PASSENGER RIGHTS: STOP THE COUNTDOWN

PASSENGER RIGHTS: STOP THE COUNTDOWN

Responding to recent calls from Canadian air carriers, airports and even a leading Canadian labour union to postpone the July 1 launch of his passenger rights regulations, Transport Minister Marc Garneau told the CBC, “We’ve been working on this for over two years. I am anxious to get them out.”

If the minister’s impatience is understandable in the context of a looming general election, it is much less so if the goal is a passenger rights system that actually works.

And it’s not just Canadian air carriers warning that rushing implementation of his plan – which is yet to be finalized no less – will fail to achieve its intended goal of protecting consumers.  IATA, which represents air carriers worldwide, and Airlines for America (A4A) also called on the government to slow down and get it right.

Not only do the draft regulations lack the clarity needed by airlines to translate them into day-to-day commercial practices but they are often at odds with global airline operating realities.

This is not an idle consideration.

In practice it means that implementation is made more difficult and time consuming because of new systems and procedures that would be required. More important, it also means that unless the government addresses some of the more glaring problems with the regulations, in some cases they could actually make things worse for travelers.

Whatever time it took the government to get the legislation through Parliament and the regulations drafted does nothing to justify a rush to implement them before their more glaring problems are fixed or with little consideration for their impact on the commercial airline industry and the passengers it serves.

Confronted with such haste, it is good to reflect on the teachable moment that the federal government’s 2016 decision to move all federal payroll functions to the ill-fated Phoenix pay system provides.

The parallel between the rushed implementation of the Phoenix pay system and the rush by the federal government to implement its passenger rights regime is instructive — both involve undue haste in the face of a complex undertaking.

In the case of the Phoenix pay system federal employees are still paying the price.  Air travellers shouldn’t have to pay the price for the minister’s impatience.

And why the rush anyway?

Is there an overriding rationale for July 1st beyond the obvious symbolism? Is air travel in Canada and globally in the throes of a market failure of such scope that exceptional measures are required immediately, even if not fully baked?

The answer is no.

Canadian air carriers move over 350,000 passengers domestically every day.  That is almost the equivalent of the population of the City of Toronto – every woman, man and child – every week.

For the vast majority of these air travelers, the flight is as it should be: pleasant and uneventful, thanks to the efforts of tens of thousands of people working in airlines, airports, air traffic control, security, national governments and international agencies.  And the vast majority of these air travelers will never once refer to the minister’s new rules in a dispute with an air carrier.

With less than 10 weeks left until the minister’s July 1 target date, time is running out. Airlines cannot begin changing information and communication systems, procedures and policies or developing training for tens of thousands of front-line and other employees before they even know for certain exactly what they will be required to do.

After spending over a billion dollars trying to fix its pay system and with over 200,000 federal employees still hurting, the federal government announced in its February Budget that it plans to phase-out Phoenix and start anew.

Unlike the government, air carriers and their passengers cannot afford a do-over.  This is why we’re saying take the time to do it right.

As a former astronaut who flew three Shuttle missions, Minister Garneau knows better than most that impatience has no place in the planning or execution of a successful launch.

Even with the world watching, shuttle launches were delayed dozens of times in the course of their status check – proving that sometimes the greatest virtue is knowing when to say “no go”.

When the federal government ran into difficulties rolling out its legal cannabis program as planned on July 1, 2018, it did the right thing and delayed implementation for a few months.

Getting legal cannabis rules right was important — getting air travel regulations right is no less important.

STORYTELLING AS STRATEGIC PLANNING

STORYTELLING AS STRATEGIC PLANNING

Every day, in organizations of all types and sizes,  programs are designed, products launched and campaigns kicked-off without a clear story to support them–predictably, the results are often forgettable.

The good news is that more and more communications and marketing departments are developing storylines to provide narrative grounding to key corporate activities.

The bad news is that storytelling remains a poorly understood communications concept and tool.

Storytelling is more than a writing exercise; it should also be an exercise in strategic communications and strategic planning.

My approach to storyline development revolves around working through a facilitated process to ensure that my clients’ narrative not only resonates with all of their key audiences, but that their project will meet their strategic goals.

This approach to storyline development is part SWOT  (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, part journalism and part PR.

In all instances–but most importantly in the case of public events meant to generate earned media coverage–I start by working with the client to arrive at a common understanding of the real story behind an initiative, and then work to frame the client’s narrative in the most objective and newsworthy fashion.

Depending on the complexity of the project, I typically develop two or more storylines. The first version–what I call the inside story–is rarely seen outside the boardroom.

When working on the inside story, I view my role much like that of an old-school print reporter. I work with the client to answer the five Ws of journalistic writing (Who, What, Where, When and Why) to tease out positive storyline elements, and ask the tough questions to get at the problem areas. Our goal is to give our clients an advance look at how their story could potentially read in the morning paper.

While this can make for uncomfortable conversations with the client,  it also results in a better appreciation of the communications and other challenges that may exist with their project and provides them with an opportunity to make the tactical and strategic adjustments needed for a successful announcement or campaign launch.

For a final product designed to frame a public narrative for the initiative, I strive for a one page journalistic-style story that highlights the newsworthy and fresh elements of the story, while framing in the most positive light any issues that could not be worked out through the earlier process.

This type of storyline can be readily adapted to produce core communications products such as news releases, key messages and media lines, while providing the outline and narrative structure for everything from op-eds, to speaking notes and speech modules.

In addition to generating a compelling external narrative, an additional benefit of this approach to storyline development is that it helps organizations clarify and address strategic and tactical problems and priorities.

I have had clients that decided to re-think and re-design a campaign because they realized that it just wasn’t ready for prime time. Or conversely, what had been seen as a negative corporate  announcement morphed into a good news story after working through its various (and sometimes subtle) storyline elements.

By taking what is most often viewed as an abstract writing exercise and translating it into a strategic communications effort, this approach to storyline development helps reveal potential opportunities and challenges that might otherwise have been overlooked in the initial planning process.