Pulling Off the AIR ASIA Experience

8/3/2019 Pulling Off the AIR ASIA Experience

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Pulling Off the JetBlue Experience

As Air Asia Flight MA15 taxis to the runway at KL International Airport bound for Macao,,

customers may not realize the level of complexity behind the scenes to safely and

efficiently operate a major airline.

The System Operations Center (SOC) is the heart of the airline – the epicenter where

effective decision making, communication, teamwork, and leadership are critical

to ensure that crewmembers able to meet and exceed customer needs. This department

has a direct impact on ensuring that JetBlue’s vision of “bringing humanity back to air

travel” is achieved. Today, the SOC is comprised of five teams, including Maintenance

Control, System Control, Crew Services, Dispatch, and Watch (i.e. security).

By fostering an environment that puts crewmembers first, Air Asia has broken new territory

in an industry known for bad customer service and disgruntled employees. The low-cost

airline entered the market in The 1990s and has survived competition from major airlines:

As Air Asia grew and changed, a culture shift occurred. Processes that once were sufficient

became outdated. The 150 crewmembers of the SOC were at the forefront of these

organizational changes, which included turnover in leadership, expansion into international

markets, increased number of departures, and the introduction of a new fleet type.

Compounding the stress of these internal changes were the external pressures of

competing carriers emerging from bankruptcy, increased fuel prices, as well as an increasing

number of low-fare carriers entering the marketplace.

In this tumultuous environment a critical need emerged to proactively investigate the

department’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas where transformation was needed to beprepared for the future. To address this need, a partnership between the SOC and the

Organizational Development (OD) team within R&D (the airline’s centralized learning group)

was forged. The goal of this partnership was to create a stronger foundation within the SOC

by building a healthier organizational culture that will support Air Asia crewmembers and

customers and enable a consistent delivery of the Air Asia Experience.

Let’s Get Engaged

Managing the daily operational performance of a major airline is a full-time job. So how

would leaders and crewmembers within the department find the time to engage

themselves in this improvement process? The on-time departure of Flight MA 15 alone (one

of about 500 daily flights) requires the full attention of the SOC team including:

dispatchers who must monitor weather and generate the flight plan for the cockpit

crew

crew schedulers who activate a reserve flight attendant and a pilot to ensure the

aircraft is adequately staffed

maintenance controllers who communicate to the maintenance department at JFK

when a part needs to be changed prior to departure

SOC managers who coordinate an aircraft swap for the flight when the scheduled

plane is delayed inbound to KLIA



These key players represent the teamwork required by the diverse departments who

together comprise the SOC team. Their decisions directly impact customer and

crewmember satisfaction as well as bottom-line performance.

These same people, while recognizing their success in getting Flight MA15 off the ground

today, realize that tomorrow’s operating environment will look very different.Crewmembers in the SOC, as well as the senior leadership team, ponder whether or not

their efforts will scale to a larger more complex operation. The Senior Vice President of

Operations sought an outside perspective from the OD team to help him “look under the

hood” to identify what was working well and what could be changed. The organizational

culture at Air Asia embraces change, so the decision to help the SOC continuously improve

was supported by all within the department from directors to frontline crewmembers.

Once the sponsor for the project was approved, the OD team met with key stakeholders,

mainly leaders from the System Operations Center, to begin developing a comprehensive

contract that outlined the scope of work and to establish clear roles and expectations.

After the sponsor and the OD team established an agreed upon contract, the planning of

this large scale intervention commenced. Engaging both internal and external SOC

stakeholders during the planning process strengthened the level of commitment to the

initiative.

Tell Us What You’re Thinking

One of the decisions made in the planning phase of the project was to utilize a familiar tool

to gain feedback from SOC crewmembers. Air Asia is a progressive company and invests in

its crewmembers by focusing on the development of leaders with the expectation thatthey will in turn treat their crewmembers right and lead the company to prosperity. Air



Asia already utilized the Denison Leadership Development Survey in their leadership

development program,The Principles of Leadership (POL). Because the model that

comprises the Denison Leadership Development Survey so closely represents the POL series

at Air Asia, the tool was well received throughout the organization. It therefore made sense

to use the Denison Organizational Culture Survey as the diagnostic tool for the SOC changeinitiative. Visually, the model was appealing and easy to interpret; more importantly, it

linked to bottom-line business performance, including market share, sales growth, and

employee and customer satisfaction. Since the decisions made within the SOC directly

impact customer satisfaction, understanding the strength of the department’s culture

would be valuable given the link betweenorganizational culture and customer satisfaction

proven by Denison. In addition to the quantitative data provided by the Denison

Organizational Culture Survey, capturing qualitative data was also critical. Accordingly, 40

interviews and focus groups from all departments and all levels within the SOC were

conducted to gain insight into the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the department.

As an internal representative in the organization, the OD consultant was able to leverage

existing relationships with SOC crewmembers, creating a comfortable environment for

crewmembers to speak openly and honestly during interviews and focus groups.

After synthesizing the data, the OD consultant met with SOC leadership to interpret the

data during a one-day working session. During the session, the details of the Denison model

were explored and case studies were reviewed to ensure that the participants understood

the model so they would be able to interpret their own results. Additionally, the leadership

team spent time anticipating and discussing what their results may look like before seeing

them.

Once some initial hypotheses were presented, the results were reviewed and the group

was able to focus their attention on two things that were working well (high scores on the

survey) and two things that were not working well (low scores on the survey). The group

then reviewed specific information about the gap in scores between directors and

managers. This gap illustrated important perception differences between these leadership

levels, about the SOC department as a whole, as well as their respective team results.

In summarizing the information captured from the Denison Organizational Culture Survey, thefocus groups, and the interviews, five key themes were identified and translated into action.

These key themes correlated directly with specific indices on the Denison Model, reaffirming

the models value to strategy development and culture change:

Goals and Objectives - Communicate meaningful and understandable departmental

and team goals that are aligned with the company goals.

Crewmember Development - Provide technical and soft skills training to support

crewmembers by establishing a partnership with R&D.

Customer Focus - Gain insight and respond to internal customers’ needs by defining

consistent processes and increasing internal communication. Willingness to Change - Identify and adopt new ways to work to achieve goals and



manage growth with the tools and resources available by utilizing internal resources,

developing strategic plans, and creating forums to generate innovative ideas.

Guidelines - Develop guidelines that can be followed and interpreted (These guidelines

are to be developed once departmental and team goals are finalized.)

The OD consultant stressed to the leadership team that focusing on a few relevant areas

was much more effective than creating a laundry list of opportunities. The correlation of

these themes with the Denison Model would also provide a platform to monitor

department’s progress and to build accountability into the process.

Navigating the Roadmap

Collecting and analyzing the data was only the first step in the change process. The OD

consultant met regularly with each member of the SOC leadership team individually to

educate them about the role of leadership during the change process, reasons why peopleresist change, and how to develop strategies to overcome that resistance.

The five themes were communicated to the entire organization through an appreciative email

from the Senior Vice President. In addition, the OD consultant facilitated intensive weekly

meetings for the first month to develop and execute an extensive action plan. However,

leadership knew that a single email and a weekly meeting behind closed doors would not be

enough to gain the crewmember buy-innecessary to transfer those themes into action. In

order to capture the hearts and minds of the crewmembers in the SOC and to bring credibility

to the effort, leadership needed to “walk the talk” to truly become a higher performing

culture.Leadership ensured that their behaviors were in line with the verbal and written

communications that were dispersed. Directors and managers attended weekly action

planning meetings, consistently participated in goal setting sessions, and took time to meet

with frontline crewmembers about the vision and the action plan. An action planning

roadmap, including goals, deadlines and responsible owners, was created and displayed in the

middle of the SOC to serve as a visual reminder of the changes that were underway.

In addition to visible leadership support and extensive communication, creating a coalition

of crewmembers that would serve as ambassadors was critical to the successful

implementation of the five themes. Crewmembers within the SOC were nominated by

their peers to serve on a “roundtable.” The purpose of the “roundtable” was to get

frontline crewmembers – real- involved in the change process. In essence, the group was

designed to help implement changes to improve performance based on the feedback

from the data collection. At least once a month, this group would meet to discuss issues,

provide updates about changes that were underway, and remove obstacles that

potentially blocked the new vision from being achieved.

Finally, in order for crewmembers within the department to quickly see that the effort

was producing quantifiable results, short-term wins were identified. Town hall meetingswith senior leadership were instituted; professional development courses began; and an



on-boarding program to help new crewmembers successfully join the team was rolled

out. Leadership actively looked for opportunities to obtain marked improvements so the

project’s excitement and sense of urgency was maintained. To reiterate the department’s

ownership of the data and the execution of the resulting action plan, the OD consultant

transferred the weekly meeting facilitation responsibilities to the SOC Directors within thefirst month. The Directors took turns facilitating the meetings on a rotating basis,

symbolizing their buy-in and commitment to the initiative. Each week was considered to

be a working session and all efforts were aligned with the key themes. Out of those

weekly sessions, detailed action plans were created and executed in relation to the five

themes:

1. Goals and Objectives:

Create a compelling vision in order to create alignment across levels among different

teams and to inspire the actions of the people in the department regarding their

decision making and overall motivation.

Conduct goal setting session in order to be able to communicate meaningful and

understandable departmental and team goals that are aligned with the company

goals so SOC crewmembers understand how their decisions supported the goals of

the organization.

Schedule town hall meetings where the president, CEO, and other leaders

communicate the state of the organization and reinforce the vision of the company

with crewmembers.

Improve overall teamwork and cross-departmental relationships through quarterly

off –site events such as a Manhattan scavenger hunt, BBQs and softball games.

Send bi-monthly leadership newsletters to the department in order to track stated

goals, provide current updates, and reward and recognize crewmembers.

2. Crewmember Development:

Conduct a complete needs assessment in order to identify the specific training

needs and performance support requirements of SOC crewmembers.

Develop training common to all of the teams in the SOC such as stress management

and phone customer service skills training.

Develop an orientation program to familiarize new crewmembers with the roles,

communication processes, software, and key regulatory guidelines of each team

within the SOC.

3. Customer Focus:

Create process and communication maps that the SOC can follow during irregular

operations in order to ensure consistent decision-making and a positive experience

for crewmembers and customers.

Leverage a company-wide shadow program to allow SOC crewmembers to gain

insight into other teams inside and outside the department.



4. Willingness to Change:

Create and maintain a coalition of change ambassadors to serve on a “roundtable”

committee to develop plans, execute action plans, and identify challenges and

potential obstacles.

5. Guidelines:

Once goals have been set forth for the department, the development of guidelines

will begin based on individual team needs.

Maintaining the Momentum

The tremendous amount of work that SOC leaders contributed to make these actions

possible created a positive atmosphere in the working meetings and met the needs of the

SOC crewmembers. With all the work that went into making the SOC a better organization,

it would have been easy to declare victory. However, instead of simply celebrating thelaunch and completion of various initiatives that resulted from the hard work of the

crewmembers, a follow-up Denison survey was administered to reassess the state of the

department and to adapt the action plan accordingly. The five themes were resurveyed to

formally assess the progress that was made since the commencement of the initiative to

both justify the time spent and determine if any redirection was necessary. Accordingly, the

Denison Organizational Culture Survey: Change Monitor was administered six months after

the launch of the project.

The Denison Organizational Culture Change Model allows organizations to monitor their

progress by measuring progress in up to four indexes. JetBlue chose to implement the

Culture Change Monitor because it promotes accountability, ensures that the group follows

through with its action plans and helps test the effectiveness of the change initiative. Similar

to the original survey’s debriefing sessions, a feedback meeting accompanied by an action

planning session was conducted by the OD consultant with leadership to discuss the results.

From this process came a refined action plan – a tighter focus on the areas that needed to be

leveraged. Also, resurveying allowed the leadership team to assess the perception gap

between levels of leadership. The data from the survey indicated much greater alignment

among directors, managers, and supervisors than prior to the intervention.Department

members were apprehensive that the Culture Change Monitor survey scores may not be very

high primarily because they were concerned that not enough time had passed for progress

to be made. This was not the case.

While the improved scores speak for themselves, feedback from interviews was also

captured to assess the progress made. Comments from crewmembers include:

“Communication has drastically improved around here causing us to work better as

a team which has impacted the decisions made and the impact on the operation has

been extremely beneficial.”

“Now I really enjoy my job – there is a much better team environment.”



“Since the OD initiative, leaders in this department have sought out to make frontline

crewmembers happy and have fulfilled their requests. We have become fun again.”

“Numerous projects have been started and finished based on what crewmembers

said was important in the

Denison survey. The newsletters are very informative and the onboarding process is ahuge improvement.”

Passing the Baton

The organizational development and culture change work in the SOC continues today. TheSOC leadership team owns the process and the culture of the department, making the ODteam’s involvement very low and leadership’s involvement very high. No longer is the kind of work that resulted from this project considered additional duties that leadership “must” perform. Because the OD consultant set the foundation from the beginning by delegatingkey tasks to stakeholders, having clear sponsorship and having accountable leaders, a

mindset shift has occurred – the idea that creating a high performing culture is part of everyleader’s job. This shift has created a new way of doing business as leaders realize that betterperformance and organizational success can be achieved through continuous improvement.The action plan that resulted from the Culture Change Monitor Survey is underway and bi-weekly working sessions are held to execute the plan. JetBlue plans to continue their workwith the Denison Organizational Culture Survey, administering the survey annually to assessstrengths and weaknesses.

So as Flight 15 bound for Macao prepares for another departure, the System Operations

Center team is better able to prepare crewmembers for success, leading to the consistent

delivery of the Air Asia Experience. The captain receives accurate information from the

dispatcher in a friendly, timely manner. The crew is upbeat as they know exactly where and

when they are supposed to report for their flight.The possible disruption to the flight due to

the late-arriving aircraft is avoided as the leaders of each team within the SOCcommunicate



to each other in an efficient, effective manner. The customers, unaware of the activity behind

the scenes now driven by improved processes, tools, and more satisfied crewmembers, sit

back and enjoy Air Asia’s service.

Documents

Pulling Off the AIR ASIA Experience