On our side of the Pacific, Mainland Chinese authorities announced this week that all Chinese airline bosses have been ordered to be on the air on New Year's Day on 2000. The Financial Times celebrated the Chinese ultimate solution to the millenium bomb problem by calling it "an inspiration -- Great Incentives of our time!"

This show of new leadership and accountability brought the spotlight on how leaders should share  risks with the rank and file.  Like looking at the emperor's new clothes, many wondered for a long time, and viewed orders from their leaders with cynicism, even mistrust.  Shouldn't all those biggies who draw salaries and packages many many times bigger than the average employee share the risk their rank and file colleagues are undertaking?  And how better to make people understand the impact of teamwork and accountability by requesting them to be exposed to the hazards and inconveniences as any other user of their services or any rank and file employee who performs the tasks?
 
 

Cold War Generals vs. True Millenium Leaders
Tn the days of the cold war, the people who made the pivotal push on the button are always protected and tucked away in underground bunkers. One wonders how much safer for everyone else, had these generals been exposed to the risk directly ?

Effective leaders are doers, not preachers. Peter Drucker recounted this story from his final high-school years.  The history teacher, a war veteran who had been badly wounded, told his class to pick several books on the First World War, read them carefully and then write an essay on them.  When these essays were discussed in class, one of his fellow students said, "Every one of those books says that the Great War was a war of total military incompetence. Why was it?"  His teacher did not hesitate a second but shot right back, "Because not enough generals were killed; they stayed way behind the lines, and let others do the fighting and dying".

Druckersaid:
Effective leaders delegate a good many things; they have to, or they drown in trivia. But they do not delegate the one thing that only they can do with excellence, the one thing that will make a difference, the one thing that will set standards, the one thing they want to be remembered for. They do it.
 
 

The Air Traffic Controllers
The real challenge according to industry experts is not the airlines but the air traffic control systems on the ground.  The Financial Times observed, "The big aircraft manufacturers have worked hard to debug the batteries of computers and chips that control Modern aircraft. But --and here is the point-- it will be far harder to debug air traffic control systems on the ground.

In addition, support programs such as those controlling power and light may be vulnerable -- especially in countries that use a high proportion of pirated software.  So the risk will come from the ground more than the air.  That is why KLM has said it might not fly, from New Year's eve, to an unpublished blacklist of airports where it mistrusts traffic control systems."   The Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Britain Malcolm Field confirmed this view from his authority's own experience. The authority began the bug-fixing program in the ground system since 1996. After several simulations, CVA is satisfied that they have completely fixed the bug in the ground system.

The Financial Times suggests, "If transport authorities want to make a convincing gesture, they should invite air traffic control bosses to join airline executives on the flight deck next January 1."

Wonder whether our own head of civil aviation and the heads of the Malaysian Airports Authorities made plans for the new year yet.  If they haven't,  flying across the country on New Year's day to begin the new millennium may be a perfect leadership proposition.   Think about the power of the message they could be sending; flight into 2000, flight into a new culture of accountability. In the meantime, stay tuned.

January 23, 1999

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