Month: September 2022

To facilitate the loading and unloading process on the ferry to Nantucket, MA the steamship company uses numbered pods. Passengers can load all their baggage into one pod and easily collect it when the boat docks at its destination. The pod system is especially helpful for island trips as many people loaded an assortment of smaller items: beverages, beach gear, bags of food, etc. It saves time and seating space as all the pods and their contents are towed together and then stowed below the deck.

Think about whether your organization or service could adapt something similar to facilitate the management of a group of items. Grocery stores have done so with their pick-up order system and moving companies have a modified system for long-distance moves, but could airlines also create a pod system to make baggage retrieval easier and minimize the delays caused by carry-on luggage? Hotels or convention centers could expedite the check-in process this way. Beaches could make a fortune by creating pods that brought all the paraphernalia people bring right down to their spot in the sand.

Everybody has a lot of stuff. Capitalize on the pod system as a way to effectively contain the items and ferry them to another place.

The entire Orange Line of the Boston subway was shut down for a month to allow for necessary repairs. In a city that relies heavily on public transit, this caused a great inconvenience to those who now had to take shuttle busses to arrive at their destination, but it allowed for years’ worth of maintenance to be completed in a condensed period.

I thought about the subway this week when I was feeling the side effects of a Shingles vaccination. This shot kicked my butt. I tried to minimize my activity and even took a little siesta in the sun, but the only thing that really made a difference was when I fully shut down and slept for 10 hours. Trying to do “repairs” while remaining “operational” wasn’t working.

The same principle is true for many other settings. Taking a vacation, but still checking email isn’t as refreshing as a full disconnection. Trying to renovate a room in your home while still trying to use it causes more disruption than just sealing off that area. Implementing a new procedure gradually can create more confusion than stopping the old way and making a clean switch.

The next time you really need to see a major improvement, shut down completely instead of making the change piecemeal. You’ll reap maximum impact in minimum time.

On one of my recent journeys, I was rerouted to Manchester, New Hampshire instead of my desired destination of Boston. Bad weather in the East caused my original flight to be canceled, and it was Manchester at midnight or depart for Boston at 8 pm the next day.

Airlines have always been tight on options, and with recent crew shortages, reduced flights, and pre-pandemic crowds the situation has worsened. Yet, even without those constraints, the industry has never created the capacity to address the inevitable disruptions that are going to occur. They know that weather will impact some of their flights — whether spring rainstorms, winter snowstorms, or catastrophic events — yet rebooking is still an arduous task for the traveler. They know that a part of their fleet will experience a mechanical issue, yet the system does not provide for ready replacements. The interdependence of the operations and the high cost of doing business has pushed the industry past the brink.

If you have an organization where interruptions are anticipated, plan to run your operations under those limitations instead of expecting that ideal conditions will occur. It may cost you in the short run to have excess capacity but you will be rewarded in the long run when you can continue smoothly despite the kinks.