Introducing a leader:
Alan Joyce is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Qantas Airlines. Earlier he had worked for Aer Lingus and later joined Ansett Australia. In year 2000 he joined Qantas Airlines and with leadership abilities and skills soon became the CEO of the company. He actively participated in various reformation, scheduling and networking strategy formulation for Qantas Airlines which brought him success. On 28th November 2008, he became the CEO of Qantas Airlines when the global financial slowdown was on the initial level. Therefore he became CEO when the problems of sustenance of business of Qantas Airlines was on the incline. He applied his abilities gained from being a former director of Jetstar Asia Airways of Singapore. The years on from 2008 observed huge industrial unrest in Qantas Airlines which led to the different structural changes and bold decision making of lay off which brought Alan Joyce to a more controversial position in the public. His hard but effective decision making actually brought him to newer levels of success and made him declared as the most influential business leader in year 2011.
Critical evaluation of leadership traits in the leader:
A. Evaluating leadership traits:
A number of successful leadership traits were observed in Alan Joyce soon after his joining as CEO of Qantas Airlines. The major leadership traits are displayed as below.
1. Possibility thinking:
The possibility thinking is the first and most critical leadership trait that is required to take the business to new height with the adapt of new innovative idea. Through possibility thinking an idea is thought and developed such that the present day issues and problems could be tackled wisely and effectively. After the year 2008 global economic slowdown.
Alan Joyce was entitled with the job as CEO with Qantas Airlines for dealing with the huge financial issues and problems that the company was facing. Actually Qantas Airlines was observing huge financial debts positions due to which the revival of the business terms and structure was becoming the need of the hour. The higher management of Qantas Airlines wanted to cut down expenditures and raise the earnings of the company. With these main objectives in mind, Alan Joyce was now had to do possibility thinking. This was done by thinking of various ideas that could actually support the decision making for financial revival of the company business. The best alternate were therefore selected and applied. Although the possibility thinking that Alan Joyce applied brought him controversy but did resulted in taking out the company from financial debt positions to profit earning status. The possibility thinking therefore resulted in restructuring of the business process and layoff of extra workforce which led to the immediate decline in expenditures and increase in profit margins of the company (centerforaviation.com, 2015).
2. Sense of Urgency:
The sense of urgency is another leadership trait through which the leader is required to prioritize and concentrate on top priority. Therefore the sense of urgency helps in identifying the matters and issues that needs immediate recognition. The sense of urgency brings out objective creation which has to be fulfilled in the given time frame.
Alan Joyce reviewed the business position of Qantas Airlines soon after the joining in year 2008 and recognized that the company priority among other issues were to cut the expenditures. Therefore he concentrated on applying measures to deal with the urgency of cost cutting required to sustain the business in the long run. He took the step of recognizing the extra human resource offering lesser income than estimation. Therefore he prioritized the cost cutting and took the decision of layoff. Not only that he decided to freeze wage from further appreciation. This led to the rise in disputes with pilots, ground staff and engineers. The issue was pay cut and outsourcing of jobs. Alan Joyce tried to first convince them that the action was taken in the best financial interest of the company. However his ideas were not accepted and led to the cancellation of 120 flights and $68 million earning loss. Later with Australian Government intervention the dispute was however resolved (Collins et al., 2015). Again in year 2014, after observing a loss of $252 million in the first half, Alan Joyce took the bold decision of slashing 5000 jobs (smh.com, 2014). This way urgency of removing debt positions and loss bearing company status was to be removed for its sustenance for long term (Creedy, 2014).
3. Accountability:
Accountability stands for offering responsibility for the results. The leader therefore is required to take full responsibility of the outcome. For this the leader must show effective and efficient decision making which he could later take responsibility of.
Alan Joyce is an accountable leader who took out his best possible skills and knowledge to help Qantas Airlines to reach new heights and gain its financial successful status. He took the decision of lay off and clearly announced his accountability to the Australian Government for taking such action in the interest of Qantas Airlines. Later he moved ahead a looked for various opportunities with the company to start earning from new ventures. With this objective in mind, he made a deal with Emirates Airlines through which the Qantas Airlines was now offering Qantas and Emirates Airlines became business partner. At present there are nearly 14 daily flights of Qantas-Emirates Airlines to Dubai. This way the company was able to move back to profits from year 2015 finally after the hustle and huge losses from past 7 years (Collins et al., 2015).
4. Synergy:
Synergy is achieved by the leader when equal opportunity is offered to all the employees for bringing ahead and displaying their innovative ideas and thoughts. This way a leader makes the employees feel heard and recognized for their efforts and new ideas. Also the accepting of the new idea proves that the leader is supportive and has keen interest in developing and bringing transitional changes in the business process for the sake of success.
Alan Joyce is a democratic leader that offers full chance to his subordinates to disclose a new idea or innovation that could help the Qantas Airlines fulfill its target goal of regaining its financial strength. H Alan Joyce is well known for inviting new ideas from the staff. He accepted the idea of fighting capacity war with Virgin Australia and keep a control over the domestic flight business. He also moved a step ahead in effective decision making by splitting the business in two half that is domestic and international with two new bosses. This way a concentrated measures on the development of domestic and international business was applied in year 2012 (News.com.au, 2013).
5. Integrity:
Leadership requires the application of the integrity by the leader for its effective application. The leader needs to have the quality of integrity so that the others could follow the path of truth and honesty as per the leader. Also the transparency in decision making is required by the leader so that the skeptic thoughts of employees could be answered accordingly.
Alan Joyce has the quality of integrity. He always tried to display the truth and transparency in his decision making. Because of this leadership quality he openly came ahead to take the responsibility in media for the mass layoff. He gave interviews and made public speeches in which he clearly stated his goals as a CEO of Qantas Airline and thereafter clarified his stand on the decision made for cutting costs and improving profit for the company (News.com.au, 2015).
6. Responsibility and ownership:
A leader needs to offer responsibility and ownership in business. That is he should take personal interest in developing the business and securing its sustenance in the long run. This would help the company in applying various measures that would support its growth in future.
Alan Joyce also showed great responsibility and ownership over the Qantas Airline business. He took the decision of lay off and clearly announced his accountability to the Australian Government for taking such action in the interest of Qantas Airlines. Later he moved ahead a looked for various opportunities with the company to start earning from new ventures. He also made a deal with Emirates Airlines through which the Qantas Airlines was now offering Qantas and Emirates Airlines became business partner. He took the step of recognizing the extra human resource offering lesser income than estimation. Therefore he prioritized the cost cutting and took the decision of layoff. Not only had that he decided to freeze wage from further appreciation. This led to the rise in disputes with pilots, ground staff and engineers. The issue was pay cut and outsourcing of jobs. Alan Joyce tried to first convince them that the action was taken in the best financial interest of the company.
B. Idea of handling situations otherwise:
Although the decisions made by Alan Joyce were best in the interest of the Qantas Airlines, I would have rather handled the situations otherwise. That is instead of taking care of the interest of the Qantas Airlines, I would have taken care of the interest of the common people as well. The decisions that I would have taken includes the followings.
1. No Layoff:
The first step that I would have taken was “No Layoff”. I don’t personally feel that anyone should be debarred of his job, therefore I think there should never be a layoff. However I would have placed these extra employees on other productive jobs. I would have created more destinations for Qantas Airlines through joint ventures business deals with other companies around the globe. Therefore instead of removing the so called extra employees, I would have transferred them to new offices and job destinations in other countries where the Qantas Airlines intends to develop business. Since expansion is the part of every business process, I would have expanded the business, and instead of hiring new employees in that place, I would have transferred the existing employees to those places.
2. More humanistic decisions:
Alan Joyce took the right decision of cutting costs and removing extra employees for the same purpose. However the right decisions were not actually wise decisions. This is so because this decision led to the layoff of more than 5000 employees at different times. Therefore making so many people become jobless and incapable of earning even there daily bread is not a good deed. If he really was wise than he should have rejected the 71% increase in his pay during the 2010-11 which amounted to $2 million pay hike after cutting 1000 jobs from the national carriage (Wilson & Jacob, 2011). If he really was wise than he would have distributed the $2 milion pay hike among the people whom he intended to layoff. This way his decisions were more opportunist than humanist.
3. No wage rise for next few years:
Since the company is facing huge losses, the plans of the employees for rise in wage was to be delayed until the company comes back to profit earning position. This way the no wage rise was to be applied in the business for next few years. The employees waiting for pay rise would instead be compensated with the promise that after the company comes back to profit than they will receive the immediate rise that they are expected of now. Along with that the recognition of the outperformer does not need any financial gains. The non-financial gains like the respect in the public and recognition would be enough to appreciate the outperformer and a letter of thanks would be enough to ensure that as soon as company comes back to profit earning position, he or she will be considered for promotions.
4. Review of the whole business process:
The whole business process will be reviewed such that inefficacies will be identified. This way efforts will be made to remove the drawbacks and issues causing high costs and low earnings to the company. The concentration will be made on cutting costs and removing such attempts that actually adds to the cost of operation. Also the services that offers no or lesser benefit will be either terminated or added with more features so that the outcome meets the requirements of earning good amount of profits for the company. This way cost effective measures will be applied to the whole business process after careful review of the business situation.
5. Entering into ventures and deals:
New ventures and deal will be entertained as this will help in developing business overseas and the employees of the company will get more work that could make their presence more profitable for the company. Hence instead of cutting extra arms, increasing the earning capabilities of the extra arms is a better idea to deal with the situation. Therefore I would rather prefer entering new ventures and deals to increase business spread in different new destinations and transfer my employees instead of leaving them forever.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the decision taken by Alan Joyce were rather more professional and mean than human. Instead of removing the extra employees, efforts should have been made to transfer them to new offices and job destinations in other countries where the Qantas Airlines intends to develop business. Since expansion is the part of every business process, I would have expanded the business, and instead of hiring new employees in that place, I would have transferred the existing employees to those places. That is he took the right decision of cutting costs and removing extra employees for the same purpose. However the right decisions were not actually wise decisions. This is so because this decision led to the layoff of more than 5000 employees at different times. Therefore making so many people become jobless and incapable of earning even there daily bread is not a good deed. If he really was wise than he should have rejected the 71% increase in his pay during the 2010-11 which amounted to $2 million pay hike after cutting 1000 jobs from the national carriage (Wilson & Jacob, 2011). If he really was wise than he would have distributed the $2 milion pay hike among the people whom he intended to layoff. This way his decisions were more opportunist than humanist.
Bibliography
centerforaviation.com, 2015. Qantas and Virgin domestic and international EBIT profit/loss. [Online] Available at: http://centreforaviation.com/images/stories/Airline_Leader/Issue_29/Qantas_Virgin/1.png [Accessed 25 June 2016].
Collins, B., Pash, C. & Heber, A., 2015. 10 huge battles Alan Joyce has fought. [Online] Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/nine-huge-battles-alan-joyce-has-fought-2014-2 [Accessed 25 June 2016].
Creedy, S., 2014. Qantas to slash 5000 jobs as it posts $252 first half loss. [Online] Available at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/qantas-to-slash-5000-jobs-as-it-posts-252m-first-half-loss/story-e6frg95x-1226839160203?nk=53ee41450f5bac5a82ece53874b4ef5b-1466821825 [Accessed 25 June 2016].
News.com.au, 2013. Qantas to cut 1000 jobs as CEO Alan Joyce takes pay cut. [Online] Available at: http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/qantas-to-cut-1000-jobs-as-ceo-alan-joyce-takes-pay-cut/story-e6frfq80-1226775800430 [Accessed 25 June 2016].
News.com.au, 2015. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce speaks about the Airline’s gains at Annual General Meeting. [Online] Available at: http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/qantas-ceo-alan-joyce-gets-grilled-at-annual-general-meeting/news-story/ba2422569c251850a6e828437f2bd90b?from=public_rss [Accessed 25 June 2016].
smh.com, 2014. Qantas chief Alan Joyce cuts 5000 jobs. [Online] Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/business/aviation/qantas-chief-alan-joyce-cuts-5000-jobs-20140226-33j48.html [Accessed 25 June 2016].
Wilson, N. & Jacob, P., 2011. Qantas boss Alan Joyce wins 71 percent, $2 m pay hike. [Online] Available at: http://www.news.com.au/finance/qantas-boss-wins-71pc-pay-hike/story-e6frfm1i-1226131646231 [Accessed 25 June 2016].
