Traditional organisational structures with stiff departmental boundaries are the perpetual, often invisible triggers of operational and cost inefficiencies. They stifle communication, exchange of knowledge and experience, and contribute to impotent decision making. Historically, even the most promising actions on organisational restructuring and popularity of cross-functional teams driven by the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into cross-functional processes didn't bring lasting results. This was mainly because the multidimensional problems where myriads of related, ever-changing events occurring simultaneously couldn’t be resolved using the step-by-step logical approach.
There is a simpler, yet pretty powerful way to bypass organisational barriers and support natural creation of cross-functional links - the process of Disruption Management (DM). Disruptions are company’s response to changed operational circumstances. Getting in touch with their multiple origins spread across the organisation supports creation of internal links, and provides invaluable insight into things that are in need of improvement.
There is no strict recipe for how this multi-dimensional process should be organised apart from that it cannot be assigned to individual departments or cross-functional teams set up on temporary basis. Each airline has to integrate the concept of DM into its organisation so that it best meets its particular needs. One of the options is to create the central information and communication unit where disruptions related to operational, strategic, network, scheduling and other related problems and information ambiguities could be coordinated, discussed, and whenever possible, resolved. It would consist of ‘boundary-spanners’ – people who are able to move freely between operations and senior management, translating the requirements of each into a language and behaviour that is acceptable to, and understandable by, the others. Boundary-spanners’ would have an important role in complex airline structures. They should establish ‘experience bridges’ that link people, information and process, and accelerate progress through the development of shared understanding. This could prove to be a good investment, considering that the introduction of this function will make significant reductions in time and money spent on unnecessary analysis, unreliable delay reports, futile decision making, and endless disputes over unsolvable problems – time that could be spent more effectively by shifting the focus from fire-fighting to longer-term improvements in operational efficiency, which assumes better cost control and reduction in operating costs.
There is another possibility for organising the process of DM that might be appropriate for smaller airlines with flat organisations and those who argue that bringing all information about disruption information management within the scope of a single unit may itself be limiting. For them, the gain from a single functional responsibility may be less attractive than building appropriate procedures into all aspects of disruption management. Even then, the system ownership must be clearly defined.
In both cases, it is essential for airlines to have a well-developed disruption information system (described in Beyond Airline Disruptions). This system coupled with the above organisational improvements will create a good base upon which internal communication, operational and cost efficiency could be built and constantly improved. As a result, the front-line and mid-organisational decision makers will benefit from getting a wider picture of business they are involved in, while senior decision makers that know the bigger picture will be in a position to learn more about what this big picture is made of.
