“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” L.P. Hartley

"The significance of patterns"

Ketan Patel in his recent book on strategic thinking1 identified the need for strategic leaders “to think of the flow of events and the outcomes as a mere snapshot in that flow”.

Such thinking, he acknowledges, “requires a broad and deep understanding of the world” – and no more is this more evident than when managing airlines or airline services.

Ketan Patel also identified the importance of leaders being to see “patterns underlying apparently random events”. Once again the fortunes of airlines over the last two years would certainly suggest a period of ‘chaotic flow’ that needs to be interpreted and actions constantly translated into renewed meaningful purpose.

Such thinking is not new. Peter Drucker wrote about his conviction that the world was a place of discontinuity in 19692. He argues that many ‘new’ events are not ‘new’, they are in fact “new connections among things long known”. He argued that for a manager the challenge is to identify not “what ought to be” but also “what is thought to be”, and in making this critical distinction urges managers not to question the truth of existing theory (or by extension analysis) but rather its adequacy. Is the approach appropriate and proportional or is it possible the world has moved on? So for example is it a reasonable assumption that a low cost long haul airline would not be as successful as the low cost short haul operators? Or when looking at the patterns of events in the current market such as those concerning aircraft availability, receptiveness to alternative value/cost models, customer familiarity with Web 2, and the growing significance of BRIIC markets should the starting assumptions now be modified?

As Gordon Bethune3 said “the future is not the past” but an awareness of all the choices that have been paid, and could be made may be helpful. Rigas Doganis4 put it differently. To him the industry is an enigma constrained on the one hand by regulation yet also characterised by rapid change and innovation. He concluded that “to understand this industry, one must be close to its heartbeat”.

With this in mind it may be useful to be able to place the current ‘chaotic flow’ that seems to characterise the airline industry context within the patterns experienced over a longer period of time.

In the following pages we will therefore summarise some of the events impacting airline managers in Europe ten years ago in order to remind ourselves of possible longer term, and still relevant, patterns.

© The Management Coach-house Ltd 2009