The strength within

Today, our industry, whose heartfelt purpose is to bring the people of the world closer together, is struggling in a time where many feel it is safest to stay far apart. Our business models, centred around the passing of passengers through air frames, through airports and around the world have been gutted as we try to survive on the smell of air cargo. Suddenly the star of the show.

And we, as trusted advisers to our much-loved industry, and our clients, trying to keep businesses alive in a world that turned upside down overnight, are learning now just exactly what VUCA means and how it will change our approach to running organisations, forever.

In a VUCA world timeliness is everything. In aviation, it already was, or so we thought. Today, even more so. We watch the industry switch towards a more variable cost base, hiring air frames on a sector basis rather than as a wet lease, working out how to adapt a network plan overnight when another border shuts without notice, and taking the difficult move of laying off people who had given their careers and lives to businesses that they loved, so that the business itself may survive.

When quick decisions must be made but knee-jerk reactions should be avoided at all cost, it is vital that leaders are able to access deep knowledge and sophisticated support that is both commercially prudent and operationally realistic. Never has that sticky overlap between commercial and operational decision making been more important.

Our industry will undergo changes too in the way we make decisions and structure businesses. The time for silos and top-heavy bureaucracies, evolved to a certain degree as the legacy of another time, has come to an end. While specialist knowledge will always be important to the industry, it will be essential that that knowledge is bedded down in true operational and commercial experience, in time in the trenches, grappling with the real texture and context and challenges of the industry day to day.

AI and big data might replace sheer numbers of people in head office, and true industry smarts will lead the innovations that get people and things safely, and profitably, around the world.

And while low investment returns across the world’s financial markets might have driven an interest in speculative (and maybe, who knows, even lucrative) opportunities, for aviation, this time has come to an end. Today, in the VUCA-esque, not-quite-post-COVID-world, the board, the owners and the company are less interested in finding a speculative idea that might drive an incredible return one day, and more interested in simply surviving. Today the agenda is about stemming the flow of blood out of the company. It’s about taking the opportunity to reverse older decisions which, with hindsight, had never made sense. It’s about finding stable ground on which to rebuild, and assembling the team that has the vision, energy and practical skills to do it.

So as speculative investment in exciting but tenuous new routes that might make money one day finds itself dumped from the airline and airport play book, so too does advice that is so high level it doesn’t even know what Jet A1 smells like. The people who can bring aviation back from the brink are the people who have walked the aisles, worked the desks, and wrestled the controls of an aircraft. The people who know what their customers most need and what it takes to deliver it, in detail, are the ones who can provide the deep intel and sophisticated advice needed to ensure that timely, commercially prudent and operationally realistic outcomes are achieved. These are the people who know how to operationalise a concept, how to make great aviation ideas come to life.

So, how can your aviation organisation find the wisdom and passion that will pull us collectively back up to our preferred cruising altitude? Here’s what we think:

1) Look within.

Inside your organisation are people with the tactile knowledge, lived experience and demonstrated commitment to inform some of your most important decisions. It has long been said that innovation comes from the factory floor, and certainly, this can be true of aviation. How can you unlock and empower the unique human talent that already exists within your organisation? How will it impact your culture and competitiveness if you find new ways to honour their experience? How will it impact your bottom line if you involve them in defining the ways in which your organisation will operate, and compete, in the future?

One of our big risks as we move through the COVID-19 period is the potential loss of talent, industry and corporate knowledge. When the time comes to rebuild Aviation Industry 2.0, we are going to need the people who know how every cog and wheel in the industry works. The potential for a widening gap between operational knowledge and commercial decisions is significant, and we need to work hard to maintain a close connection between the two.

2) Look around.

Plenty of good, skilled people are moving around the industry seeking their next opportunity. Many of these people have walked a mile in your shoes. They know how to make the pieces of the industry fit together and work, how to turn planes, or fly them, how to negotiate aeronautical charges or leasing, how to deal with regulators and how to find new opportunities with numbers that actually add up. They understand the terms of a ground handling agreement, or an air services agreement and they know what matters to freight forwarders or corporate travel bookers. Take a look at your organisation and determine where are the critical competitive skills gaps? Take action to find a great industry person who is excited to fill them.

3) Get some help.

The breadth of available external support spans newly minted one-person bands, operational specialists, commercial advisers and industry strategists through to multi-national firms. Today, the required speed of decision making, and a complete aversion to risk, means that organisations need advice which is frank, independent, relevant, real and well informed by true experience running businesses within the industry.

There is a saying among the academic community that the value of a report is judged by the thud it makes when a printed copy hits the desk. And there is a business trend among some consultants to set you up with the next question (and the next job), while giving the original question the most cursory consideration. Lastly, there are organisations who, poorly equipped to add to the client’s IP around the operational or commercial challenge in question, charge enormous amounts of money for advice which simply concludes that more work is required, or which neglects the truisms which hold our industry together.

This is one of the excesses that the industry cannot afford any longer.

Advice must answer the question posed. It must be informed by real time in the industry, and an ability to understand both the macro impacts of a decision or opportunity, and the micro-operational and commercial implications. Advice must be heavily contextualised, drawing insight from both rich data and an innate understanding of how the various stakeholders fit together, make decisions and make money. In short, advice needs to come from people who understand how the industry works, and from people who have the industry knowledge to truly help great aviation ideas take flight.

Our industry has been through a tough time. The world has shown us just what VUCA means, and at this point we can only really theorise about the shape and speed of a recovery. We do know that we will continue to operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment for some time yet and perhaps forever. As our industry recovers, we need people with the gritty operational and commercial knowledge born of time in the industry to help us make the right decisions.

Organisations need good quality, practical, actionable ways to operationalise their ideas, to ensure commercial viability and to make the recovery happen. Inside our industry, inside our organisations, among the people ready for their next challenge and among a select group of capable and experienced independent specialists, that knowledge is there and ready to help with the recovery. Go find it.

Keith Tonkin is a former editor of Australian Aviation and current managing director of Aviation Projects and director of Avistra Aviation Consulting.