Alaska airlines case study

Alaska airlines case study

Alaska Airlines has been facing several challenges for the last ten years, calling for immediate intervention. Lack of customer satisfaction was a significant challenge, among other operational needs. Constant issues were rising from baggage; the customers were also complaining of late plane arrival. Only 60% of planes scheduled to arrive maintained the arrival time. The transportation department frequently reported at least seven bags out of a thousand passengers being mishandled. The general customer transaction process was not standardized, leading to complaints.

Passengers were observed to disgruntle the airline workers until security officers intervened due to long carousel wait times (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker. 2015). There was poor communication between the management and labor organizations, causing regular strikes. The employees and pilots were facing pay cuts, which led to the loss of working morale across the company workers. As the cost of fuel continued to rise, the management sought the issue by cutting off employee salaries. However, despite the company’s effort to stabilize, there were frequent conflicts and dissatisfaction across the panel. The employees seemed to be resistant to any organizational, operational change leading to a low growth rate (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker. 2015). The paper tries to identify the most suitable issues and concerns to take toward the Alaska airlines case study.

Creating Urgency

To help Alaska Airlines employees to understand the need for change, the company should set a well-defined change plan; otherwise, the company many experiences a tremendous fall. The communication strategy should be set to ensure all the available information is presented to the employees in a presentable manner. Giving the employees the correct information helps them in assessing the necessary action is needed for operational stabilization. Failing to address the current problem may lead to the company’s bankruptcy. Another approach, which would help the employees understand the need for change, is see-feel-change methodology. The strategy involves a demonstrative approach where employees are presented with eye-catching events helping them to visualize the current issue and also propose a permanent solution to the problem (Cohen 2015).

Leaders should play an important role in availing educational problems and solution approaches to the pilots. The pilots should be made to understand the cost of slow taxing and its effect on the general plane operations. Slow taxing within the gates consumes much fuel increasing the value of the plane operation. The cost of jet fuel rose extremely to about 147 dollars per barrel. By assessing the locally known plane 757, it consumes at least 750 gallons hourly (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker. 2015). Taking the current jet fuel cost to be 6.22 dollars, the overall taxing cost per hour equates to over 4665 dollars. Considering the pilots are slowed by taxi to and fro the gates, there is a heavy burden experienced by the organization from the vendors.

The first step for any leader trying to establish a change successfully, it is essential to own the problem. The level of responsibleness defines a good leader in dealing with issues and being responsible whenever a question arises within the organization attacks accountability within the organizational units.  It is essential to develop trust across the operational chain to win the situation without creating conflicts. Trust makes it easy to drive change without necessarily much conflict since every individual is satisfied by the decision made by the organization leaders. Several methods should be readily adapted to drive change in Alaska airline operations.

Building a Guiding Coalition

Choosing the right individual with the necessary qualifications makes a change process successful. One individual from each operational unit should be chosen to lead others. These leaders should then report to the management leading to less resistance to change (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015). Leaders to be selected should possess excellent leadership characteristics such as high convincing power and evaluation skills. The leaders chosen should then form groups by choosing their team members depending on individuals’ knowledge and capabilities towards change. The leaders should meet regularly to discuss the respective change process.

Another critical aspect of building a coalition is Strategy Report. Strategy Report can be achieved by appointing leaders with profound abilities in bridging the gap between the management and the employees by taking the necessary actions to make the change. By adopting this strategy, the employees will be guaranteed support by the administration as long as the company’s objectives will be met. Open communication should be allowed for employees to raise their concerns, avoiding future strikes. By allowing the employees voice, every entity feels comfortable, leading to a smooth change.

Alaska Airlines should focus on the data-driven process to achieve change. The company should use scorecards to evaluate its operational objectives, especially in timely arrival and departure times. Each entity within its functional change from top management to line maintenance personnel should be included in the board. The organization should also include the project management team to analyze and report on baggage mishandling and long wait time (Avolio, Peter & Baker. 2015).

Motivation to respective teams advocating for change will be a driving factor towards successful change in Alaska Airline’s operations. Teams coming up with compelling ideas such as improving baggage handling and waiting time should be recognized and be awarded. Change is brought about by overall individual perception by the various entities within the operational chain.  By assigning each productive team, everyone will be motivated towards achieving transformation within the organization.

References

N.A (2018) Aviation Fuel: Current US Fuel Prices & Averages by Region. Retrieved from:

https://www.globalair.com/airport/region.aspx

Avolio, B. J., Patterson, C., & Baker, B. (2015). Alaska Airlines: Navigating change. Ivey Publishing.

Cohen, D. S. (2015). The heart of change field guide: Tools and tactics for leading change in

            your organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.