Future and Change Management Case Study: Northwest Airlines Confronts Change

Title of the Case:

Northwest Airlines Confronts Change

Problems:

1. What practices in the case would be helpful to apply in your organization?
2. How might you modify the practices in the case to better suit your organization?
3. What did you learn overall from the case?

Objectives:

1. To determine the helpful practices in the case that would be applicable in my organization;
2. To adjust the practices in the case to better suit my organization; and
3. To enumerate what I discovered and realized from the case.

Areas of Consideration:     

1. Type of Organization
2. Culture of the Organization
3. People in the Organization

Answer:

1. There is one helpful practice in the case that would be helpful in my organization, the Operation Breakthrough, a program that include a range of initiatives from Town Hall Meetings (employee forums which were designed to encourage two-way dialogue) to Station Action Teams (groups based at outlying stations, made up of union, employee, and management representatives which were given the autonomy to handle a range of issues without corporate involvement).

2. Although the operations breakthrough is a concept that could be applied mostly in medium and large enterprises or organization, I could liken it to a simple open forum between management and rank-and-file employees.  I think that is what is lacking in our organization too. Our rank-and-file employees I often heard complained about management practices and even suggested to have open forums were turned deaf ears on this request by the higher ups.  Maybe the suggestion could be taken into discussion during one of our staff meetings sponsored by one of the rank-and-files so that a direct feedback on the suggestion from all of the employees could be heard. 

3. The important realizations I discovered from the case are the following:

1. Work as if God is my employer;
2. Get out of the organization before one could mire his reputation;
3. Invest aggressively on personnel development, growth and performance because it is one of the keys to any successful organizations; and
4. A leader who knows how to empathize the plight of his people saves discord and resentment in an organization.