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

Read the terms of reference and decide for yourselves!!

New Board and Terms of reference

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? ...

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.

[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/...onsultpack.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.