AirServices targeted by Government

[Aus ATC]

It looks like John Anderson has decided it is payback time. Bernie Smith's "retirement", a media announcement of new board members, and now a review of Airservices. Is Minister Anderson looking for a more compliant organisation??

Media Release (http://www.ministers.dotars.gov.au/ja/releases/2004/December/a178_2004.htm)

Read the terms of reference and decide for yourselves!!

New Board and Terms of reference (http://www.ministers.dotars.gov.au/ja/releases/2004/December/A178_2004_attachments.pdf)

Aus ATC

[Uncommon Sense]

Hardly payback.

Good to see no experience in ATM/ATC yet again in the board.

Now I wonder why they keep getting things wrong?!?

The Airspace directorate will just add another empire building layer of government dis-organisation when anything airspace wise needs to be addressed. (Hey! Isn't Liberal philosophy about smaller government?)

Right now we can not even get a sensible answer out of CASA on ATM/ATC practices - they either don't care or just don't know. So lets add another competing entity in to the murky equation.

I forsee - greater rates of change - greater expense - duplication - no net increase to safety (we all remember safety don't we?).

But then - who do YOU trust to keep interest rates low? who do YOU trust in the war on TERROR? ... :yuk:

Perhaps the removal of regulatory functions will give ASA the time to focus on their no-longer-looming-but-arriving ATC staffing crisis?

[Icarus2001]

The board DOES NOT NEED any experience with ATM/ATC. That is what the managment of AsA is for. Do you think the board of Qantas needs to have aviation experience? Does the board of Telstra know how to wire up a phone? Just as a government Minister does not need portfolio specific knowledge, that is what their department is for.

It is about management. What a board needs is people with big ears and small mouths. The opposite of DS if you like. They do not need to have specific ATC experience, in fact this could mean they bring the wrong sort of baggage with them to the boardroom table.

Let's see who ends up running the Airspace Directorate.:eek:

[Uncommon Sense]

The board DOES NOT NEED any experience with ATM/ATC. That is what the managment of AsA is for

Strike 2.

[Icarus2001]

Would you care to expand on that?

[Uncommon Sense]

Sure;

NAS Implementation, Staffing Levels, ATC Streaming, Outstanding Project Implementation, TCU consolidation, the foray in to RSA .....

It's all been going quite well really... not a penny wasted

[R4+Z]

Icarus2001

Bad analogy
Does the board of Telstra know how to wire up a phone?

Ziggy just departing and this not long after they bought a run down PABX service business from Damovo for $60 mil. Only thing is the management of Telstra refused to listen to the people who could wire up a phone two years earlier when they told them not to sell a healthy PABX service business to Damovo for $30 mil.

No you don't have to know how to wire up a phone to run a Telecommunications business if all you are trying to do is run it into the ground just to show ever increasing profits until you can escape with a nice package.

[missy]

Smith for Telstra!

[missy]

Perhaps the review panel should start by reading this:

http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/customer/industrybriefings/waypoint/2004/cust_consultpack.pdf

[DirtyPierre]

It is about management. What a board needs is people with big ears and small mouths.

Has the government done this?

One new board member is Henk Mertens. Isn't he part of the pro-NAS lobby?

[Frank Burden]

Came across Henk Meertens at a meeting once. He was representing the Australian Sports Aviation Confederation. Seemed like a nice guy. Did a net search and found this:

<http://www.asac.asn.au/>

Seems the Minister has chosen him to balance out the ego driven types who seem to have been mainly selected for the new Board.

As a friend of mine says: 'If you can quote expertise in more than three fields than your ego is ahead of your ability.'

[Sunfish]

Terms of reference look absolutely straight forward and not controversial at all.

What's missing of course is the verbal stuff about what the Cabinet and the Ministers expectations are. You can guess that is about two things: Money and ensuring that any associated trade unions are destroyed or marginalised if possible. Final point would be to minimise or remove the Governments responsibility for safe air traffic control although I suspect international treaties might get in the way of that idea.

Expect anything that can obviously be contracted out will be contracted out. I could see Serco, Skilled and a few other companies thinking about starting an ATC business.

Of course the airlines would like ATC to be priced "per flight" to load as much as possible of the cost onto GA and vice versa.

As for ATC expereince on a board, yes and no. If you have Directors with very good "bull**** detector" skills you don't need technical skills. Its really the CEO's job to have those skills, on the basis that you cannot tell people to do stuff you do not know how to do yourself.

[Gunner B12]

Sunfish

Its really the CEO's job to have those skills, on the basis that you cannot tell people to do stuff you do not know how to do yourself.

I personally have been on a Telstra managerial assessment course that works on the assumption that you don't need to know what the people you are managing do, you simply have to know how to manage. That is where bad customer service comes from. If you don't know what the business requires (and I mean that specific business) then all you are doing is spinning managerial bull$hit that can be learned on any degree course. I might add that in my team at Telstra I had a multiple degree holder who could always be counted on to be asleep at thier desk and when not asleep was a definite liability and a manager with a business degree who would find any excuse to be out of the office if a call could be expected from a problem customer.

Guess who had to deal with those calls...... Me the person who actually knew the business.

I am better off out of there. But I pity those in this position now.

Have you ever been there?

[150Aerobat]

Whilst everyone debates whether a process can be managed by someone who doesn't understand it, I've always wondered, why bother? Why not just promote people who know what they are doing into positions managing people doing what they themselves once did? All this obsession about making accountants run airlines is academic. Given enough surgeons, I can probably find one who can fix a car, but why bother. Just hire a mechanic.

[Binoculars]

Why not just promote people who know what they are doing into positions managing people doing what they themselves once did?

If I understand the question correctly, the answer is a repetition of what has gone before. Skill in the job is absolutely no guarantee of an ability to manage, and nowhere is that more true than in air traffic control, where management jobs are often latched on to gratefully as an escape from the workface, especially by those whose ability in the field was marginal.

And no, I don't believe the Airservices board should necessarily have an ex-controller on it. The last board demonstrated the folly of that proposition.

.

[tobzalp]

What happened to Hisham ElHussein? I thought he was the hot tip? CEO Maybe? Or you reckon That Tony A wil get that one?

[Sunfish]

Gunner You are right. I have to say in my own career I have been on both sides of the desk and, if you are honest with yourself, it is totally frustrating and pointless.

You cannot manage people if you do not have an insight into what they face every day. You can only get that insight by actually having done the type of work, or similar work, yourself.

Sure, you can administer people, but you cannot be an effective leader unless you can command respect. An MBA is useful, but it is no substitute for hands on expereince.

I found out the hard way once, "leading" a 70 strong group of IT people - and me with zero formal or informal IT expereince. I got out after 18 months of pure hell.

[AerocatS2A]

I don't think a manager needs expertise in the field that they're managing, but they do need to have the interest and the ability to learn enough about it to have a good understanding of what the employees are doing. Also, a willingness to listen to the workers and take advice from them would be helpfull. A bit like an inexperienced officer leading with the help of an experienced, respected seargent.

[Duff Man]

A board should ideally have a mix of people from all fields, including the core business.

Managers really should have direct experience in the field being managed. The 90s concept of generic management is purely a misguided philosphy dreamt up by MBA academia in order to: a) justify their own existance; b) fill gaps caused by deteriorating career development within organisations; and, c) write more essays with bulleted lists.

Airservices provides little or no career development for ATCs either vertically within the chain of command or horizontally between different groups. The ATC's lot is a dull one.

[Jerricho]

Airservices provides little or no career development for ATCs either vertically within the chain of command or horizontally between different groups

Funny you should say that. If by career development you mean supervisory and management positions, Air Traffic Controllers don't necessarily make good managers. Although, I've worked for 3 ATS providers that think they do.

[Icarus2001]

I always find this an interesting debate. I used to believe that being promoted up from a technical level to management was the way to create productive managers however I have changed my mind. I have worked for two people who were "professional managers" they had an understanding of the area that they managed gained from research, study and listening and observing but they were excellent managers. They saw their role as facilitators for the staff that they were managing. They were able to have meaningful discussions with all staff about the operation without having "done the job" themselves.

I think avaition throws up an interesting example of something known as the Peter Principle (http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Peter_Principle.html). If we look at a line pilot who gains experience and is viewed by those above as management material. He or she eventually is promoted to Deputy Chief Pilot and then in time to Chief Pilot. He or she was and is a good aircraft driver, knowledgable and also extremely professional but now the role that they fill requires people management skills not Single Pilot IFR skills. The next step is a vacancy as General Manager, he or she takes that position and is very poor at running with the big picture and is now miserable because of not flying and being swamped under a mountain of paperwork. I have seen this on many occasions. Pilots often make poor managers (unless given training:rolleyes: ) but still this is seen as a logical progression.

Perhaps we could look at someone like Bob Mansfield who was CEO (I think) of McDonalds Australia and went on to high management in Telstra. What are the chances that he knew much about the telco business but by all accounts he was a good manager. The other example might be Ray Williams of HIH Insurance, he built the company and then sent it broke as it was now beyond his capabilities as a manager so he resorted to dubious business practises that have landed him in prison.

An individual who posseses the right skills to be a good manager will, I believe, be a good manager of any business. By their nature they will learn and understand the business and its processes in addition they will not be biased by their own path through the industry, they will have a big picture view. Something akin to a good politician, who do exist even though we pretend that they do not usually because they do not serve our immeditae self interest but may be looking at the big picture.

[AirNoServicesAustralia]

It really does depend on your perspective, as to whether a CEO of ASA is a good one or not.

From the governments point of view, they would like a CEO who maximises profits, and minimizes controversy and bad press, who also sets the company up so they are ripe for privatisation, as that is the end state the government wants.

From a controller point of view, they want a CEO who is interested in protecting and maintaining their employment package, and not in constantly undermining it, and who is more interested in providing a safe service, above and beyond profit driven concerns.

From a pilots point of view, they just want the system to be such that it is as unrestrictive as it can be, while still providing enough structure and retraints to provide a safe environment in which to fly.

The historical problem for controllers has been that the CEO has been driven by the bottom line only, and so has seen ATC salaries as the single biggest drain on profit, and as such has tried to slash this. They have never realised the skill and expertise held by this group of people is the company's greatest single asset, and the one that creates all of the revenue. Without the controllers you have no AirServicesAustralia.

Unfortunately, I agree with Jerricho, and that is while a manager with first hand experience in the field would be ideal, ex-controllers (with only a few exceptions) make very bad managers.

My tip for CEO will be along the lines of Bernie Smith (that is past experience in taking government departments and carving them up into private companies) but more hard line, so as to ensure they can push through with their agenda to sell off all the towers at least.

[Uncommon Sense]

Even if you go with the school of thought that the CEO/Executive do not need the technical knowledge / skills / experience, what they must hahve is the ability to accept professional advice from those who do.

If this had occurred, amny of the messes that have arisen or are about to arise VERY soon, would have been headed off. Unfortunately for the organisation in question the agenda has been set by interfering politicians and pretend politicians.

The important issues have therefore come a poor second and have suffered from Attention Deficit!

Sorry, but ASA should not be about profit. Never Ever.

Taking away the regulatory function (as John Anderson keeps re-releasing as old news) is really only a reorganisation of probably the same old faces with some new logo and letterhead doing the same thing.

If there are profits, put them back in to the system (reinvest in hard equipment, training, new technologies.....) OR refund the users of the system - sorry, the 'valued customers'.

This is called a not-for-profit organisation, and it is the only way anything related to core responsibility of safety should be run.

Safety is your Product? fine - prove it. Increased productivity must therefore equal improved safety levels - NOT improved profits for the sole shareholder - the Federal Government.

4tw (http://fourthtermwatch.********.com)

[AirNoServicesAustralia]

That is the problem Uncommon Sense, ASA is not a not for profit organisation. It makes big profits, and those profits are paid as a dividend to it's shareholders, which at this present time, is the one and only Federal Government. The idea of this is that at the time when it is politically acceptable to privatise the organisation, they can turn and say to potential buyers "look we have paid X dividend for the last 10 years so we would like X billion dollars for the company". If they are going to privatise and make it a profit driven company, like similair organisation are already the world over, then get on and do it, so it can be run properly as a business. If not, then go back to the way it used to be, and concentrate on providing service for service and safety sake, not for the motivation of increasing the bottom line of the company balance sheet. In other words, become a real company, or go back to being a real Government department, you can't be both.

[Jerricho]

Unfortunately, I agree with Jerricho,

Come on ANSA.....it's not that bad to agree with me ;).

I forgot to add, and I don't know if this is aviation specific or on a wider scale, but those that were once worker bees who are put into queen bee (managerial) positions must instantly have a brain operation removing any memory of what it was like to be screwed by management and do the same. Suddenly, all the things that were done to them that p*ssed them off become feasible and acceptable. Maybe it's self-perpetuating........"I got screwed a couple of times on the way up, I'm going to do the same".

[Duff Man]

If by career development you mean supervisory and management positions, Air Traffic Controllers don't necessarily make good managers Jerricho, that was part of it. I also referred to career development within the different licenced ATC roles. There is a huge opportunity to promote skill and experience growth that has been squandered by Airservices Australia which has now ended up with a bunch of one-eyed ATC specialists and irrelevant management.

But ATCs will, all things being equal, make better ATC managers than accountants, surgeons, engineers, or Bob Mansfield (who I've had the pleasure of working for - Bob was the sort of executive who would go and flip burgers, and would get out with cable crews, for hands-on famil). That premise holds true up to the top of the core operation (such as ATM) but not to the executive. I agree that selection and promotion of ATCs within Airservices has mostly not been well performed. And I should stress the requirement for extensive management education and training as a prerequisite for such a role. Training that should be conducted externally. The executive and board don't need operational experience but training and familiarisation on operational tasks is extremely valuable and Airservices has only scratched the surface on ATC famil courses for non-operational staff.

What was this topic about again? :)

[R4+Z]

Have you noticed that everyone thinks it is right to train a manager what the business does but no one wants to train the worker to manage. It's basically eliteism.

Icarus2001

Perhaps we could look at someone like Bob Mansfield who was CEO (I think) of McDonalds Australia and went on to high management in Telstra.

Again a bad example as both companies have ultimately struggled not only to satisfy the customers but in the end the Boards. Really all they can be said to have achieved is high profit growth for a period leading to crisis, Macdonalds needing to completely rehash the menu and Telstra yet to be seen but now desperately lacking in skilled people able to deliver the product and service.

[Icarus2001]

R4+Z for a period leading to crisis, Macdonalds needing to completely rehash the menu and Telstra yet to be seen but now desperately lacking in skilled people able to deliver the product and service.

What crisis? McDonalds simply have reacted to the changing market by introducing a healthier food line, which is the sign of good management.

Telstra deliver every day. It is simply an Australian sport to bag them. I have a Telstra mobile, landline and internet and I have always received excellent service.

Perhaps you could give some examples to back up your hyperbole?

The point is senior management move from industry to industry, it works and some are better at it than others.

[Adamastor]

Sorry Icarus but EVERY SINGLE service dealing I have ever had with Telstra has been nothing short of abysmal. And don't get me started on them raising my line rentals by OVER 100% in the last three years.

[Sunfish]

Icarus, with respect, Telstra delivers alright, but at monopoly prices.

Not to put too fine a point on it, in my opinion, you need generalists as Board level, asking thorny questions and running the BS meter over the CEO and those closest to him.

The specialist knowledge needs to be in the management team up to and including CEO level, although its OK if the CEO hasn't practiced as a specialist for 30 years.

In management, there is nothing worse than having to adjudicate and decide on a technical matter you know nothing about that your staff are arguing over.

Even calling in the consultants doesn't always work because how are you going tobrief them if you don't know what they issue is about?:}

However the only way to get expereince running an airline is... run an airline.:}

Ansett had some real good people who could have followed G McM, trouble is one of them got comparsed, don't know what ever happened to AY.

[MrApproach]

Once opon a time Airservices (or whatever it was called) was run by engineers and they were either useless or good - now it's the accountants turn. The point is you're either a good manager or your not, it doesn't matter whether your initial role in life was controller or a manager. The problem with Asa is the quality of the managers. Very few of them are what staff would call "good". Whether they come up from below or in through the side they seem to have one objective - screw the staff to please next boss above them and achieve their narrowly based and poorly constructed "performance" bonuses. (Almost to a man this typifies managers who have come up through the controller ranks) The mark of a "good" manager is whether he or she is a good leader. Workers need to know that you believe that without them there is no company to manage, that they really are the company's greatest asset , and that you will stand up for them provided they behave. When did you ever see that in AsA? How long would such a leader last?

[Duff Man]

Ummm, guys, Mansfield was CEO of Optus when it bought Aussat and started ops in the early 90s. Was only after Optus was standing strongly on two feet he left for Telstra to bring it "up to speed" in the competitive environment. Never understood how Stardust followed his footsteps. Ziggy never did a good job. Guess that's what happens when a photo lab technician runs phone companies. Telstra continues to trade as an incumbant, ripping off those who don't know better or who couldn't be bothered to shop around.

And not professing to be a huge Mansfield fan but he left Maccers before their downturn (mid-late 90s) and his replacements did an amazing job at stopping the blood loss ... his replacement Charlie Bell started work at the coal face as a 15 year old and ended up recently as their US Chief of operations.

[R4+Z]

Icarus

I will leave off McDonalds as others seem to be covering that one quite well. Thanks Duff Man.

As for Telstra it's what you don't see that is it's problem. a few examples are customers with analogue indial where Telstra has neglected the service to the point where even thier own technicians don't know how it works so can't fix it unless they have thier hands held, usually by the likes of me who are the private techs. The thing you don't see on this one is the bill for my time that just gets paid by the big company's accounts department when it should never have been necessary in the first place.

Customer service....Ha have you ever rang up sales and waited half an hour to an hour for someone to have time to deal with you. If it wasn't for the fact that no one else can put your line in you would definitely vote with your feet.

How about the fact that in order to say to the board that staff numbers were down they now use contractors in the office roles. The best bit is these contractors become the product specialists then find full time employment elsewhere and all the knowledge goes with them. Who suffers, the customer.

I had a senior manager at telstra who took over our area and for some reason decided to have a clean out . All well and good except he didn't know what was what and all the Critical spares kits went out with the rubbish. How about the stores department bosses deciding that because certain parts hadn't been used in ages, they would get rid of them. Fine only how often does a main processor fail and how much did it cost the queensland company who had to wait while we got one configured by the manufacturer.

Ever hear of the COT cases? basically it stood for Casualties Of Telstra, who were suing Telstra for the damage thier bad service had caused thier companies.

I could go on and on but I need to take a breath.

R4

[Sunfish]

Telstra's management culture is so bad, a consultants report on it had to be suppressed.

Many many years ago, I did a few consulting jobs for Telecom, telstra's predeccessor and a small thesis on its directions in a competitive environment for my MBA.

The consulting job was about Telecom's response to privatisation, was it competitive? My answer, by all available measures (and there are a lot) it was a basket case. Standard Telstra response when I pointed out they were overmanned, over equipped, over everything was; "Oh Australia is dfferent fromt he rest of the world, the benchmarks don't apply to us."

Sunfish wrote a one page summary for his report which just said basically "believe your own ideas if you want, but every International benchmark says you are performing poorly. Guess you are going to have to find out the hard way if I'm right or you are right". Needless to say, the report was not well received by management who had hoped to use it to fend off the treasury's efforts to privatise it.

The trouble with Telstra is that its still a monopoly and it cannot (and won't) change its business practices until it is forced to by competition. I'm not holding my breath.

By the way the MD at teh time was Mel Ward - a communications engineer.

[Hempy]

Managers really should have direct experience in the field being managed. The 90s concept of generic management is purely a misguided philosphy dreamt up by MBA academia in order to: a) justify their own existance; b) fill gaps caused by deteriorating career development within organisations; and, c) write more essays with bulleted lists.

The problem is, as stated by others here, there is probably one ex ATC who is a competent manager in Airservices at the moment.

ATC is time critical. Controllers make a considered decision and then stick to it. They can't have a round table discussion about how to best separate the 4 jets that are about to converge at the same level, so they judge the situation and make it work, and if it comes unstuck they work around the initial decision until it does.

Unfortunately they carry this "inflexibility" into management positions and tend to refuse to believe the fact that a decision may have been ill-judged.

Add to that that the majority of them know that they would never get to that level of management in the private sector, so they like to make sure their empires are as solid as possible.

Or maybe I'm just cynical

[Binoculars]

Not the first time that hypothesis has been brought up, Hempy, but no less true for that.

In short, ATC's make almost all their decisions within a couple of seconds. Pilots to some extent are in the same boat. When confronted with a scenario where a decision doesn't have to be made for six months, they lose patience, want to make a decision now and get on with the next problem.

This makes for very poor managers, because as you rightly point out, we make snap decisions then do what's necessary to make them fit the situation. To weigh up all the pros and cons and make the one best decision for the whole picture is a foreign concept.

I know I for one would be a completely useless manager, and I've never aspired to it. Oddly enough the problem is compounded by the culture of ATC who tend to look down on those managers known to have been less than stellar performers at the coalface. This ignores the possibility that they may well turn out to be superb managers. Totally different skills required.

Umm... what was the question again? :confused:

[WALLEY2]

Pprners I think some of you have missed the point with regards to the AsA Board members.

When selecting an important Board such as this you need to ensure nearly all the members understand corporate governance and responsibility of directors. Then you look to cover the various specialtities of the decisions the Board is likely to face.

I am asounded that such a large Board has not covered all the bases and the degree of duplication in experience in the members selected is incredible. Normal corporate Boards look to fill the knowledge gaps in their appointments and keep the Board down to a more workable size.

The terms of reference barely mentions safety where as keeping the skies safe is surely the ultimate aim of the Board and the establishment of airspace reform guidlines to ensure reforms meet the ultimate goal of keeping it safe.

Who is expected to do the studies to ensure the proper evolution of airspace reform is carried out correctly? It is not CASA they are to audit and review it is not the Regulatory Directorate they are writers not examiners.

If it is AsA responsibility as previously advised to them by learned councel doesn't the Dep PM want to give this "Main Agenda" some reference in his terms and expectations of the new Board.

Looks like a politically correct, gender ballanced, "mates of Sir Humphrey" type committee but with an agenda to create competition in services, not the continuation a safe aviation services and airspace reforms.

I hope I am wrong, but the appointments and Terms of Reference definately seem to lead to this conclusion.

[Binoculars]

The terms of reference barely mentions safety where as keeping the skies safe is surely the ultimate aim of the Board Walley, I can only assume you had your tongue firmly planted in your cheek when you wrote that. It certainly would have raised a wry smile on the faces of more ATC's than just me.

[Sunfish]

Thats the trouble inn't it? No major RPT accidents for so long that the primary purpose of CASA and Airservices has been forgotten. The old Challenger disaster phenomenon - just because it hasn't happened yet, it isnt going to happen.

Trouble is I don't think Australia has any Richard Feynemans to draw the correct conclusion when it inevitably does happen.