Stop the Insanity! Change the Model!

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

 

It is said that when a person tries the same thing over and over again in the same way and expects different results, they are exhibiting signs of insanity.

So what do we call a business or industry that--in the midst of total and utter failure--keeps doing the same things? I don't know about you, but I call it Stupid and Insane. Yet for the past three years or so, we have watched the airline industry giants lose hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter, and yet they do nothing different. This total failure to learn has United Airlines and now American Airlines in chapter 11 bankruptcies.

By now, you might thing they would get the message: It's time to change the business model!

On March 28, ABI World published the story "AMR May File Largest Airline Bankruptcy Next Week."

"AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, the world's biggest carrier, may be pushed into bankruptcy protection as early as next week in part because of the war in Iraq, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines has failed to cut costs fast enough to match a drop in revenue that never fully recovered from the Sept. 11 attacks and was exacerbated by the start of fighting in Iraq. A bankruptcy reorganization would allow the airline to restructure more than $27 billion in debt and stem losses that totaled $5.27 …

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