You know something’s terribly wrong when your site’s pizza budget is mostly being used just to get people to cover shifts, not to celebrate wins. That was one of the first harsh realities that hit me when I returned to lead the airline hub I’d helped turn around years earlier.
The Shock of Return
Eighteen months away, and the place had plummeted from being a network leader in on-time performance to dead last. Standing on the tarmac at 0600 that first morning back, watching the chaos unfold—seeing dedicated ground crews resorting to makeshift Coke bottle wands because standard equipment wasn’t available or managed—it hit me hard.
This wasn’t just slipping; this was a systemic breakdown rooted in faded discipline and broken trust.
When Process Discipline Vanishes
The success we’d previously built was centered on “The Pit Crew Way,” a process the frontline team had embraced and improved. But leadership consistency had wavered. Support vanished. Without reinforcement, people revert to shortcuts, especially under pressure.
I heard the frustration directly: unpredictable staffing, lack of accountability, and even supervisors asking, “The Pit Crew Way? What’s that?” The misused pizza budget was just a symptom. As I quickly realized, “My leadership team had to relearn the lesson that it takes more than free pizza to sustain best-in-class performance.”
The root issue wasn’t the team’s capability; it was a failure of leadership consistency and trust.
Operation Restart: A Leap of Faith
Blaming the team was pointless. They hadn’t lost their capability; they’d lost faith. My first priority had to be rebuilding that trust. I rallied my leadership team with a clear message: we wouldn’t impose something new. We had to fundamentally trust that the frontline had the answers and the energy to drive the needed turnaround – a real leap of faith given where things stood.
We decided to revitalize The Pit Crew Way, commit to it, and empower the team to make it work again. Honoring their past efforts felt like the only authentic way to tap into the pride and knowledge still lingering in the team. Operation Restart was born.
The goal was audacious: worst to first in 90 days. This aggressive timeline was crucial for generating momentum and proving commitment through visible, rapid change.
Clearing the Path
Crucially, before demanding re-engagement, my leadership team had to enable the frontline by relentlessly removing the barriers we had allowed to grow – tackling the seemingly unmovable obstacles. The biggest? Staffing chaos, with nearly 20% unavailability daily!
We implemented practical fixes: updated attendance policies, an Employee Service Center to handle issues efficiently (freeing supervisors to lead), daily proactive roster reviews, and a Ground Crew Reserve pool. Fixing these fundamentals pushed roster fill rates over 95% and signaled tangible support, unleashing the team to focus on the real work.
Frontline Ingenuity Finds an Answer
With improving stability, we focused back on The Pit Crew Way. Its strength always lay in its clarity and focus – clear roles, visual aids, concentrating on the critical few drivers of operational performance. But surging flight volume presented a new challenge.
The solution emerged from the team itself: adapt the system by designating one role as a “scout” to handle initial arrivals. This was employee-powered innovation – adapting a solid framework to meet new demands. They owned it, refined it in their shift reviews, and made it work. It was testimony to what happens when you trust your team’s ingenuity.
Back to First: Performance Restored
The impact was dramatic and fast – our focus on gaining quick wins and building momentum paid off. Within our 90-day target, on-time performance surged from the mid-fifties to over 90%. We were number one again. Safety remained perfect. The pizza budget? Back to celebrating genuine team success, one win at a time. When a competitor later asked how we did it, the answer was simple: consistency and continuous improvement. “Change and get better!”
Leadership Takeaways
My biggest lesson? Leaders build trust through consistent action and enabling their teams. It’s about making tough decisions, being consistent, and getting back to basics to clear the path for your people to succeed.
Epilogue: The Foundational Beliefs in Action
Dan’s powerful story is a living case study of the foundational leadership beliefs outlined in my new book, Ideas to Action. His success wasn’t accidental; it was driven by leadership actions that directly reflected these core principles:
- Make the Leap of Faith: Trusting the frontline had the answers and energy was fundamental. Dan didn’t impose external solutions; he trusted the team’s inherent capability and their ability to revitalize their own proven process, even after past failures.
- Start Where the Energy Is: By focusing first on the issues most impacting employees’ safety, welfare, and daily frustrations (like chaotic staffing and missing equipment), Dan addressed their key pain points, unlocking willingness to re-engage.
- Empower Effective Action: Leadership actively dismantled barriers – fixing roster management, creating the Service Center, ensuring equipment access. This wasn’t just talk; it was tangible action that unleashed the team’s ability to execute the Pit Crew Way and even innovate upon it (like the ‘scout’ role).
- Embrace Simplicity: Amidst the chaos, the focus returned to the clear, visual, and proven fundamentals of The Pit Crew Way. They simplified the scorecard and concentrated on the critical few operational drivers rather than getting lost in complexity.
- Prioritize Speed to Results: The clear, ambitious 90-day goal created focus and urgency. Celebrating each incremental win (like stable rosters, then performance gains) built momentum and reinforced belief throughout the turnaround.
Dan’s story powerfully illustrates how enlightened top-down direction—clearing obstacles and setting strategy—meets bottom-up ingenuity and energy when leaders commit to these foundational beliefs for employee-powered innovation.
