How To Survive The Recession, Then Fail The Recovery - The British Airways Story

"How To Survive The Recession, Then Fail The Recovery"
“The British Airways Story”.
Last year BA reported a sharp rise of operating profit to £883 million, which in view of the rising fuel price and their falling market share, seemed to be bucking the downward global trend.
This year they reported a loss of £401 million.
Somewhere between the two reality probably lies, but when has reality ever paid out a performance bonus? And when have the published numbers ever reflected what is actually happening to a business?

A spokesman for BA, Mr Willie Walsh, said last month: “The combination of unprecedented oil prices, economic slowdown and weaker consumer confidence has led to substantially lower first quarter profits." “But,” He said ”British Airways is well prepared and has adapted its plans in the event of further economic uncertainty.”

These reported performance figures for BA and their smooth denial of concern reminded me of the last time BA management hit the news.

It was several years ago and Rod Eddington, the then chairman of British Airways, was responding on TV to concerns about the profitability of British Airways.
He was having a moan about how the budget airlines were cutting into his market share, but he was still being quite bullish about it. He told the interviewer how, in the last three years, he had cut the operating costs of British Airways by 5% and that although the competition was tough they fully expected to maintain their market share.

What he didn’t say was that in the past three years, to make that 5% saving, he had made redundant 16,000 members of his workforce.

He must have had some idea of the consequences of those redundancies for the remaining workforce. How did he think they felt about it?

Did he think they still felt good about working for British Airways?
Did he think they still felt their jobs were secure?
Did he think they felt proud of what had happened.

At the time Rod Eddington seemed supremely unconcerned by any of the consequence of his actions other than the ability to boast about the financial savings he thought he had made.

The men and women who worked for BA had. in the main been in their dream jobs. Pilots, who as schoolboys had pictured themselves wearing Raybans while they lounged around in the cockpits of big jets.
Cabin crew who used to dream of all the exotic destinations they would go to.
Baggage handlers and support staff who at the time could use BA to nip over to Paris for the weekend for the price of a cup of strong coffee.

And then, by making 16,000 redundancies, Rod Eddington had at a stroke completely changed the way that the remaining BA employees felt about what they did.

He had changed their attitudes and behaviours from those of a proud group of motivated people, dedicated to the service of their customers, to a bunch of disillusioned job hunters.
By making these redundancies British Airways changed the behaviour of their whole workforce from a powerful group of people who were proud of what they did, to an apathetic, untrusting workforce who were only interested in where they could send their next CV.

In the latest twist in the saga of the failure of BA we read of the appeal from the current management for the workforce of BA to give the company one months work without pay to try to save the company.

Since the days of Rod Eddington, management at BA have completely lost the loyalty of their staff by the way that they have behaved towards them, creating a morally bankrupt organisation, Make no mistake, this moral bankruptcy was caused by BA management.
Now we see the current management attempting to cash a cheque against the BA account that they themselves have already emptied.

Is this BA management completely misreading the way that the workforce feel about the company they work for? Or is this a cynical manoeuvre by management to deflect the blame for the failure of the company?

It is possible that the company will fail without these individual contributions from the workforce.
The workforce must be aware that it is just as likely that the company will fail even after they have put themselves into personal debt to try to keep it afloat, the only difference being that when the company fails, even after the workforce have given their time for free, the workforce will be in an even worse position to support their families.
Either way, management have already broken the trust of the workforce and since none of the management team seem to have offered to work for nothing it seems even less likely that any of the workforce will be persuaded to stick their necks out.

Do BA management truly believe that the workforce, working for nothing, will save them or are they working a spin, which when the company goes to the wall will enable them to say
“It was not our fault, We were let down by the workforce who would not support us.”

In this ongoing crisis we have to be very careful about what we do to survive and how that changes the way that our remaining workforce feel about they are asked to do.

Ride roughshod over the workforce during the recession because you can, and like BA you will have a very hard time continuing to trade even when the rest of the world has resumed doing business, Or, take care of your people when they most need it and they will take care of you when you need it.

We can’t have it both ways.

What goes around comes around.


Peter A Hunter
Author – Breaking the Mould
www.breakingthemould.co.uk

Financial Analysis

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Cambrian House "house of soft-ideas"

Hey all Entrepreneurs and all those who want to be an Entrepreneur. Let’s gamble, ideate for new venture, be the one to uncork innovation, be there to accept challenge, create network, get & put views and get the feel of things that you do and you are supposed to do and on the top of this get money and points for what you do.

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CH has given some detail about the crowd-sourcing.

What is Crowd-sourcing?

Crowdsourcing is when people gather via the Internet to create something and share in the profit – often without ever meeting each other in person. The products of these collaborations are referred to as crowdsourced.

Just read following,

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO talks about Crowdsourcing in Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics, 2007 saying. "Peer production is about more than sitting down and having a nice conversation... It's about harnessing a new mode of production to take innovation and wealth creation to new levels."

Cambrian House is a web based community, which specially works on crowd-sourcing and Peer production. They are totally focused on software related ideas; I usually call them “soft ideas”. Here you will find the peers and members outing in their ideas and getting paid for that.

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Is the real life enough???

hello friends

the original post was posted by me at http://analyticsnewswire99.blogspot.com/2007/07/world-is-not-enough.html

What are we fighting for today? Or what do you think the WWIII will be all about? Is it about land? Is it about water? Is it about money? Is it about technology??

No, Its about second life. Second life is wat? Is it rebirth?????

No, its about virtual world!!! The time has come when the world is not enough space for our fellow planetarians to survive. Wat they need is virtual world. Am i talkging about Matrix!!!

Might Be!!! Check it out for yourself http://www.secondlife.com/

Is it all about feeling???

No, its all about money!! Honey!!!
The site statistics
Total Residents: 8,360,141

Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,682,527Online

Now: 35,222US$ Spent

Last 24h: $1,502,626

LindeX Activity Last 24h: $220,674

It has its own currency known as Linden Dollar. 1 US $=250 Linden Dollars
It has its own stock exchange Linden Exchange.

Is it all????

Big No.

The Business Opportunities available here are:
party and wedding planner
pet manufacturer
casino operator
tattooist
nightclub owner
automotive manufacturer
fashion designer
aerospace engineer
custom avatar designer
jewelry maker
architect
XML coder
freelance scripter
game developer
fine artist
machinima set designer
tour guide
party and wedding planner
dancer
musician
custom animation creator
lottery operator
theme park developer
real estate speculator
vacation resort owner
advertiser
bodyguard
magazine
publisher
private detective
writer
gamer
hug maker
And these are very few of the possibilities.

Am i saying it by reading some magazine????????

Big NO

I m saying this by actually going and living in the second life for more than 100 hours. I m saying this by marrying a french lady in second life. I m saying this after earning as private detective in second life.

Now its upto you whether You ignore it or embrace it. But one thing is for sure You can't avoid it.

eHOW

When one stumbles and doesn’t get how to operate something; then don’t forget to surf through this portal.

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The link is http://www.ehow.com/

MANAGERS-NET

If you are looking for information on the management models and concept then stop your vague search. This is the portal that will provide you lots of things. Its a portal by managers for future managers.

Managers-Net is the initiative by few active managers who have decorated the management models with real life example. This portal also focuses on various business models

Broad topics that this portal covers are as follow.

• General Management
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• Monitoring and Control
• Analysis and Improvement
• Technology

Under these broad categories, they provide different terms and models that are widely used in corporates. They have also given examples at suitable and possible points.

There are two sections which are dedicated for biographies and reviews.
This portal is having great potential to explore itself.

This can be PAKKA portal.

Although you may not find all the information that you expect but you will come to know about lot of new things & fundamentals. Visit the link given below

www.managers-net.com

Time to Meet CFO's & CEO's

Hi all,

just go through this site www.ceocfointerviews.com . It has interviews of many CEOs' and CFOs' of various US companies. these CFOs' / CEOs' are not big shots,but the best thing about them is they don't give any gas. just pure strategies on how to do your business. plain and simple... but effective. U will definately learn more from these ppl than from any other Managers.

thankx,

rohan.

BookMyShow

URL: http://www.bookmyshow.com/

Utility value : 7/10!!!

Whats in it? Movie and PLay ticket booking online...

I was waiting for such a site to come up. If you can have a yatra.com for booking flights on a single platform, why not a single platform for booking Movie tickets throughout India? And viola, I present to you http://www.bookmyshow.com/ . Its a complete site. It has associations with all the major Multiplexes. I think only Fame is missing out at this point, but I am sure it will join in. It has its own picks of the week and the top ten movie suggestions. I think its a great site, a single point to see the lowest rates for movies in theaters you can go to. this was a gap which was waiting to be filled and I am happy it has been filled. Also, it gives much needed platform to PLAYS. as tickets for plays will also be available here soon. So I give them 2 thumbs up!

My dissapointment - a rather big one, is that the site has only signed up with Multiplexes who anyways have e-ticketing facility on their own sites. It would be much better if this site cud have Single theaters as their partners and sell their tickets online. I think the single theater owners are suffering enough and if they are given this platform , it would boost their sales. I belive the theater owners are also at fault, if they dont approach this site. As we know they dont have the capital to come up with their own site. Nor does the volume of sales warranty a site, but if this site is used, the cost would be shared between many single theater owners. I think BookMyShow can give this platform to small theaters at cheap rates.

About this site - Its started by Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. which was founded in 1999and is India's premiere comprehensive ticketing, information and analysis solutions provider.

sharing IT knowledge

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World of Free Codes

I was just looking for the HTML code to create pop-ups, at that time I came across this portal. I just startled as I saw this portal. This portal contains lots of programming codes and in different programming languages and on the top of this these all codes are free of cost.

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