The Management Mythbuster

Measuring madness -- so you think travel is glamorous?

Welcome to the flght 666 on Absurd Air—sit back and enjoy the ride but first of all make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and your tray table is in an upright and locked position.

I am writing this while sitting on a 747 en route from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Australia.  I left home just outside Cleveland, Ohio at 2.45pm on Thursday and will land in Melbourne at around 9.30am on Saturday – hopefully. Not sure where my Friday went, still I will make it all up again on Thursday when I leave Melbourne at 11.30am and land in LA at 10.40am, 50 minutes before I took off, en route back to Cleveland. Such is the glamor of traveling across the International Date Line.

In my 26 years as a management  consultant I have taken 2,742 plane flights (yes I keep a record because that's what I do) through 188 different airports in 56 countries.  The reason for the current trip is to deliver a couple of speeches at a performance management conference. While pondering the world of scorecards, dashboards and KPIs, I got to thinking about the key performance indicators of travel. 

Our travel vendors love to boast about their rankings in surveys and always seem to focus on the one metric that shows them in the best light.  Over the years this has led to some creative measurement. Apparently the 19-minute flight from Cleveland to Detroit flight now needs to be scheduled for 1 hour and 40 minutes in order to have a chance of achieving respectable on-time stats.

 

Of course, for those of us who are on the road all the time the sole metric for our travel is to maximize the accumulation of frequent flyer miles or other such rewards.  Our choice of airline, rental car, hotel, restaurant and payment mechanism all seek to apply the maximum multiplier to each mile covered or dollar spent.  I will freely admit that in my younger days I engaged in some less than optimal logistics for December travel to secure the next level of elite status—Cleveland to Newark via Houston anyone?

Back in the late-1980s during my days working in London we maintained a league table that documented another metric reflective of the consultant’s itinerant life.  The metric was simple: Average Speed for the Week. The calculation took the total miles covered in a week and divided it by 168 to give a “mph.”  Suffice to say that on at least a couple of occasions I managed to top the 100mph for the week without getting so much as a speeding ticket.

However, over time the pursuit of insane travel statistics loses its luster. If in doubt then watch the movie Up In The Air, I am sure you will notice the uncanny resemblance between George Clooney and yours truly! Today my priorities have changed.  Travel planning involves maximum use of non-stops at off peak times; and avoiding tight connections in Chicago, Atlanta or Newark at all costs while maximizing the chance of upgrades over mileage accumulation and choosing hotels based on the comfort of the beds, efficiency of the shower and proximity to client site/airport rather than their coolness quotient.  Of course, when all is said and done there is only one metric that actually matters when it comes to air travel and that is to make sure that Landings Equal Takeoffs, everything else is secondary.

 

Assuming that this metric holds for this flight, I am looking forward to a few days in Melbourne, it's a great city and in less than 24 hours I will have swapped fall in Ohio for springtime in Oz, will have access to decent beer (after all American beer is an oxymoron), and will be able to enjoy extended coverage of the Rugby World Cup.

 

Till the next time, have one for the road.

 

PS. I did it! My weeklong trip to Australia covered 19,946 miles for an average speed of 118.73 mph.

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This China thing is real

I know you already knew that.  What with the impressive Olympics, our seemingly insatiable desire for cheap Chinese goods and the U.S. economy's dependence upon China to keep buying government debt, Chairman Mao's successor's have made it onto the big stage and they won't be leaving anytime soon.

After a week in Shanghai and Beijing, my fourth trip in five years, the furious pace of development shows no signs of abating. Certainly things slowed for a year or so but it now seems full steam ahead. Some random observations from the field:

- they sure can do infrastructure.  Of course the absence of real property rights and the right to object helps move things along, but the quality of the roads, the very impressive subways and the airports (nothing like LaGuardia or Heathrow I can assure you) shows that China means business

- while the Yuan maybe manipulated to keep Chinese exports cheap, that makes things cheap if you have greenbacks to spend in China. A subway ride costs 35 cents - anytime, any distance, and the trains are clean, air conditioned and very safe; bottled water is just 30 cents a half liter right in the middle of Tiananmen Square on a Sunday morning; a taxi ride from one side of Beijing to the other costs $8 or about two blocks on Manhattan. However, beware if you venture into the mushrooming upscale malls and you will be in true rip-off land - $200 for a polo shirt and $300 for a simple pair of trousers - the upside of such retail mecca's?  There's probably a Cold Stone Creamery for your ice-cream fix.

- the world expo in Shanghai is very impressive, although visitor numbers will have to grow quickly - here are the queues when I arrived last Friday!

- you feel really safe, police are everywhere, bags are X-rayed at the entrance to every subway and to any major building and no, there are not crazy long lines -  staff are plentiful (there are 1.4 billion of them after all) and very friendly despite the obvious language barrier and even that is crumbling faster than acid rain destroys the Great Wall!

- the West is making inroads - McDonalds and KFC both merit their own signposts around the city

Much better western cuisine is also available as my lunch on Sunday showed - It could have been Munich!

Of course, real democracy and free speech are not the norm -  no access to either Facebook or Twitter from the three hotels I have been in. Still you have to give the leaders credit for successfully balancing tight political control with an economic miracle unlike say, the Russians. Can it last?  Well the signs of a Thai like rich versus poor divide are there but I wouldn't bet against them. They may even find they like democracy if they try it...  

Indian Insights

Its been three years since I was last in India and the changes are amazing.  Sure its still an assault on the senses - hot, smelly, noisy, visually jarring and I'm not sure I would touch much of anything, but this is a country going places.  Even the street vendors in  Chennai (formerly Madras) chatter away on their mobile phones while they hawk their fruit.

Both Mumbai and Chennai airports were clean, efficient and, most important of all, cool.  Flights were on time, baggage handling quick.  Customs was a breeze compared to Newark or Atlanta and the taxi fleet seems to have moved out of the 1950's, albeit only as far as the 70's.  Service is outstanding at the best hotels, comparing very well with the best in Singapore or Hong Kong and far outstripping that at most of their US or European counterparts.  Prices are rising but still lag the rest of Asia (including China it seems)

Infrastructure investment is everywhere and needs to be as the potholes here make NE Ohio roads look pristine but it augers well for the future.  Foreign businesses are everywhere and the Indians seem genuinely appreciative of the investments yet cultural pride remains fierce and the passion for cricket shows no sign of abating! 

Now of course not everything is perfect, the train drivers in Mumbai were on strike creating gridlock in an already over crowded city but I remain bullish on India notwithstanding the continued threat of terrorism that seems to present everywhere these days.  

As a democracy, change is a little harder here than China, but don't count them out.  I'm a fan.

Why is the weather so perfect in SoCal?

Finally a few days R&R in Southern California.  Been here three days and the sun hasn't stopped shining with the mercury seemingly stuck at 72F - its a tough life sometimes. 

Mission Beach north of San Diego full of the beautiful people.  I definitely spoiled the scene.  Here are some shots of me and my ladies enjoying the zoo, the beach and the Four Seasons at Avaria - the sign in the last pic gives a true CA health warning that is posted on the front door of the hotel!

 

Not tired yet!

Since March 10th I have been to 14 countries on three continents, crossed the Atlantic six times, been on 29 flights and slept in 19 different hotels.  But that was just the start.  Today I am sitting in Cleveland Airport waiting to board a flight to London. Tomorrow morning I connect there to visit Bucharest. Over the next 25 days I will visit another 13 countries also on 3 continents, deliver 14 speeches, take five red-eye flights and not visit home once - I can't wait!  My next four weekends will be spent in China, Singapore, Tokyo and London - which sounds very glamorous - but when you are knackered it does not matter where your head hits the pillow. 

I get back home on May 29th, sleep for three days and then go to Bogota!  Insane or what? Stay tuned for more updates...

Redefining the Rest Stop

As a brief respite from my world tour, I got to spend last weekend in and around Catalonia in northern Spain.  On Friday I headed north to spend a couple of days on the Costa Blanca in the town of Roses right by the sea (picture of hotel below - cool eh?).  After leaving Barcelona I joined the N-11, a good two lane road to Girona. After leaving Girona the road gently winds through the countryside and looks much like any other road, except for one thing.

I was casually minding my own business, playing with the "flappy paddle" gear change on the surprisingly nippy diesel powered Citroen C4, when out of the corner of my eye I saw what appeared to be an attractive girl sitting in a white plastic lawn chair by the side of the road.  Being a normal male my gaze wandered over to examine her more closely.  She looked a little out of place for a rural road in northern Spain. She was wearing very high heels and a skirt that was as short as the heels were high.  I cruised on not really knowing what to make of it.  My first reaction was that it was  strange place to have a bus stop.  A couple of kilometers further on, another similarly attired girl sat beside the road - only this time the shoes were replaced by boots.  Somewhere in the slower moving parts of my brain it began to dawn on me that they were not waiting for a bus.  This site was repeated at regular intervals for the next 20km or so. 

I know the Spanish are a friendly bunch but I had no idea that the services they extended to weary travelers were so comprehensive -  very different than the free coffee at an American rest stop!

On my return to Barcelona on Sunday morning, I reversed my route. This time it was raining so most of the white plastic chairs were empty, either that or business was especially brisk that morning.  I did however pass one petrol station where a couple of members of the "traveler relaxation team" were hanging out under the canopy.  Now that really did redefine the concept of "full service" never mind having your windscreen washed...

Cruising Croatian style

I like Zagreb!  Best of all I got to stay in probably the best hotel in town, the excellent Regent Esplanade - a real throwback to the grand railway hotels of Europe - it is right next to the railway station. Remember the train ride in Bond's From Russia With Love?  Well it was filmed outside my hotel room!

But unlike almost any other five-star hotel in the world, the Regent has FREE unlimited, wireless Internet throughout the property.  In my humble opinion that makes Croatia one of the most advanced nations in the world.  Further adding to its luster; on my two hour stroll around this small city this morning I encountered not a single McDonald's or Starbucks! Long may it stay that way. The closest I got to American cultural imperialism was the donut stand at the railway station - see below. But even that did not look much like a Krispy Kreme outlet.  I urge Croatians everywhere to resist the commercial tide but please do one thing for me - ban smoking in hotels and bars.  Despite years of second hand smoking in smoky English pubs I am a big clean air fan!

Another Iranian technological breakthrough!

Forget Iran's nuclear ambitions, I can exclusively reveal that Iran has been secretly developing its own supersonic airliner!  My sleuthing came to a fruition this morning while walking down Piccadilly in London.  How the world has missed this startling development is a mystery to me, after all, the evidence is on plain show in the window of Iranian Airlines.  I offer the following in evidence:

So know you can wing your way to Tehran at Mach 2.  I bet you can't wait.

Back in the USSR

Next month I will visit Moscow for the first time in 32 years! Believe it or not, I was in Moscow when I found out that Elvis had died! I can't wait to see what's changed and perhaps more interestingly what's stayed the same.

 As someone who grew up in the shadow of the Iron Curtain I was well accustomed to deriding the Soviet economic system.  In 1977, as a fifteen-year old high schooler, I got to experience Soviet Russia first hand.  During a ten-day stay in Moscow and St. Petersburg (then still called Leningrad), I witnessed the sparse selection of goods on offer in the massive GUM department store in Red Square, traded ballpoint pens for rubles with which I couldn’t find anything to buy, and listened to lecturers proudly proclaim the Soviet economic miracle.  I well remember one chart that showed the rate of inflation in the USSR since the end of the Second World War.  The graph showed a straight horizontal line at the zero percent level on the y-axis.  It defied all logic and thirteen years later it all came tumbling down – literally in the case of the Berlin Wall.

All these experiences armed me with considerable biases that I had to suppress while reading the text of Russian prime-minster, Vladimir Putin’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week.  Surely a Russian (and a former Communist) could not offer anything of value on the subject of managing in a world of turbulence?  But some of Putin’s words made perfect sense.  First he nailed the economic downturn of 2008 by describing it as: “The world is now facing the first truly global economic crisis, which is continuing to develop at an unprecedented pace.”

Putin went on to liken the events of 2008 to a perfect storm and offered sage advice to managers trying to cope in such an environment: “Responsible and knowledgeable people must prepare for it.” He went to outline some of the failings that resulted in a singular lack of preparation: weak regulation; greed; and a failure to acknowledge risk. However, to a Cold War baby like me, his most startling statement of all was that: “Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake.”

Wow! We’ve certainly come a long way in the last twenty years when a Russian warns America against excessive government intervention!!!

Dining with Gusto in Noosaville

24 hours and 15 minutes after leaving home in Ohio, Qantas flight 176 touched down in Brisbane, Australia.  Brisbane, in the state of Queensland, is flanked to the south by the Gold Coast and to the north by the Sunshine Coast.  Neither lived up to its name today. Unfortunately the transition from Northern Hemisphere autumn to Southern Hemisphere spring did not affect the weather, it was pissing down with rain!  Queensland has had a two year drought as numerous people remind me that this is the first day of rain "for months." Just my luck. 

After fighting jet lag with a nap and a couple of beers, the stomach starts rumbling so I head to Noosaville (yes that's right, this is Australia after all) which is next door to Noosa Heads (don't ask) a really quaint (well as quaint as anything in Australia can be) town where I am spending the weekend. 

Gusto is a riverfront bistro in a lovely location and therefore my expectations were not high.  After all, nice view, tourist trap and good food rarely mesh well.  But Gusto surpised me.  The scallops were delicious and ever so tender and the snapper had none of the dense, almost tough, texture one so often gets back in the good old US of A.  In short a very pleasant meal. 

So if you ever lost in Noosa, head to Gusto...