Yesterday
I arrived at Montreal Airport at about 4:30pm for my 6pm return flight
to Toronto. I was surprised to note that it was already listed as
'delayed', scheduled to depart at 6:30pm. I got my boarding pass from
the machine and headed to the bar for an early dinner, and ended up
exchanging Air Canada stories with two other guys at the bar who were
waiting for the same flight. We all admitted we would rather be flying
on the 'upstart' airline Westjet. but for logistical reasons were
flying Air Canada. The terminal was jammed because all flights to the
US East Coast were seriously delayed or canceled, and the temperature
was near 90 Fahrenheit. We boarded the flight at 6:30 and twenty
minutes later were told by a very flustered and tongue-tied flight
attendant that the plane had 'serious mechanical problems with its
hydraulic systems', that they would know in about an hour whether it
was fixable, and that if anyone wanted to 'jump ship' there were still
50 seats available on the 10pm flight. A few people 'jumped ship'.
At 7:30 we were told that the problem was not fixable and that we had
to deplane and talk to the Air Canada rep about other arrangements.
After we disembarked, we were told that a replacement plane had been
arranged for us at the other end of the terminal. After a ten minute
trek we discovered that the replacement plane was the one destined for
Winnipeg, and that all the Winnipeg passengers had been given a new
departure gate and later departure time. There was open discussion as
to whether they were bumped to make room for the larger Toronto
passenger group, and whether they would make it home at all that night.
Announcements were few and far between, and it was left largely to the
passengers to tell each other where their new gate was, and to organize
ourselves. On top of that, the clerk at the gate said she had to go to
look after her Winnipeg flight, so for half an hour there was no one
from Air Canada at our 'new' gate at all. When they finally arrived,
they clearly did not know how to manage such a situation, muttered to
each other for fifteen minutes, and finally announced that because it
was a different sized plane, all boarding passes would have to be
reissued. Rather than just 'mapping' from the old seat assignments to
the new ones, they reassigned every seat on a first come, first served
basis. It took two of them 45 minutes to do this for about 150
passengers, and I was one of the first to board the new plane at 8:50.
At 9:30 they told us that the new plane had a broken auxiliary engine
so there would be no air conditioning until we pushed back. At 9:45
they told us that the auxiliary engine was also needed to jump-start
the plane, and that the truck brought in to 'boost' the plane had
failed to do so. The heat and smell at this point were suffocating. At
10:00 a second truck successfully boosted the plane, and at 10:20,
almost 4 1/2 hours late, we took off.
The first apology we heard since the beginning of this ordeal came from
the captain at 9:45. I got home just after midnight, eight hours after
I had left my Montreal client -- it would have been faster, more
comfortable, and much cheaper, to drive. And other than a free beer or
wine on board, no compensation was offered for the inconvenience.
What are the lessons from this story?
The value of prevention:
It's much better to prevent problems from occurring than to try to cope
with them when they do. One mechanical problem every once in awhile is
unavoidable even with good preventative maintenance; two back-to-back problems is inexcusable. Small airlines
don't have the luxury of bringing in 'back-up' aircraft, and in my
experience they are better at this than the big guys.
The importance of not over-promising:
All of the expected departure and arrival times given to us were wildly
optimistic. Many passengers were arranging pick-ups and connecting
flights by cell-phone, and had to change them at least six times.
Smaller companies 'get' this: they give you a worst-case time, not a
best-case one.
The value of agility:
Why is there no automatic, computerized re-mapping of boarding passes
when passengers need to change planes. This is not that rare an
occurrence. If it had been a small airline, they would simply have
honored all boarding passes on any seat in the same class on the
aircraft, and not bothered assigning seats at all. In fact, some of
them only have one class and have no assigned seats. And why couldn't
they break Standard Operating Procedure and have the check-in clerks
stay where they were, instead of swapping back and forth with the gate
changes?
The importance of courtesy:
Too little information, too infrequently, inarticulately provided, and
too few apologies. Come on, guys, this is not rocket science. Good
thing we were patient, peace-loving, non-line-jumping Canadians.
The importance to treating everyone equally:
In a crisis situation, you can't play favourites. This is a Titanic
lesson. What appeared to be blatantly sacrificing the Winnipeg
passengers for the Toronto ones was inexcusable. And taking the
business class and frequent-flyer passengers first after everyone had
been waiting an hour in unbearable heat (which they tried to do, and
then thought better of) was just dumb.
The value of service recovery:
When you mess up, bend over backwards to recover the lost goodwill.
Giving passengers compensation would have repaid itself many times over
in repeat business, which Air Canada will now not get from many of
these passengers.
Small is beautiful. From big computer makers to big airlines to big
media to big pharma to big agribusiness, bigger is worse -- for the
economy, for the environment, and for the customer. When will we learn?
A discussion of why big organizations are inherently inefficient and
grow more indolent as they grow more profitable, and why we all work
harder than we have to.
I don't think there's anything
wrong with being lazy. I believe it's human nature (and natural,
period) to only work as hard as you have to. Only shareholders and
customers care about 'productivity' -- that modern euphemism for more
work for less pay. With few exceptions, if we could be comfortable
doing less work, we would. In an ideal world, we could each work an
hour a day, or a day a week, and all live comfortably. So why don't we?
The main reasons are:
The rich and powerful need us to work hard to keep them in the luxurious style to which they have become accustomed, and
As communities have given way to large corporations and
state organizations, our sense of responsibility and duty to that
community have been lost, so we need to be forced to work for these big, anonymous organizations, for fear of starving or living in destitution, sickness and misery.
Many of us have sought to escape this wage slavery by becoming
entrepreneurs, but thanks to the massive power of large corporate
oligopolies, and the equally massive subsidies and tax breaks their
political contributions earn them, entrepreneurs need to work even
harder to garner the crumbs that are left for them in niches the
oligopolies can't be bothered to corral for themselves.
The irony is that once these oligopolies reach the level of comfort
their power earns them, they naturally can, and do, become lazy
themselves. Why produce quality locally when you can outsource
production to China and let them do all the work? Why innovate when you
can simply hire an army of lawyers to patent everything and sue anyone
who dares threaten your industry dominance (or just buy them out)? Why
provide good service when through bad service you can coerce customers
into 'self-care'?
Nowhere is this trend to big business laziness more evident than in the
information and entertainment media. In television's early days there
was an enormous pioneering spirit and sense of responsibility to the
viewing public. You had news and public affairs programming that was
hard-hitting and investigative. You had dramas that were brilliantly
written and so innovative that they embarrassed big-budget Hollywood
with their courage and creativity. You had comedies that were genuinely
funny, heart-warming and heart-rending in turn.
Today you have timid media unwilling to challenge or investigate
government and corporate wrong-doing -- the news is endless sound
bites, the same video is repeated on every network -- shared by the
networks to cut costs, and focus is on cheap, easy stories -- the crime
blotter and celebrity scandals. Instead of well-crafted drama you have
'reality TV' -- cheap, contrived, improvisational 'staged' drama with
no message or information value spewed out by unimaginative producers
and delivered by semi-literate amateurs. And as I have written before, and as a new article by James Martin (not available online) entitled The Future of Comedy: It's Not Even Funny
points out, 'neo-funny' comedies feature cheap humiliation and
embarrassment of characters "that make the audience cringe rather than
laugh", in place of wit and humour that takes skill and genuine effort
to create.
In short, the media (of all genres, not just television) have gotten
lazy, complacent, unimaginative, and risk-averse. Of course this is due
in part to the fact that this strategy minimizes costs and hence
increases profits, which is what modern corporations, alas, are all
about.. But, bottom line, there is no right-wing conspiracy in the
media -- the right-wing slant exists because it's easier and cheaper to
pander to that audience segment, and there is today no sense of
responsibility to either inform or truly entertain the public.
This is not to suggest that people, even executives, in large
corporations do not work hard. On the contrary, because their
'productivity' has come at the expense of mid-management and now top
management jobs, those who remain are working harder than ever. And
large organizations. as John Ralston Saul has demonstrated, are
inherently bureaucratic and inefficient, so an enormous amount of
largely wasted time and unproductive work is required just to keep them
from sinking into a bureaucratic quagmire.
So ultimately, no one benefits -- as shareholders and customers we are
getting higher profits and lower prices, but as customers we are also
getting lower quality, and as workers we are getting lower wages,
often, when we are laid off, as entrepreneurs, and often despite
working longer hours.
Interestingly, there is a segment of the entrepreneurial workplace that
has found the best of all worlds in this chaotic and overworked
economic system. These are the people who have founded Natural Enterprises,
keying in on niches the oligopolies cannot, or cannot be bothered, to
fill, working modest hours for comfortable wages with low risk and 100%
control over their company and destiny. They are true models for the
rest of us, in large and small organizations alike -- they work only as
hard as they must, producing goods and services that customers
genuinely need, at a fair price, and loving every moment of their work.
Are they lazy? Damned right. They know there are more important things
in life than work, and that no one on their deathbed ever wished they
had spent more time at the office.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking large organizations for being
lazy while praising entrepreneurs for the same thing. They're both
rewarded for what they do, and it would be illogical to expect them to
behave otherwise.
What this indicates, however, is that the economic and legal system
that produces this dysfunctional behaviour is seriously broken. The
answer is to change the economic and legal system to discourage oligopolies and offshoring, and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.
Would the world be better if we all worked shorter hours, for our own
businesses, for more modest ROIs, trading less 'stuff' for more time
for ourselves, our families and our communities? I think it would.
Cartoon by Robert Weber from
the New Yorker. I know I posted it last week, but it's so good and so a
propos of this post I couldn't resist a re-post.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
Yesterday
I arrived at Montreal Airport at about 4:30pm for my 6pm return flight
to Toronto. I was surprised to note that it was already listed as
'delayed', scheduled to depart at 6:30pm. I got my boarding pass from
the machine and headed to the bar for an early dinner, and ended up
exchanging Air Canada stories with two other guys at the bar who were
waiting for the same flight. We all admitted we would rather be flying
on the 'upstart' airline Westjet. but for logistical reasons were
flying Air Canada. The terminal was jammed because all flights to the
US East Coast were seriously delayed or canceled, and the temperature
was near 90 Fahrenheit. We boarded the flight at 6:30 and twenty
minutes later were told by a very flustered and tongue-tied flight
attendant that the plane had 'serious mechanical problems with its
hydraulic systems', that they would know in about an hour whether it
was fixable, and that if anyone wanted to 'jump ship' there were still
50 seats available on the 10pm flight. A few people 'jumped ship'.
