An Email from United's New CEO

Blackhawk said:
Most economics syllabi I've seen deal more with the technical/theory side of economics rather than the application to management.
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We had class in undergrad that was called "organizational behavior" that was all about motivating employees, realizing pay is not the only way to motivate people, and how to lead an effective organization. It was one of the best classes I had in undergrad and one that I still refer back to now that I am in charge of managing multiple teams at once. My grad school maybe have had a similar class but I never took it. Rather there was a lot of talk about how absorption costs caused the take over of the beer industry by several large players and the smaller "microbrews before they were called microbrews" could not keep up. I think we drank away our misery after that class.

I actually found one of the more useful, how to relate to people classes, was one I took in Med school when they dressed us up in short white coats and sent us to the wards to interview people. I learned to deal with crazy people, insanely personal questions, and end of life situations. Bringing the empathy learned from that class, combining it with the organizational behavior lessons, and then drinking away the miseries of accounting, has made me a much better leader than being a "by the numbers guy." Then again, my industry has 20-30% turnover, so if there is someone you dont like, wait a year and they probably will be gone.
 
I had two similar classes Organization Management and Multi-National Management both were great classes looking back on them. At the time I couldn't understand why we had to take them in the aviation program. Both have served me well.
 
tonyw said:
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Third, this is a company and an industry that demands innovation. We are embracing the changes, and will continue to innovate with the goal of providing our customers better performance
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Blackhawk said:
Most economics syllabi I've seen deal more with the technical/theory side of economics rather than the application to management.
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Economics is broken, while there are certainly correct and applicable aspects to it, many facets of econ are unfalsifiable.
 
ppragman said:
Economics is broken, while there are certainly correct and applicable aspects to it, many facets of econ are unfalsifiable.
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No, it's not broken. What's broken is people thinking a couple smart individuals can make better decisions than the masses. It eventually results in Greece or Venezuela.
 
Bandit_Driver said:
Very few business realize that if you take care of your employee, your employees will take care of your customers. All to often, management today is just concerned with the bottom line and and how to get an extra penny or two added to that dividend check. A happy employ who enjoys coming to work and is empowered to help customers will do so and take that extra step to help the customer.
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It simply blows my mind that every single company out there doesn't understand this. Especially AIRLINES!!! Us employees, whether we are pilots or gate agents, can either A: Do our absolute best, provide a great experience, love our jobs and make you tons of cash, or B: Despise our very existence and burn through money like it is going out of style.

Seems like it would be a simple choice. Make me love my job so much that I'm going to do my best to make you a pile of money.
 
Derg said:
Vaguebook time.

Once upon a time at a particular airport that I had consistent problems with, one of the "higher ups" at that station came to the gate to tell me all about his position of authority with certain "below the wing" operational things in the middle of a operational failure.

I told him that I was glad he dropped by, notified him that what we were undergoing was a regular occurrence and at some point you can't use the "well, they're minimum wage workers" excuse when so much of the operation depends on their performance.

You're going to run into micro-CEO's of small domains that have more pride than utility, but come on man, don't brag about your epicurian skills when you've just screwed up preparing a basic bologna sandwich.
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As a regional scumbag I've been in a unique position to "try out" two of the three major carriers throughout my time here. What impresses me about how Delta is currently being run is that they are seeking to become more profitable by taking care of their customers and employees and it is absolutely working.

United on the other hand is trying to become more profitable by cutting line items on a spreadsheet. As for how that is working, I'll quote a friend of mine who works there when they said "we are making money in spite of ourselves, not because of it." Hopefully that'll change with actual leadership.
 
Yeah.....i still have nightmares/flashbacks to watching Doug Parker in his DFW "town hall" or whatever that thing was called telling 120,000 employees (they posted this on the entire company website, ugh) that the front-line employees don't have any effect on the daily profitability of the business and thus shouldn't be considered for profit sharing. Umm...did you just say that out loud???
 
Blackhawk said:
Most economics syllabi I've seen deal more with the technical/theory side of economics rather than the application to management.
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That's the Econ core. But depending on which school you go to, Econ is frequently part of the school of business, so you have to take the full business core also.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
As a regional scumbag I've been in a unique position to "try out" two of the three major carriers throughout my time here. What impresses me about how Delta is currently being run is that they are seeking to become more profitable by taking care of their customers and employees and it is absolutely working.

United on the other hand is trying to become more profitable by cutting line items on a spreadsheet. As for how that is working, I'll quote a friend of mine who works there when they said "we are making money in spite of ourselves, not because of it." Hopefully that'll change with actual leadership.
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Leadership starts at the top, but sometimes there are problems that permeate the company.
Back in the 80's I dreaded flying United to Asia. The crew members treated the military like crap, and this was not an isolated incident. It's also the airline with the MEC chairman who who was famous for saying he did not want to kill the golden goose, he just wanted to choke the you know what out of it. The summer of 2001 ("The Summer of Discontent"). This past summer ("The Summer from Hell").
Just look at our company, or your soon to be ex company. I think we could have the best management available but part of the pilot group would still be intent on burning the place down.
 
Blackhawk said:
It's also the airline with the MEC chairman who who was famous for saying he did not want to kill the golden goose, he just wanted to choke the you know what out of it.
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Oh, come on, that's one of my favorite union quotes of all time! :)

"We don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. We just want to choke it by the neck until it gives us every last egg." - Captain Rick Dubinsky

He's an interesting character.
 
tcco94 said:
I just left Delta and I can assure you that it was the same for us as well. Delta is getting rid of DLTERM which agents use almost 24/7 to override the system or ...pretty much do whatever they want. When I started working gates, it quickly got switched to SNAPP, which gives you almost NO authority to override. Show up past 30 minutes? Sorry, you're screwed. 4 bags? Sorry, you're screwed. Want to upgrade ahead of someone? Want to be listed for an earlier flight? Want to be moved to a flight 6 hours ahead from now? The smallest things that I knew how to do on blue screen (DLTERM), was NOT in the new Delta system and to be honest I have no idea how they're gonna figure it out either. I was always just instructed by my managers and higher authorities training at Delta classes in various hubs that we needed to learn the new system now. Also, if I upgraded someone ahead of the list, people supposedly would monitor it and you could easily get a call from corporate asking what you just did. Then they put a block in the system (I believe) so if you were 15 on the list, I had to seat all 14 ahead of you or the computer would just pop up and pretty much say "you suck, try again".

The entire jumpseat process was also done through blue screen (DLTERM) as well. There wasn't even an option to do it through their new program SNAPP. Supposedly, Richard Anderson says DLTERM will be removed from the passenger fronting computers so hopefully their customer service doesn't fall off the map of the earth like it did to United. I have a feeling a wave of angry people will be coming when the agents look stupid because the system created by the company literally won't let them do anything. It's hard to explain to people too because they automatically assume I'm just an idiot who doesn't know how to do his job. Nobody even had an idea it was just a college job and maybe someday soon I'll be flying their next plane. Needless to say, I've made some people pretty angry because I "didn't know what I was doing".... lol ...yeah I definitely don't miss it.
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I have friends that are/were agents at NWA and now at DAL. The number of keystrokes now required to do the most mundane changes is time consuming and sometimes requires two computer screens. Big step backward after the merger. And don't get me started about the DAL part timers.
 
Springer said:
I have friends that are/were agents at NWA and now at DAL. The number of keystrokes now required to do the most mundane changes is time consuming and sometimes requires two computer screens. Big step backward after the merger. And don't get me started about the DAL part timers.
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Northwest's PARS system was hardly simple to use.
 
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