I’ve long maintained (no original thought here) that the most important thing a manager, any manager does is make decisions about who does and does not wind up on the payroll. That is especially the case in an environment where there simply are no spare parts, ‘er humans, and each person’s contributions or lack thereof are vital.

The next most important managerial contribution is getting the “system” off peoples’ backs so they can actually do the jobs they were hired to do to the very best of their ability. What do you mean by “system” some would ask? I’m talking about rules, procedures, methods, customs, policies and the like. Things that were probably once appropriate and well intended, but make absolutely no sense in that moment today when the rubber hits the road. I’m not railing at all procedures and policies mind you, just the clunkers, of which there are plenty.

I saw a perfect example yesterday in the Atlanta airport. Hustling through Concourse B, I decided to grab a sandwich before my flight, so I stopped at the Muffulettas’ vending station. Two staff members were there busily counting merchandise and cash. I stood for a moment, then interrupted the lady counting the food items and asked if I might purchase a sandwich. Before I even finished asking, and with her back still turned, she replied, “We’re on shift change. You’ll have to wait about ten minutes.” “But I just want to buy a sandwich” I countered, to which she replied, “I can’t sell you anything for about ten minutes. We’re on shift change.” Thud.

Flummoxed, I stood there for a couple of minutes with a $10 bill still in hand. In that time span, four more hungry travelers approached and got the exact same treatment. Two of them uttered some not so nice words at the women before walking off. As I, too ventured off for a sandwich place that might be more open for business, I thought, “what a crappy way to make a living.”

These two women get ten minutes at the beginning and end of each and every work shift ruined by a process that unintentionally but decidedly turns them into idiots in the eyes of customers. They didn’t invent the shift change process, but they have to live with it, and judging from personal experience, it improves neither worker performance nor earnings.

These are the kinds of things that, just like a pinch of sand in the shoe, wear people down, make them crazy, and cause them to unplug, whether they actually leave the job or not.  We’ve all got them in our workspace, and it is up to those of us who are in leadership roles, regardless of the number of stripes on our sleeve, to relentlessly find them, root them out, and make it a tiny bit more possible for our people to do their very best work.

And speaking of best work, I did see some of that yesterday, too. Shortly after arrival at Kimpton’s Ink48 Hotel in New York (and still hungry), I called room service and ordered some food, which was soon delivered by a server who is a recent immigrant from Tibet. In halting but perfectly serviceable English, he politely introduced himself, inquired about my stay, told me that he was proud to work for Kimpton, and explained that he looked forward to being of service both today and in the future.

When replying to his question about where I’m from, I told him that I’m from Tennessee, which drew something of a deer in the headlights look. After a little further explanation to no avail, I quickly popped up Google Maps on my open laptop and showed him, mentioning that the state was home to Elvis, and a couple more localisms. End of story, or so I thought.

A couple of hours later, after calling to secure permission, another room service server delivered a gracious, handwritten hospitality note from my new Tibetan friend, along with a bucket of ice and two miniature bottles of guess what? The world’s best sipping whiskey, which just happens to be made in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

From a socio-economic standpoint, this fellow’s job is very much on par with the two ladies I ran into earlier in the day in Atlanta. He delivers food to guest’s rooms, and they sell it out of a refrigerator in the airport. But that’s where the similarity ends.

They get worn down each day by at least one dumb process designed or approved by someone who I suspect hasn’t spent one hour watching what kind of aggravation it brings to others. The Kimpton guy, working for a management team that has obviously told him to do what it takes to be nice to guests, is free to do his very best work, and it shows.

Evidence abounds that workers who believe that they have an honest shot at doing their best work deliberately turn up the boost on their discretionary effort, because performing at that level is exhilirating. Those who don’t, mail it in. So the choice is there for each of us to make. Do we want to invest a little time every day making the path a bit clearer for our folks, or do we want potential customers putting their hard earned money back in their pockets and walking next door?

*****

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. He is co-author of the newly released book,Rebooting Leadership. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Upon returning from a trip to the Florida Keys Saturday, I saw a bright, shiny, freshly painted Delta Air Lines 747-400 jet parked at the adjacent gate as we pulled into Terminal E at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. In all likelihood, the plane recently bore the markings of Northwest Airlines, now in the process of integrating with Delta.

To their credit, the folks at Delta and the 25 or so “integration teams” responsible for planning and managing the execution of the merger (‘er acquisition) are moving with purpose and pace, and for the most part seem to be getting it right. Our flights this week were all unremarkable, on-time, and checked luggage showed up as expected.

Airlines are big, complex organizations with lots of critical moving parts and though many have tried, you  can’t simply slap a new coat of paint on a few airplanes, hang up some fresh signs, and call it quits. Just ask a few folks who regularly fly US Airways. Though Delta and Northwest are still operating as separate carriers, it is clear that there will be a day sometime in the next year or so when there is only one entity.

One aspect of the Delta-Northwest integration, and for that matter most business mergers that lags, however, is the integration of different (vastly different in this case) organizational cultures. While Atlanta-based Delta is known for hospitality and manners, Northwest excelled at other things, to put it charitably.

Though they may be wearing new uniforms, too many of the new Delta folks are still wearing Northwest attitudes. Just as there continues to be a struggle within the combined group about whether or not various employees will be represented by a labor union (I hope not), employees are figuring out what the new standards are for performance and behavior. It all pretty much reverts to the old “barrel of apples” axiom, and management must take pains to quickly assert its will before the wrong group of apples reaches critical mass. I don’t know where it is on the transition checklist, but this is one of the things that can’t wait. If management convincingly establishes smiling faces and polite, professional exchanges with customers (and others) as the norm for the new organization and models that behavior, it will come to pass. If they don’t, well, you know what they say about the barrel of apples.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

Forty years ago I experienced my very first commercial aircraft flight(s) on a trip from Charleston, WV to Sarasota, FL to visit my grandfather. Though the second flight leg, from Atlanta to Sarasota was canceled, something I found a bit unnerving as a teen-aged newbie flyer traveling alone, everything turned out okay. I suppose in retrospect it was good preparation for things to come.

In the intervening years, as a veteran business traveler, I have experienced thousands of flight legs, millions of air miles, and I dare say at least a hundred canceled flights. What I have not experienced until this year however is the kind of meltdown of the American air transport system that is going on at present.

When America’s largest air carriers decide to park, at one time, an entire aircraft type for inspections, re-inspections, or re re-inspections relating to an eighteen month old (non-emergency) airworthiness directive, something is broken indeed. As chronicled in the April 10 USA Today, and Joe Brancatelli’s Biz Travel Life, over a quarter million air travelers have been inconvenienced in the past week as the result of American Airlines’ grounding of its MD 80 and 90 series fleet, for the 2nd time in two weeks.

When four, count ‘em (ATA, Frontier, Skybus, Aloha) airlines go bust in the same week that four of the six legacy carriers (Delta, Northwest, Continental, United), also formerly bankrupt companies, are pursuing shotgun weddings, something is amiss. Ditto for the fact that, according to a study published on 4/18 in USA Today, air travel in the U.S. took longer (30-40% longer in many cases) in 2007 then it did twenty years ago! And while all this is going on, the Department of Transportation’s uppermost priority is… get this… drumroll please… increasing denied boarding compensation for the handful of travelers who actually wind up getting bumped from a commercial flight. Yikes!

Wassup?

1. Contrary to what one might conclude when boarding one crowded commercial flight after another, we’ve still got too many aircraft seats chasing paying fannies.

2. Carriers are being allowed to use the bankruptcy process as a low cost way to gain unfair competitive advantage. Why, for example, should American and Southwest have to compete against an entire field of competitors who (some more than once) have used the bankruptcy process like a washing machine to wipe away the burden of debt and employee obligations? Perhaps the door to the bankruptcy court should henceforth be limited to “first time flyers.”

3. The FAA has been lame in dealing with flight scheduling, the enforcement of safety rules, and the management of its own workforce. Found recently to have been a bit too cozy with Southwest, and perhaps others, they are now engaged in a chest pounding smokescreen that precipitated the recent groundings. Further, by allowing air carriers and airport operators to schedule more flights at peak times than could possibly be handled by an aging infrastructure on a bluebird day, they are as much at fault as the industry itself. This is an agency just begging for privatization.

4. It’s the fares, stupid. Air carriers, most notably the legacy carriers, seem bent on self destruction by  maintaining fare structures which absolutely hose the business traveler while putting leisure travelers on the same planes at fire sale prices. You can be absolutely certain of two things when you board your next flight: No two passengers on your plane paid the same fare, and everyone got a cheaper seat than you did.

5.  The absence of a cogent national energy policy is killing us, and the aviation industry is but a single manifestation of that fact. According to IATA, the price of jet fuel has increased by 69% yr/yr. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are some leisure fares out there where the fuel surcharge portion of the ticket fee exceeds the basic fare. One thing each of us can do is to elevate this item from our own consciousness to the national stage, and demand reasonable solutions from those who would ask for our votes.

End of rant… I’ve got a plane to catch.