Based on Kotter’s steps 3 and 4, use this information about Alaska airline to an
ID: 384536 • Letter: B
Question
Based on Kotter’s steps 3 and 4, use this information about Alaska airline to answer the questions at the end of the case. Thanks
Kotter’s steps 3 & 4
3. Decide the change vision and strategy; clarify how the future will be different from the past and how you can make that future a reality
4. communicate for understanding and buy in; make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
Organizational needs
Organizational needs identify what is necessary to meet the future need of the organization. The needs help to determine the organization’s priorities, make improvements, and ensure the appropriate resources are allocated. The first organization need is to fix the operational challenges at Alaska Airlines. The company cruised through the 1900’s with mediocre performance; however, due to various events over the past two decades, Alaska Airlines has been facing the risk of bankruptcy. Alaska Airlines’ primary hub is located in Seattle and houses various operational units including maintenance, ticket counter, infight, flight operations (Avolio, at el., 2015). The various operational units work independently, however with current operations failing to meet the status quo, Alaska Airlines needs to overhaul the current operations process to ensure all units are aligned and are collaborating for the success of the company. By improving the operational challenges, the company can work on reducing costs and improving the company’s reputation.
The second organizational need is to increase the employee morale. The crash of flight 261 in 2000 began the steady decline of the morale within the workplace. Flight 261 and the 9/11 attack took an economic toll on the company, which it tried to repair in 2003 with The 2010 Plan. The 2010 Plan began impacting employees financially by outsourcing groups, offering voluntary severances to management, and closing several Alaska Airlines stations and offices throughout the west coast. Around the same time union contracts were up for renegotiations, which resulted in mediations, binding arbitrations lowering pay, and terminations of employees (Avolio, at el., 2015). The union negotiations further negatively impacted the employee morale, as employees were fearful that they would be next impacted and were overworked. By having low employee morale, one of Alaska Airlines’ three strategic priorities - customer satisfaction – will continue to be negatively impacted due to the lack of employees’ desire to please the customer since they aren’t happy themselves. As the employees represent the brand of Alaska Airlines, it is important to focus on their morale to help to ensure they are upholding the value of the Alaska Airlines brand.
The third organizational need is effective performance measurements to help measure success. Alaska airline employees work in individual silos along and currently do not have any performance analysis that help measure organizational goals. The lack of understanding current performance targets and current status of performance does not encourage employees to strive to achieve any performance standard. As the company must improve its operational status, it is important for employees to understand where the company is currently operating at and what each employee’s role is to help improve the performance (Blazey, 2009, p.16). The performance analyses can also be used to respond rapidly to changing organizational needs in the future. These analyses can also help to identify weak spots within a certain operational team and help to identify units that need additional resource. In addition, the performance of the airline is something that shareholders hold much value in. Shareholder want to know that the performance of the company is standard with competitors and are helping increase the value of the company.
Impacting
How did this problem arise? Determine how this problem is currently “impacting” the organization.
The problem with Alaska airline first arise when one of their planes crashed on January 31, 2000 due to mechanical problems. MD-80 jet was carrying roughly 88 passengers, and working crew from Puerto Rico Mexico when the plane crashed into rough seas 64 km, approximately 40 miles from Los Angeles. Everyone was shocked at the tragedy that had just happened. Not too long after came the trauma of 9/11. Airlines operations were greatly interrupted worldwide, with the demand for traveling going down. 9/11 was seen and viewed by many to have been a great shock to the nation. However, because the Alaska Airline crash had something to do with mechanical problems, made the crash very personal to all that were directly impacted by the event or not. To them, it was rather neglect on the airlines side that caused such a crash to happen in the first place (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015).
Due to the 9/11 tragedy that had shocked the nation, and caused airlines to see a huge reduction in travelers, many airlines decided to lay off their employees to avoid going bankrupt. Atlanta Airlines and its management felt that it would be best to take the other route and not lay off that workers. In the sense that doing so would maybe restore some, if not, all the trust that their employees once had about the airline after the tragedy crash that had occurred.
The mechanical problem that caused the crash has been affecting the company since it first occurred. “Alaska’s annual passenger traffic dropped 5.6 percent in 2001 compared with the industry wide decline in domestic passenger travel of 19 percent (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015)”. In 2004, the airline decided to contract out their heavy aircraft maintenance. The company has been taking measures of different kind to avoid the maintenance problem crash that caused many people to doubt the airlines ability to protect them, and whether safety was of any importance to them at all.
Gaps
Alaska Airlines was going through some major changes (rather they had to go through some major changes). ‘Alaska Airlines had recovered from an all-time operational low, where only 60 percent of flights were on time and seven bags per 1,000 passengers were reported as having been mishandled’ (Avolio, B., J., Patterson, C., & Baker, B. 2015). The airline company was able to stay afloat because they had an extremely loyal following of passengers. This loyalty was rapidly decreasing as more and more passengers were experiencing delayed flights and lost bags.
The airline had gone through two major events that negatively impacted the customer loyalty. In one incident, ‘an Alaska Airlines MD-80 jet carrying 88 passengers and crew from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco crashed into rough seas 64km (40 miles) northwest of Los Angeles’ (Avolio, et., al. 2015). Shortly after this incident, 9/11 occurred which severely hindered all airlines. With these two events happening so close together Alaska Airlines was struggling to keep sales. With these two events on top of their poor flight times and bag handling, Alaska Airlines had a long way to go to get their sales back to a ‘below normal’ level. With their current situation being so bad, they needed a full organizational shift to get back where they wanted to be.
Alaska Airlines wanted to get their numbers back to where they used to be and then eventually surpass that and gain their customer loyalty bag. The airline needed to determine what changes to make to the core values and processes of their organization to make their goal a reality. Their process included an entire shift in management in their Seattle hub. This also came with downsizing and changing up lower level managers as well. This was tough decision as employees (along with the customers) can also lose faith and their sense of loyalty to the organization.
Perhaps the biggest change that Alaska Airlines made to get to where they wanted to be as an Airline was outsourcing their ramp vendor. ‘A bold decision was made to replace more than 470 Seattle baggage handlers with contractors’ (Avolio, et., al. 2015). This decision really defined the gap between where they were versus where they wanted to be. Although they had hiccups with the vendor, which initially was not working towards their advantage. ‘Stabilizing the ramp quickly was essential to the long-term success of the “Fix Seattle” imperative” (Avolio, et., al. 2015). Once they got this aspect of the organization corrected their flight delays, bag handling, as well as other employees working operations (especially pilots).
Alaska Airlines gap between their current situation and their goal had been increasing at an alarming rate due to external factors as well as internal factors. The organizational change that they made in their Seattle hub was extremely crucial to minimizing and eventually closing this gap.
Question, Form a Strategic Vision;
D. Communicate the Change
1. What is required for the change to be communicated effectively within the organization? Why?
2. Determine actions you will take to encourage two-way communication for effective feedback loops during implementation of the change effort. Explain why these actions will be effective.
3. How will you support the direct supervisors in the organization in their efforts to communicate with employees about the change effort?
4. Describe how you will address any concerns or anxieties regarding this change.
5. Who needs to be involved and in what capacity for this change effort to be a success?
Explanation / Answer
Organizational need:
1. What is required for the change to be communicated effectively within the organization? Why?
The dire necessity for change has to be communicated to one and all. It should be elaborated further on WHY is it so imperative NOW to resurrect, overhaul ourselves in all depts. It should be supported by some key numbers. The change should be communicated with some personal examples, baby steps that the CXOs have themselves taken to ensure the commitment towards the change.
All these ways to communicate the expected change will make the employees visualize the past and the future of the company in both cases of accepting or not-accepting the change. The mental picture is very important as that would lead one and all to work towards the core values and thus the up-liftment of the company.
2. Determine actions you will take to encourage two-way communication for effective feedback loops during implementation of the change effort. Explain why these actions will be effective.
Two-way communication is equally important as if a communication happens only on-way that too from the top downwards then at some level it just fizzles out. Hence an open discussion forum online where people can post either named or anonymously would be a great measure. Also dashboards at every nook and corner of the employee touch points where anyone can put a sticky with his/her ideas, feedback would also mean that every employee has a say. Moreover based on these interactions, the management needs to act on all the feedbacks received at all levels.
3. How will you support the direct supervisors in the organization in their efforts to communicate with employees about the change effort?
Direct supervisors are one of the most pivotal point to manage an operations intensive organization. We think all CXOs only should travel and address all direct supervisors at their locations giving them the impression that the top 4-5 people on this mission to save the firm need their efforts. They are here for a reason and want the wellness, prosperity of the bottommost rung of the employees.
4. Describe how you will address any concerns or anxieties regarding this change.
Any concerns or anxieties needs to be spotted first, heard first, to be analyzed and then put through enough brainstorming, perhaps asking the person himself what does he sees as possible reasons and thus solutions and then act as per the most viable solution. Open discussion is where it starts and action items with execution and results is where it ends and thus all uncertainties, doubts has be addressed.
5. Who needs to be involved and in what capacity for this change effort to be a success?
As mentioned earlier it has the start from the CXOs. And it should not take the waterfall model where it flows through multiple pecking levels and reaches the employees. It should be direct bypassing all the levels so that the change starts from the bottom and top in parallel.
Operational challenges can only be resolved by people who are performing the operations and not by boardroom deliberations. Employee morale will rise if the employees know what they are doing and how does it affect customers and thus the company’s fortunes. Every employee’s, dept’s KPIs can be chalked by asking them what do they do every day, how do they think they can be more productive, how they can be more happy while doing it. We need to say that the past is part and we all have to accept the lessons from there and we look and work towards the future. We still have a lot of customer loyalty and thus we can rise from here. No one other than the top 4-5 CXOs can do it more effectively .
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