airlines tends to do, it left stranded passengers without useful information about the status of the flight.

The passengers just had to sit there and wait.

By the time American Airlines did communicate anything substantive the Twittersphere was humming and passengers were in rebellion mode. This can’t be a good for the brand, especially for an airline that’s in bankruptcy.

Yet, brand building seems to be the last thing American Airlines worries about, as the two incidents below demonstrate.

How American Airlines Stole Christmas

The passenger, Don, wanted to fly from Los Angeles to Seattle on Christmas Eve, 2012, to spend the holidays with his family whom he hadn’t seen in some time.

In October he made reservations for himself and a friend using American Airlines’ online reservation site. The site was difficult to use, freezing up and losing data a number of times.

It took Don, a veteran web developer, five tries to successfully enter his information, but finally the reservations went through, and confirmation was sent to him.

The day before the flight Don tried to check in online, but he got an error message saying simply that he’d have to check in at the airport. There was no indication of what the problem was. He thought nothing of it and went to the American airlines counter to check in the next day.

The person at the counter reiterated that there was a problem with his reservations, but she couldn’t give him any information. He would have to call American Airlines central reservation desk and speak with them directly. Since they had no direct phone line that he could use, he had to use his cell phone.

Only when he called did he find out the problem: both seats were in his friend’s name (remember the glitchy reservation web site?). The friend could travel in whichever of the two reserved seats she wished, but he would have to buy a new ticket if there was room on the plane.

Don asked to speak a supervisor. The supervisor’s opening salvo was a scolding to Don for the quality of the cell phone transmission. The call went downhill from there.

Don explained that the error was with American Airlines’ web site. They were obviously aware that he was the main passenger, since all travel information was addressed to him, and not to his friend with the two seats.

But the supervisor, unrelenting in her abrasiveness, said, no matter, the onus is on the customer to catch the error. He could still fly that night, however, if he bought a new ticket. Don said OK. But the price she quoted was far in excess of what he’d already paid. He ended up passing on her offer and missed the Christmas family reunion.

There’s more. Don’s son, who had flown to Seattle for Christmas, decided to come to Los Angeles to visit Don. He got up at 4:00 a.m. to board the 6:30 a.m. Alaska Air flight that took him to San Francisco and would connect to his 9:30 a.m. American Airlines flight on to Los Angeles.

PowerPoint: Three Rules for Effective Business PowerPoint Presentations from Ariane David PhD on Vimeo.

THE VISION:

A culture where employees don’t become plaintiffs.

When employees feel that they have no recourse, no power, and voice, they sue. It’s their only source of power and they only way of being heard. Create a culture in which employees feel empowered and heard.

» Create a culture in which employees feel that they can speak up and even complain, and where they feel they will be heard.

» Create a culture where employees feel that you are communicating with them.

» Create a culture of integrity where one standard fits all: everyone is held to the same values, even the boss.

» Remove blame; concentrate on behaviors and results not judgments.

» Treat all people with respect no matter how menial their work or how stupid their mistakes.

» Build trust by being trustworthy. Do what you say you’re going to do.

» Don’t be an arrogant, remote boss. Remember it’s easier to sue people you don’t like or respect.

THE PLAN:

Create a Crisis Plan for how you will handle lawsuits, whistle blowers, union threats, etc.

» Don’t wait for disaster to figure out what to do; have a plan and stick to it!

» Don’t trust difficult decisions to knee-jerk reactions.

THE CULTURE:

» Question your own assumptions /mental model about how you run your organization.

» Know what you want. The very first item on the agenda for organizational policy makers is to answer the question, “Do we really want a culture of open communication?

» Create official policies that promote integrity and communication. Employees know you’re serious when you make it official. Listen when people have a complaint.

» Respond openly and appropriately.

» Walk the talk. What you really do when an employee has a complaint will matter way more than what you say.

» Reward desirable behavior: you’ll get what you reward.

It’s a funny thing about closet space, the more we have, the more we fill. And, when we run out of space we think, I need more closet space or I need a clever way of stuffing more into the space I have.

So we refold, reorganize, vacuum seal and even throw some stuff away.

Sometimes, a week later we discover that we really wish we had some of the stuff we got rid of.

Time is Like Closet Space

Time is like closet space: we fill up the time we have, discover we haven’t enough, and start reorganizing and dumping, all the while getting more and more stressed.

We make small phone calls between big appointments or have meetings on the way to the car. We’re told to fill in little bits of open time by reading email and doing short tasks, and our lives start taking on the look of a Byzantine mosaic. But the truth is, in the end we still haven’t time for what’s really important. Worse even, we discover that some of the things we deleted from our calendars because there wasn’t time, are exactly the things we like. What we’re left with is a lot of “necessary” but grindingly un-meaningful stuff.

For all the talk we hear about “mastering time”, in the end time cannot be mastered.

Time just is. It’s the fourth dimension, and it’s even more enigmatic than the first three.

Physicists can’t agree on what it is or how it works. We can’t understand it and we can’t control it. The best we can hope for is some degree of control over how we operate within it.

In other words, we cannot master time we can only master our own behavior.

Knowing What’s Important is Tricky

Making the best use of time doesn’t mean finding ways of cramming more into our already bursting schedules. It’s not about knowledge management software or smart phone organizers, or another system we have to make time to learn to use. What it is about is discovering what’s important, in the long term as well as the short, and how to attend to it.

Knowing what’s important is tricky, since it requires that we know what we value – not easy in a world that continually pounds us with all sorts of things we’re told we should value, even if we don’t. These things usually take money so we fill our time with work in order to be able to afford them.

A good way to sort out what’s really important in your life is to ask the question, “When I’m very old and looking back over my life, what do I want to have done?”. Ask, “At that will make me say, ‘I did what I came to do. I have lived a good life?’” That’s what’s important.

At work the situation is a little different. There’s a whole bucket of things screaming to get done. They range from important and urgent to not important and not urgent and everything in between. Generally what’s not important and not urgent is pretty obvious and fairly easy to avoid. The things that usually get our attention are what scream the loudest even if they’re not important. These urgent but not important things shove the quieter important but not urgent things off to the side, but not forever. The neglected important things grow up to become urgent important things usually requiring much more time and energy than they did initially.

The Big Questions

The big questions for figuring out what’s important at work are , “What is my mission, i.e., what is the goal of my work, which if accomplished would mean I was successful?” Answering this question means making some decisions about what “successful” means: does it mean promotion, or doing a good job, or more money, or loving what you do, or making a difference in someone’s life? The next question is, “What are the tasks and milestones that are critical to accomplishing that goal?” The answer to the last question represents mission-critical activities, and they are what’s important to your work.

Figuring out what’s important is the first and hardest step. Then it’s time to step back and see if your current priorities are in agreement with what’s most important in your life and work. If you feel that time is swinging you around by the hair, chances are they aren’t.

The next step is a little simpler: examining your activities to see if they support what’s really important. In business this means looking at all the tasks you have to accomplish and ranking them by how much they each contribute to your mission. The higher the ranking the higher the importance, so this is where you put your attention and time first.

High Leverage Activities

There’s another class of activities, called high leverage activities, that are important because they deliver the biggest value for a relatively small input of time and energy. They’re often hard to see because they tend to be the quiet important things. These activities include cultivating relationships, knowledge, health and resources. At work that could mean developing relationships with mentors, superiors, peers and subordinates, developing job knowledge and skills that go beyond your present job, and training employees. In terms of family, there no higher leverage activities than developing strong and trusting communication with your children.

In the final analysis what’s important is finding a balance that allows us to get the most satisfaction out of both work and our private activities. Since, unlike closets that we can simple add on to if necessary, we have to make do with twenty four hours in a day, no more, no less. How we use this time and whether or not we use it in meaningful ways to a large degree up to us.

Management vs Unions

The battle between the three involved unions – pilots, engineers and ground crews – and Qantas management is a classic one these days. Qantas wanted to outsource a good part of its operation to Asia, primarily Malaysia, in an effort to lower operations costs. The unions, of course, focusing on the loss of Australian jobs (and union power), found it unacceptable, and the fight was on.

The First Shot

Stranding passengers in order to punish Qantas employees was the shooting-themselves-in-the-foot part. The reload and shoot again part came three weeks later. Instead of making brief contrite apologies to the passengers who had been stranded, offering them an offset and moving on in the hope that they would eventually forget, what Qantas did next was straight out of Mad Men.

The Reload

On November 29 Qantas, in an effort to mollify disgruntled passengers, launched a contest with prizes (really cheap prizes) asking them to describe their “dream luxury in-flight experience”.

Now this might have been a fine strategy in the past: the contest would have been announced in print or on radio and TV,  responses would have arrived quietly at Qantas HQ, and any negative responses disposed of in private.

Instead, at a time when they were locked in a bitter labor dispute and on the heels of the most irksome treatment of passengers in all airline history, Qantas used Twitter to invite participation in the contest.

“Be creative”, the Qantas tweet encouraged.

Let the Mockery Begin

Qantas was not prepared for just how much participation or creativity they got. The Tweets went viral: somewhere around 25,000 Tweets and reTweets flew in a twenty-four hour period. A huge percentage were negative, and they were right out there for everyone to see. Instead of mollifying disgruntled customers, it spilled the whole ugly mess in front of the world. Qantas’ pre-SMM strategy was a disaster. A couple of quotes from the Twittersphere captures the tone,

“Somewhere in Qantas HQ a middle-aged manager is yelling at a Gen Y social media ‘expert’ to make it stop,“

“Alan Joyce now seeking an injunction to ground Twitter due to #QantasLuxury fiasco“.

It’s All About the Thinking

While Qantas must now hurriedly be  trying to find out not only what went wrong, but more urgently, who’s to blame for the Twitter fiasco, what’s really going on is far deeper than  a couple of bad PR decisions. What’s at issue and what isn’t being addressed is the thinking behind it all – on all sides.

What the world has been seeing from CEO, Alan Joyce, throughout this whole thing is a kind of divisive thinking that cannot ever bring lasting solutions, and he expresses it with the kind of arrogance that only monumental positional-thinking can produce.

But Alan Joyce is not the only one. For union managers Qantas’ off-shoring move, was not only a threat to Australian jobs, but also to their powerful positions in the airline industry.

No Learning Seems to be Taking Place

The situation is now in the courts. According to Australian law, at this point all adversarial action by all parties must cease: neither the unions nor Qantas management may make a move against the other.

The outcome will be resolved through a judgment of the court. Both sides will likely abide by that judgment, but as in most cases of compromise or imposed solution, both sides will dwell primarily on what they had to give up in order to have a settlement rather than on what they gained.

Given the political and economic climate in Australia, the award for feeling the most-shafted will likely go to the unions.  And, as in most such cases where the root thinking behind the problem has not been examined, trouble will surface again, and when it does one might hope that Qantas will remember what it felt like to shoot itself in the foot.

Live Twitter Feed #QantasLuxury

Qantas Fail Whale Image by @kellulz