The decisions and actions of Alan Joyce and the Qantas board will no doubt be studied in text books for many years to come...was grounding an entire airline at a moments notice as a form of reprimand the correct management decision that could be made? I'm not sure, and it's not for me to say as I am sure there are many, many facts and circumstances that Mr Joyce, the board and senior management of Qantas are dealing with daily that we will never be privy to. Maybe under the circumstances it was the only course of action. The purpose of this article is not to validate or criticise the managements decisions but to look at what lessons that can be learnt from this monumental event.
Every person in business can learn from this. We all have people we need to satisfy in our business's on a day to day basis. Maybe we have employees, we definitly have customers or clients. The Qantas case involves both employees and customers.
The other big discussion point in this exercise is brand damage and whether or not the actions taken on the day have damaged the brand and image of Qantas. If we go back to the very ingredients of any business whether you are a small sole trader or multi-national public company, the following points are critical to remember:
1) Customers/Clients are critical to your business. Without them you have no business or revenue. They need to be serviced and looked after so they become an advocate of your brand and keep coming back and buying from you. People need goods and services everyday but where are they going to get them?
2) If we have customers/clients that need servicing in a particular way as discussed at point 1, we need people and systems to do this efficently . It is vital to the ongoing success of the business that the people we have doing this are equally motivated and engaged in providing the level of service and skills that are required. Is it better to have 1,000 customers serviced exceptionally well and thus positive advocates of your product or 1,000,000 customers receiving mediocre service by disgruntled staff, thus negative advocates? Yes, revenue might be higher initially but obviously not for long.
3) This is where the brand comes in - through constant delivery of exceptional service and supply of product the business brand grows customers/clients associate and assimilate with the brand in their lives. The brand can have different meanings and feelings to different people but the more consistantly you hit that chord the stronger the brand grows. This is the same for the employees of the company. The strength of the brand grows as their emotional and motivational perception of the brand increases. Attracting people to work in your business becomes easier with the strengthening of your brand.
If we apply the basic ingredients above to the Qantas scenario you will see that there are some very delicate relationships that need to be mended by the management and board of Qantas.
For Example
If we simply legislate through Fair Work that there can be no industrial action and all employees need to just get back to work, will point 2 above be satisfied? Will employees feel engaged and motivated to deliver exceptional customer service and building a brand? Or will the extra touches of customer service go undone and over looked?
Equally if the employees hold the company to ransom through strike action, does that help the company to remain viable and assist in better working conditions?
Does awarding the CEO a $2 million dollar payrise at a time of such cultural turbulence help engage your employees in the debate? Does it make it hard for Mr Joyce to go to the bargaining table now and say we can't afford to meet your requests?
If we just throw millions of dollars in free flights to our customers as an apology will this help everybody to move on if we still have disgruntled employees? Or will it make matters worse as we encourage more people to take a trip on our disgruntled air service?
At the end of the day as I said, there are no doubt many facets in this debate that have not surfaced or we are not aware of, however from an outsiders perspective and looking for the lessons to be learnt on what we do know...
It doesn't matter how right you think you are, how unreasonable you think someone is being or how wrong the opposing opinion is. If they are critical to the success of your business, which they clearly are, you have to be prepared to give and take to find common ground.
If you are the CEO of an organisation and you are arguing with your employees that our productivity needs to improve and we need to put restraints on wage growth you will have an impossible time selling this argument and thus finding common ground and maintaining respect by awarding yourself a large pay rise and blowing millions of dollars fixing a problem you didn't need to have in the first place.
As Dale Carnegie quoted in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People published in 1937, "If you want to gather honey don't kick over the honey pot."
People have pride. Alan Joyce is a proud man, the employees of Qantas are proud people, the unions that guide them are also proud. To say any of them are wrong for what they believe to be right will not repair Qantas. It is only respected leadership that can pioneer common ground and a strong win/win for all parties that will ensure a business's longevity and profitability.
There is a lesson in this for us all in business and in life...
"Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?"
