At 7:50 PM, comfortably seated in the first-class cabin of his new carrier, McPherson jerked to attention as the captain came on to announce that because of a leak in the hydraulic system, there would be an aircraft change and a two-and-a-half-hour delay. Sprinting off the plane, McPherson realized that the meeting with the power company executives, planned three months ago, would be over before he got there. The following day he was due in Frankfurt to give the keynote address at a major information systems conference. Flying to the United Kingdom to connect to Frankfurt would be a hassle and unnecessary since the purpose of stopping in the United Kingdom was now totally negated. Glancing up at the departure board, McPherson was surprised to see a 7:55 PM boarding departure for a plane to Frankfurt, nine gates away. Pulling into the gate at 8:02 PM, he discovered several things:
1) The plane was at the gate, and with commendable dispatch the gate agent relieved him of his London boarding pass and his London-to-Frankfurt ticket and hustled him onto the plane minutes before the door closed.
2) The cabin attendant, giving him his favourite drink, explained that because of favourable tail winds across the Atlantic and the fact that eight passengers (plus now McPherson and one other) had very tight connections, they had decided to hold the plane for 15 minutes to get the extra passengers and still arrive on schedule. The note of pride in the cabin attendant’s voice was evident.
One and a half hours later, appropriately wined and dined, McPherson drifted off to sleep, reflecting on what a remarkable case study had played out in front of him in the previous two hours. Information technology, operations strategy, management control, an empowered (and unempowered) workforce, and service management had been interwoven into a tableau. A revised format for his speech in Frankfurt began to emerge. Best of all, he would not have to go through a case release process because it had all happened to him.
At 7:50 PM, comfortably seated in the first-class cabin of his new carrier, McPherson jerked to attention as the captain came on to announce that because of a leak in the hydraulic system, there would be an aircraft change and a two-and-a-half-hour delay. Sprinting off the plane, McPherson realized that the meeting with the power company executives, planned three months ago, would be over before he got there. The following day he was due in Frankfurt to give the keynote address at a major information systems conference. Flying to the United Kingdom to connect to Frankfurt would be a hassle and unnecessary since the purpose of stopping in the United Kingdom was now totally negated. Glancing up at the departure board, McPherson was surprised to see a 7:55 PM boarding departure for a plane to Frankfurt, nine gates away. Pulling into the gate at 8:02 PM, he discovered several things: 1) The plane was at the gate, and with commendable dispatch the gate agent relieved him of his London boarding pass and his London-to-Frankfurt ticket and hustled him onto the plane minutes before the door closed. 2) The cabin attendant, giving him his favourite drink, explained that because of favourable tail winds across the Atlantic and the fact that eight passengers (plus now McPherson and one other) had very tight connections, they had decided to hold the plane for 15 minutes to get the extra passengers and still arrive on schedule. The note of pride in the cabin attendant’s voice was evident. One and a half hours later, appropriately wined and dined, McPherson drifted off to sleep, reflecting on what a remarkable case study had played out in front of him in the previous two hours. Information technology, operations strategy, management control, an empowered (and unempowered) workforce, and service management had been interwoven into a tableau. A revised format for his speech in Frankfurt began to emerge. Best of all, he would not have to go through a case release process because it had all happened to him.
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