OL 633

2

Alaska Airlines: Case study

Deyanira Diaz

Southern New Hampshire University

OL 633

Dr. Ellington

September 25, 2022

Strategic vision

Alaska Airlines’ path to success was flawed by ineffective organizational culture, which resulted to poor performance of the company. The management led a culture that made it hard for the airline to perform effectively. Therefore, the airline had to navigate a different operational course to improve its operations. The first action by the airline was to hire a vice president at its Seattle operation. In addition, prior the change, the airline had changed its management structure. Each department was operating under independent managers. The vice president met with the managers to discuss on the strategies to get the airline on the right track. The meeting resulted in the implementation of lean processes within the operations of the company to reduce or eliminate wastages (Avolio, Patterson & Baker, 2015). Before the changes, the airline had recorded high cases of customer mishandled bags and delayed departure time. Therefore, it is was high time the company implemented new strategies to change its status quo.

Initially, the company operated on a culture that believed “just good enough” was enough and did little to improve its operations. The company operated on the slogan that “it’s ok to be late, so long as we’re nice.” This perception was attributed to Ray Vecci, who was the acting CEO of the airline between 1990 and 1995. This was the period when the company started cultivating a lazy culture and also resistant to change. Ray Vecci was resistant to the adoption of mandatory Departure on Time (DOT) reporting (Avolio, Patterson & Baker, 2015). The attitude by the CEO led to the adoption of culture for blaming the system rather than confronting the challenge and implementing changes that facilitated effective operations regardless of the environment in which the airline was operating in.

The Kotter’s’ third step in change management is creating a vision for change. For Alaska Airlines to move towards the right direction, it had to create a vision for change. This entailed what the new change seeks to achieve or the existing problem (Kotter, n.d.). In this case, the airline had in place a reluctant culture that contributed to significant failure of the company. The culture resulted in poor employee performance which was witnessed through mishandling of passenger bags as well as delayed departure time. Therefore, the vision for change was to ensure that the airline addresses these problems in order to ensure customer satisfaction and to increase its revenues. The management of the airline learned that in order to improve customer experience, it was important to minimize lost baggage or mishandling of bags, increase on-time departure and arrival time. Therefore, the strategic vision focused on transforming the entire organizational culture in order to enhance customer experience and improve employee performance.

However, for the change to be successful, it is imperative for the management to bring on board all stakeholders to the company. For example, employees play a critical part in the success of the organisation. Therefore, they should be part of the group that create the strategic vision for change so that they are part of the change implementation.

Change communication

The Kotter’s fourth step in change management process is communicating the vision. Communicating the vision is imperative as all stakeholders have to understand why the change is important to the organisation and what it seeks to achieve (Kotter, n.d.). Alaska Airline management must make the stakeholders understand the current problem the company is facing and what change the company seeks to implement to address to solve the problems. Stakeholders support to the vision is largely dependent on how effectively the management makes them understand why the company needs to implement a change. Ineffective communication of the vision results in resistance from stakeholders who fail to understand how the change will impact their operations (Recardo, 1995). It is imperative for the team responsible for creating the vision to walk the talk. To effectively get support from stakeholders, the management should not only communicate the vision, but also to address the concerns and anxieties of the stakeholders. Addressing concerns and anxieties of stakeholders helps reduce the likelihood of resistance by stakeholders (Recardo, 1995). In most cases, change can be disruptive and people are more likely to stick to a status quo rather than embracing a change. Concerns and anxiety can be addressed by involving the stakeholders in the change implementation process and also openly and honestly communicating how the change will impact the organisation. In some instances, stakeholders are afraid to embrace change because they do not understand how it will affect their roles within the organisation.

Therefore, to avoid the resistance, the management can encourage a two-way communication where employees and management work together to implement the changes. Involvement of employees in decision making process and allowing them to give feedback and opinions allows for two-way communication and also reduces instances of resistance. Open communication where employees are allowed to give their input towards the change feel as they are part of the change and are more likely to embrace and support the change.

References

Kotter. (n.d.). The 8 steps for leading change. https://www.kotterinc.com/methodology/8-steps/

Avolio, B. J., Patterson, C., & Baker, B. (2015). Alaska Airlines: Navigating change.  Harvard Business Review,  93, 1-22.

Recardo, R. J. (1995). Overcoming resistance to change.  National Productivity Review,  14, 5-5.