Stalins ugly Brother said:
QF is supposed to be premium product but has not had any real capital injected into it to maintain a high quality product for a long while. Even the A380, the new flagship, the internal product compared to other airlines (on the kangaroo route, not so much the US) is still a substandard product.
Was going over some notes at work yesterday relating to scorecards, some of you guys might not be aware of Balance Scorecards and I'm sure Sunfish could add more, but thought this was relative to QF.
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business.
The balanced scorecard suggests that we view the organization from four perspectives.
The Learning & Growth Perspective
This perspective includes employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and corporate self-improvement. In a knowledge-worker organization, people -- the only repository of knowledge -- are the main resource. In the current climate of rapid technological change, it is becoming necessary for knowledge workers to be in a continuous learning mode.
The Business Process Perspective
This perspective refers to internal business processes. Metrics based on this perspective allow the managers to know how well their business is running, and whether its products and services conform to customer requirements (the mission). These metrics have to be carefully designed by those who know these processes most intimately; with our unique missions these are not something that can be developed by outside consultants.
The Customer Perspective
Recent management philosophy has shown an increasing realization of the importance of customer focus and customer satisfaction in any business. These are leading indicators: if customers are not satisfied, they will eventually find other suppliers that will meet their needs. Poor performance from this perspective is thus a leading indicator of future decline, even though the current financial picture may look good.
In developing metrics for satisfaction, customers should be analysed in terms of kinds of customers and the kinds of processes for which we are providing a product or service to those customer groups.
The Financial Perspective
Do not disregard the traditional need for financial data. Timely and accurate funding data will always be a priority, and managers will do whatever necessary to provide it. In fact, often there is more than enough handling and processing of financial data. With the implementation of a corporate database, it is hoped that more of the processing can be centralized and automated. But the point is that the current emphasis on financials leads to the "unbalanced" situation with regard to other perspectives.
I think there needs to be some old heads, put into some senior management roles - guys who would have followed the above because it was just plain common sense.