Management of Change: Alaska Airlines

Management of Change:  Alaska Airlines

In responding to the crisis that was taking at the Seattle hub, a current staff VP of operations Ben Minicucci was selected as the new VP of Seattle Operations. Previously, a lot of changes had been done, and all the challenges had not been resolved. To begin with, the first change that was made was recreation change that involved transforming the prior system that had failed to lead the organization to success. Ben considered a large scale thermostat where he captured his ideas on a proposal that was aimed at tackling the whole process and solving problems that were within the Seattle hub. His proposal involved capturing three guiding principles that were: leading with passion, driving the process with accountability and managing the whole system with data (Alaska Air Group Inc, 2001, 54).

        In this regards, the view of change that Ben had developed was Planned. In planned change, managers have the tasks and intentions that that are aimed to achieve organizational change. In addition, planned change incorporates the start and end points. Ben had noticed that the previous process involved the use of brute force in which a lot of individuals and resources were used in order to keep Alaska airline operation working. Unfortunately, the approach was not sustainable or repeatable as it had gained a limited amount of ground. Even though Ben had noticed that the staff was working extremely hard, the individuals were being dragged in different directions (Alaska Air Group Inc, 2001, p.55)

Force Field Analysis Finally, Ben embraced force field analysis as a tool of assessing forces that were either making the changes stagnant or driving the change towards the desired directions (Daft, Marcic, Gao, & Ma, 2010, p. 277). Ben identified that among the roots causes of operational problems was the lack of adequate standard work processes and mechanisms that measured performance goals. Even though Alaska could gauge on time performance, it had failed in upstream events like boarding, door closure and catering. In addressing this, Ben came up with report cards that were a practice he borrowed from Air Canada. The report card tracked operations metric on both daily and hourly basis as well as recording all aspects of daily meetings. In addition, the report cards were highly quantitative and reports facts that were linked to operational problems.

Using the Lewin model, there are three stages of change that are used that include: unfreeze, move and freeze. The unfreezing stage is vital for any organization as it involves the company getting ready to appreciate the change. In this stage, it is vital to understand all the change, therefore, moving away from the comfort zone (Daft et al., 2010, p.44). Ben looked critically to all the inputs of the system of Alaska airline, and his prior knowledge of the cultural aspects of the organization was an added advantage in changing the entire structure, process and culture. In initiating the strategic changes, Ben formed a vendor oversight group that managed to produce a 180 point change plan that managed the ramp vendor. Initially, the Alaska organization had been extremely harsh on ramp vendor where a system of penalties and bonuses had been implemented however the brute force was insufficient in establishing notable services.