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I thought HfP was meant to be full of city types and big corp? Maybe it’s full of people who worked in those industries 20 years ago and not today.
Aviva, Tesco, Sky, London Stock Exchange to name a few all have similar roles. Many many more companies have more specific roles (i.e. specific to Finance Transformation or Digital Transformation). Such roles are pretty ubiquitous these days, if anything BA only just creating the role is more the surprise.
@SteveJ the difference is that the companies you mention are largely evolutionary ones – Tesco and Sky are particularly good examples of UK companies that are constantly adapting to the marketplace and technology. My point was that, like Sainsbury and RR, BA is in or close to crisis – it has very severe operational issues partly relating to shortage of staff and aircraft, both greatly exacerbated by covid. Those issues create considerable cost and customer dissatisfaction. No Director of Transformation role will change that underlying problem; it will be a longer term role that could be effective once the big stuff is fixed. BA has been here before and bounced back and I would be confident they will succeed again; they really need the market to remain as buoyant as this for as long as possible.Having a CEO driving transformation from the top and appointing a Director of Transformation are not contradictory.
.. BA is in or close to crisis – it has very severe operational issues partly relating to shortage of staff and aircraft, both greatly exacerbated by covid…
Do you conclude that the Risk Managers didn’t quite get their risk assessments right for their Risk Registers and the Exacerbation Avoiders hadn’t been to Specsavers?
I think @JDB sums things up very well.
I should probably caveat what I say with the statement that I am no longer a “city type” having retired a couple of years ago. But I still spend a reasonable amount of my time looking at companies as I keep a very watchful eye on the Froggee family funds and if I mess this up badly, I might have to go back to work. Which would suck.
Transformation is not a new thing. In the past we’ve called it words like turnarounds, change management and innovation. It’s also not a new thing for a CEO to try to fix stuff by hiring people in generalist roles to, erm, fix stuff.
But I cannot think of an example of a flagging company where the successful turnaround/change management/innovation/transformation has not been led by the CEO. Typically companies that are performing well have a strong innovative culture and in such companies you may well find these sorts of transformation roles sit alongside operating roles with a lot of crossover.
Poorly performing companies cannot fix things by appointing Bruce or Sheila to a transformation type role. What it does allow though is for a weak CEO to blame Bruce or Sheila a few years down the line when everything still sucks.
Given the state BA is in, I feel pretty strongly that it needs a CEO and several operational roles directly reporting to the CEO where all in these roles (including the CEO) have a strong background in operational excellence and the willingness to make significant changes.
Once the airline is actually performing then I’d suggest that the transformation roles are more appropriate to constantly challenge whether improvements could be made.
I won’t be all pretentious and quote in French but for BA, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” never rang so true!
The presumption that this role is somehow the only role being tasked with transformation is astounding. Oh well, c’est la vie.
BA isn’t a failing company though.
It’s a very profitable one but one that recognises that if it is going to maintain and increase those profits AND improve the customer experience then it needs to do things better.
This about changing the way the company does things across the board with lots of small projects that needs someone to lead at a strategic level and in reality it’s too big a job for the CEO to do on his own.
And we as passengers may not notice many of these changes either as probably most of the “transformation” will be in systems and processes. The increase in MCT next month in T5 is one of those changes that very few people will actually notice but will actually mean more people will catch connections for example.
I’m laughing at the idea that the transformation manager is going to come up with ideas any worse than the CEO himself.
Clever economists have shown no correlation between CEO and company performance.
For every Steve Jobs there are thousands of also-rans on the CEO merry-go-round, getting bought out of their golden handcuffs deals to sort out the fiasco that another of their number left behind when he moved onto his next big gig. Like football managers, a few get a smattering of luck along the way, but are found out when the fairy dust runs out.As there is also a Chief Transformation Officer role for BA and IAG, I could hazard a guess that a lot of the comments on here are made without fully understanding what this role is or where it would sit.
BA isn’t a failing company though.
It’s a very profitable one
How profitable might another carrier with the same slot allocation at Heathrow (and other assets like fleet etc etc) be? Tens of millions each for a slot pair, on the open market, and they have over five hundred departures from Heathrow every day. They are ineffective and inefficient.
Change leadership is certainly a specific skill and not everyone has the ability to drive change at pace. I don’t think a certificate proves you can do this, so that’s my only beef with the job req as advertised.
Based on what they are trying to do to reboot the airline as better than the Middle East airlines, they most certainly need somebody who has taken a large organisation through significant change. And done it quickly and to budget too.
They are ineffective and inefficient.
Hence the need for this post and the whole transformation process!
Change leadership is certainly a specific skill and not everyone has the ability to drive change at pace. I don’t think a certificate proves you can do this, so that’s my only beef with the job req as advertised.
A change management certification is only listed as desirable
OK, I’ll take the job. It’s a £250k role.
Transformation is needed. The business needs to transform to what customers and staff need it to be. And for that you need to get everyone on the bus (inc customers). Change comes from within, but driven by the external.
Will they change the configuration of the BA A350 to transform it into something that isn’t a problem for CS passengers and crew?
The business needs to transform to what customers and staff need it to be
Uh, no. The business needs to transform to maximise shareholder value. That may bring both benefits and inconveniences to customers and staff.
They are ineffective and inefficient.
Hence the need for this post and the whole transformation process!
I’m not sure that “ineffective and inefficient” are really the right words. BA is significantly more profitable than its European legacy carrier peers and beats them on many metrics. BA is in fact operating in a way that’s too efficient for the customer.
OK, I’ll take the job. It’s a £250k role.
Transformation is needed. The business needs to transform to what customers and staff need it to be. And for that you need to get everyone on the bus (inc customers). Change comes from within, but driven by the external.
What makes you think it is a £250k role? The CTO role may be close to that, but I would have thought that this role would have been more in the £110k-£125k mark. Am I out of touch with big corporate salaries?
OK, I’ll take the job. It’s a £250k role.
Transformation is needed. The business needs to transform to what customers and staff need it to be. And for that you need to get everyone on the bus (inc customers). Change comes from within, but driven by the external.
What makes you think it is a £250k role? The CTO role may be close to that, but I would have thought that this role would have been more in the £110k-£125k mark. Am I out of touch with big corporate salaries?
If they want to get somebody from Big Tech they’ll need to pay that and then some, so it’s not implausible.
OK, I’ll take the job. It’s a £250k role.
Transformation is needed. The business needs to transform to what customers and staff need it to be. And for that you need to get everyone on the bus (inc customers). Change comes from within, but driven by the external.
What makes you think it is a £250k role? The CTO role may be close to that, but I would have thought that this role would have been more in the £110k-£125k mark. Am I out of touch with big corporate salaries?
There is a reported salary of around £150k on GlassDoor for a Finance Director at BA, so I’d guess it’s around that mark
I’m not sure that “ineffective and inefficient” are really the right words. BA is significantly more profitable than its European legacy carrier peers and beats them on many metrics. BA is in fact operating in a way that’s too efficient for the customer.
Suggesting they are more efficient than the likes of Air France is really to damn with faint praise 🤣
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