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Protect capital infrastructure. Allowing the
conditions of assts to run down in the long term proved to be a poor strategy. Eventually
fleet replacement became prohibitively expensive. |
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Assets purchases must be strategic.
Indiscriminant purchase of core assets (planes) lead to over two dozen different models /
types out of 118 planes, all with different spares, certifications, engineers even pilots.
An expensive option when spares alone ran into tens of millions. |
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Consult experts but don't abrogate
responsibility. The hiring of external consultants in 1998 to devise a strategy to save
Ansett, a process which lasted 2 years and cost more than the economy of most Pacific
nations seemed to create followers not leaders within the company's decision makers. The
"spill and fill" restructuring went on too long distracting managers from their
day-to-day tasks. |
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Failure to partner with staff. Work practices
in Engineering, Flight Attendants just to name a few areas were riddled with demarcations
and to the end remained uncompetitive yet the protection of these practices was valued
above jobs. |
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Buy in to a productivity gap is essential.
Benchmarking was introduced to drive home the productivity gap but was ineffective because
management did the benchmarking not the people whose daily lives it affected. |
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Mature partnership with unions. Partnership
with unions except with of course pilots, meant mostly capitulations by management leading
to the best conditions and an unsustainable cost structure, which some unions recognized
but chose to ignore. |
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KPIs are only as good as the use to which the
data is put. Although performance measures (Key Performance Indicators) were introduced
across the company their introduction was not complimented by appropriate data review and
subsequent corrective action / continuous improvement process. |
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Performance and management appraisals were
undertaken but like KPI data, the results were not used to better performance. The payment
of bonuses to managers at a time when the company was loosing large sums of money made the
message of gloom and doom hollow. |
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The separation packages paid to poor
performers under the guise of redundancy annunciated values loud and clear. |
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Don't cut off you head to save a dollar.
Voluntary redundancy scheme successfully exited the performers essential to Ansett's
survival. Shedding a company's accumulated knowledge and intelligence by retrenching key
personnel as a cost cutting exercise rarely leads to success. |
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Don't promise what you can't deliver – it
costs, figuratively and literally. A media campaign of "ABSOLUTELY" created a
higher cost structure because it wasn't matched with internal processes to deliver the
promise. |
