It's Not What You Think!
One day a wife of Fifteen years made an unscheduled visit to her husbands business, walked into his office unannounced and found him pleasuring his Twenty One year old secretary on his desk.
He looked up in horror and shouted at her the immortal words: "This is not what you think!!!!"
Of course it was. Perceptions are reality - which is the point of the parable.
Well it's about time for Qantas Staff , Customers and Shareholders to wise up. The Board and Management can say what they like. Actions speak louder than words. Nothing the Company says can change this. Perceptions are reality.
1. It is apparent from a multitude of actions over at least the last Ten years that Qantas Management views all its staff with compete contempt, regards them as valueless automatons whose experience and skills are actually a negative attribute because:
(a) These staff are capable of highlighting weaknesses in management capability and decision making through their own superior skills and experience.
(b) These staff demand recognition as well as recompense and treatment consistent with skills acquired and responsibilities.
(c) Management response has been to replace these staff with less capable but cheaper staff. Part of the strategy to do this involves treating existing staff with contempt at every opportunity to send a message that they are not wanted. Jetstar is a thinly veiled vehicle for doing this.
This is a lethally stupid strategy because your product is only as good as the staff who deliver it. It is foolish to expect that customers will not react to it.
2. Qantas has developed a growth strategy that is directed at profiting from Asian markets by attempting to provide services that Asians can provide perfectly well for themselves. This is simply wrong because the profits (if any) will never find their way into shareholders hands.
3. Qantas has attempted to put a rosy face on these strategies, or at least try to mask their impact, by a variety of means. This has not, and will not be successful.
4. The Qantas executive remuneration system is focused on short term - bonus driven- results. This is lethally wrong for airline management because acquisition of aircraft and route planning require management time horizons to be thinking at least Ten years out, not Five years, let alone One year. This has, and does, produce sub optimal decisions from a shareholders point of view, and this is not going to change until the remuneration policy changes.
5. Unless I'm mistaken, the failed APA bid, as others have pointed out, demonstrated a less than candid approach to the concept of creating shareholder value for all shareholders by the Board and Senior Management at the time. One has to wonder if anything has changed since then, or if change in Board and Management thinking is even possible.
So there you have it in a nutshell people:
- utter contempt for anyone not "Management" and belief in their invincibility.
- Stupid business strategy, badly executed anyway.
- No likelihood of change,
That is what I think anyway., and no matter how Qantas tries to dress it up, those perceptions will remain.