Charting A Wiser Course: How Aviation Can Address the Human Side of Change

by Kaye M. Shackford, Joseph E. Shackford

Overview

As the world observed the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight, the aviation industry was struggling to survive, stabilize and rebuild. Businesses were reworking strategies, markets, structures and products while seeking to redefine relationships with partners, customers, suppliers and employee groups. But no one was paying sufficient attention to one key element of change. Without it, their other efforts can't succeed. Our current managerial and behavioral models are operating at cross purposes with our own strategic objectives. To achieve those objectives, we must align our behaviors with our intentions. This sounds easy. It's not. Achieving significant and sustained organizational and personal behavior change is hard. The challenge is even more daunting because many of those who need to lead this effort are perhaps least prepared by inclination, training and prior experience to do the job. In Charting A Wiser Course, Kaye Shackford, a thirty-year industry veteran, invites members of the aviation community worldwide - managers, professionals, leaders at every level, and concerned and involved employees - on a journey to understand why this change is necessary, why it's harder than it looks, and how it can be done. She helps us build an appreciation for where we came from, what we learned, what we somehow forgot, and how our past is now sabotaging our future. The models, concepts and stories she shares provide us more clarity about how to move forward, a realistic understanding of both the quagmires and the possibilities, and the mental and emotional resources to begin.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013612488
Publisher:	The Mattford Group Press
Publication date:	12/15/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	322
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

I graduated with an A.B. in English Education from UNC-Chapel Hill. My Masters in Adult Education was with Malcolm Knowles at Boston University. My Diploma in Advanced Studies in Gestalt Psychology was from the New England Gestalt Institute.

During 12 years at GE-Aircraft Engines, I served as personnel manager for the sourcing and manufacturing technology organizations and as manager of marketplace education and professional development.

From 1986-89 I lived in India, designing and running training programs for GE International people in Europe and South Asia. These programs included negotiation, communication skills, effective people management, person-job matching, and strategic account management.

My husband Joe and I established the Mattford Group in 1988. Since then, thousands of aviation/aerospace people have used our Negotiating Solutions workshop to discover at a deep value level the far superior results possible through interest-based negotiation.

This book was my September 11th response. As you may recall much too vividly, after September 11th, our aviation businesses were struggling to survive, stabilize and rebuild. A 2002 article in Business Week said they were “grappling with their costs, capacity, pricing and product features in ways they hadn’t seriously contemplated since the start of deregulation in 1978.” They were laying off appalling numbers of people. They were simultaneously implementing major change initiatives – lean applied to the shop floor and to business processes, value-streaming, supply chain management and others. They were seeking to implement massive changes in how they worked in the marketplace with suppliers, customers and partners. And they also had identified the need to change the working relationship between management and employee groups.

But there was one element of change that no one was addressing. I kept waiting for someone famous to talk about it and write about it, because I knew that unless it too was addressed, these other efforts could not succeed.

This element has to do not with the content side of change – which is what everyone was paying attention to – but with what Douglas McGregor called “the human side of enterprise.” It has to do with how we do what we do with one another. But nobody wrote that book. Nobody made that case.

I finally realized I was closest. So I wrote it.