To the Qantas Board, institutional investors and management
I strongly recommend you pick up the July Australian Aviation Magazine. You, the Board, lost the opportunity to select the right candidate for CEO. You failed to reward a man with 30 years of loyal service, a man committed to improving Qantas Mainline. Instead, you chose the protégé of a man who would’ve helped dismember QF, a man who spoke of Qantas mainline as “legacy” instead of “premium”; a man who did not believe in the word “morale”; a man who left his workforce disengaged. You chose a man who talked the talk on re-engaging with staff, but is not walking the walk and has instead fallen back on the methods of his mentor. You chose a man on whose watch the share price has retreated below issue price. You have a responsibility to the shareholder: pay a dividend and/or provide capital growth, sustainably and consistently. On this man’s watch the shareholder has received neither.
Here are a few quotes from the man you cast aside. Contrast this with the man you chose: a foreigner whose CV contains the word “Ansett” – a word synonymous with “senior management failure”; a man who ran an airline not satisfied with sucking at the teat of it’s mother but ate of it’s flesh, and continues to do so. You, the investor, must start asking questions about your investment: accounting methods, IR strategy, staff engagement, fleet decisions, route decisions, cabin config decisions, short-sighted management remuneration methods.
You, the senior management, need to get out of your office and follow Borghetti’s example: talk to the people on the front line. Don’t listen to the filtered, massaged and glossed versions of the corrupted, narcissistic, self-serving, incompetent and nepotistic among the mostly honest and hard-working lower and middle management. You, the vast majority of lower and middle management must disown the dishonest, short-sighted, and strategically flawed policies, methods and practices rammed down your throats by those above you: that includes the internationally discredited short-term KPI remuneration policy. There are better ways to be remunerated, ways that encourage the long-term survival of the airline without foregoing financial reward.
The following posts are extracts from an interview with Mr John Borghetti, the man who has sworn to rip a 20% hole in the most significant part of one half of the two remaining profitable arms of the Qantas Group: domestic business class.