We have all asked ourselves questions like that.
Recently an article by the Wall Street Journal “How Airbus revived a trouble jet” (17 October 2007) featured the difficult journey Airbus took to deliver the jumbo airplane that our national carrier Singapore Airlines just had delivered. This article provides some valuable insights which we may use in our professional lives. Airbus faced a wide range of challenges - from the boardroom to manufacturing floor, from the blueprints to the hard-wiring. In trying to combine technologies, philosophies and methodologies from their French and German teams, Airbus created a situation which actually pitted one team against the other, instead of synergizing them. The fallout? Two chief executives left within three months. In September 2007, the third chief executive suddenly quit, too.
Challenges that Airbus faced can be summarized as follows:
1) Diversity of views – Every individual brings along expertise to the table. If not managed properly, teams become polarized and refuse to accept each other. In the case of the Airbus, senior management could hardly contain the diversity, and choosing to work separately rather than integrate the processes. In the short term, it may appear to work. But we all know what happens in the long-term.
2) Unbridled ego - If personal pride is not controlled, an employee’s efforts are focused on self-promotion. If anything goes wrong, blame allocation is the name of the game and not fixing the problem. During the early days of the A380 construction, no single manager was driving integration or spotting problems. We can imagine what kind of chaos was taking place at Airbus!
3) Lack of people support – For 30 years, Airbus operated as a consortium of independent aviation companies in Britain, Spain, France and Germany. Operations in various countries generally functioned as stand-alone entities with little communication between them. As reported in the article, successful new ways of working often failed to spread around the company.
The good news is that Airbus managed to turn things around and delivered the first A380 to Singapore Airlines with great fanfare. The amazing fact was that the issues and challenges were not solved in the boardroom by top executives, but rather middle managers taking a bold step in integrating the consortium into a single company and by focusing on deliver their promise to their customers.
What can we learn from Airbus’ long and painful journey?
Taking ownership - Only when the French and German engineers put aside their cultural differences, and focused on the job at hand, was any progress on the Airbus 380 made. Do we take ownership for our teams, our company’s success? Or do we coast along and wait for someone else to direct us?
1) Problem Solving as a Team – In an unprecedented move within Airbus, the German designers and engineers asked their counterparts in France for help. We all know that at work, no problem can be fixed by an individual’s effort alone. In addition, the willingness to learn from each other is extremely important in problem solving. Are we ready to set aside our baggage and work with our colleagues to tackle challenges?
2) Building Resilience – Although co-operating may have been difficult initially for the French and German teams, I believe this led to an increase in their resilience as they met and successfully resolved all challenges. Only by such a trial by fire are high-performing teams born.
3) Challenges at work will always exist. Airbus will continue to face internal challenges and stiff competition from rival Boeing. Ultimately the success of our organization begins with us – even though it may not seem that way. Are you ready to take ownership, tackle problems as a team and help build resilience personally and in your team? Would you take a step… forward?
