Tony Lowery

I find the overarching goal, kpi or outcome of any process, should guide the stakeholders to resolutions that achieve the targeted outcome. The process has a purpose! If all involved understand this purpose, conflict should be easily remedied. Designing process to satisfy personal agendas or political desires rarely achieves sustainable results… getting everyone to understand the outcome desired, before you begin and continually reminding all stakeholders of this will produce the fastest most sustainable results…

Besides the other elements, I think understanding the inner dependencies of your project and where it sits with the overall strategies of the organization, as well as the impact it delivers to the organization, is very important. Having a powerful sponsor with influence and that is tied to the success of the project helps to mitigate the conflict that any meaningful project will encounter at any Airline. Gaining alignment and support with the key stakeholders at the beginning, gives you the best chance of delivering on time and on budget… Communicate!Communicate!Communicate!

I find conflict arises from conflicting goals or objectives. Different priorities… Focusing on the issue and how it affects your goals and listening to the same from the individuals you are in conflict with, is a great first step… Then from an interest based perspective, collaborate on a resolution that satisfies both parties or gains agreement on priority and support … It’s not easy, but discussing the issue without focusing on the person or department helps cut through some of the emotion around conflict…

A great productive technique to help improve logical reasoning and support a leader that may be struggling… Debate! I enjoy debate, I believe there is not enough of it for critical decision… to often, decisiveness, speed, confidence, is favored over good thoughtful debate with colleagues. Debate forces logical reasoning, critical thinking and brings out many aspects to consider, to help prioritize and develop strategies to achieve the best outcome. Debate also, helps the leaders involved in logical reasoning, to explain the decisions that are made, to those impacted by what the leader believe to be logical. A pitfall to watch for, is choosing sides and seeing debate as a win lose … instead of seeing it as collaboration to learn from…

Maintenance operations is a team sport… no individual department within the organization can drive success… with this in mind, each function must understand what they deliver to the value chain and how it impacts their peers… More importantly however, is for the leaders of each function to have shared goals and KPIs… this I find, brings the team together and aligns the teams within each function to prioritize better, support each other and anticipate the right actions to take to improve outcomes… Maintenance operations is a complex combination of process that should lead to safe Airworthy Aircraft, communication, collaboration and a constant focus on process improvement and digitization are also very important!

Staffing has become the top of mind for organizations across the globe with all the elements mentioned being important; knowing clearly what your needs are, competencies, onboarding experience, what differentiates your company or department from the rest, etc. However, I believe the starting point is with your current Employees, understanding their needs, skills, moral and what they think about what they do and how they do it… what gets them up in the morning. Developing plans to retain them and helping them become more efficient, must come first, this will define the rest… I believe your current employees will help attract new talent as most companies with great cultures and compensation have already learned…