As it turns out, it was merely a package for shares to be awarded if AJ meets a 3 year target. There is no immediate bonus or payout. I hope the targets were fairly aggressive, but apart from that nothing too much of note, and not a turncoat decision on AJ's decision earlier this year after the announcement of the loss.
Be that as it may, for those that do not voice it is as much conceivable that the overall position could be either judgement (AJ held in contempt or not). That being said, notwithstanding the overwhelming opinions of those who
do voice their position, I suppose the only "fair" thing to do would be to give the benefit of the doubt. That method in itself is likely debatable...
The grounding was merely
one example; in fact, many use that as a prime example to help back up and endorse their contempt for Joyce. Other actions that have been heralded as exemplifying Joyce's incompetence include the following quoted:
- Ignoring 777s
- Mismanagement of fleet and fleet age
- Creation and development of Jetstar - this one is an AFF classic, with a decent chunk of people here committed to never flying the "Orange Cancer"; in particular, many times argued as being developed at the expense of Qantas proper
- Failure to pay dividends
- Share price plunging
- Complacency of market position at hands of agile competitors, both in domestic and international (but especially latter)
- Reduction of workforce
- Withdrawal of services (e.g. QFi) or lack of decent services (or operated by JQ rather than QF), especially international (esp. PER, ADL, CNS, OOL)
- General apathy of service standard or deployment: seat selection, operational upgrades, priority boarding...
I don't really buy the "ball and man" argument. Decisions are not made by themselves - it takes
someone to make the decision and furthermore that
someone must draw on some part of their mental being to actually make the decision. If it were so mechanistic as to suggest that one's self and the decisions they make could be isolated, then we may as well install a robot as a CEO. Also, there is a striking irony that a "good" decision promotes both the professional and personal level of one's person when praise is lauded, yet a "bad" decision supposedly only attacks the professional level of someone (and not the personal) when criticism is leveled.
So when people criticise or harbour contempt for AJ, they really are attacking both what he did and who he is. Just like those who threatened his life - they wanted to see to it that he was gone, so those decisions he was making (or the kinds of those decisions) ceased. How he would go may be extreme, but given that they wanted to stop those decisions (or rather, punish him for them) then the means were probably irrelevant.
To be honest, apart from perhaps the EK announcement and some isolated opinions from the industrial disputes last year (including the grounding) - and very isolated at that - no one really has given any good reason
why anyone would
not harbour contempt for AJ and his position as CEO of Qantas. What has he done that is
right?
And what do a bunch of investment corporations know about running an airline (more than the mum and dad investor)? They do not know how to run an airline! They only know of profit, and that is all they really want to see. It doesn't matter how the company achieves that profit - as long as Qantas appears to have a robust financial profile, anything else that happens within the airline is not a big deal.
Those corporations don't care about Jetstar's impact on the Qantas brand. They don't care that the meals are getting smaller. They don't care that there are half a dozen kinds of Business product in the network. They don't care that 737-800s still operate coast-to-coast services. They don't care that the competing airline on the lucrative coast-to-coast market is flogging Qantas in terms of product. They don't care that PER and ADL are getting the short end of the stick for services. They don't care about the overcrowding of lounges. They don't care about the groundings - they really don't. They
only time they care is if you can
significantly tie it to the bottom line. Deliver on profit and look appealing financially - you've satisfied these "majority shareholders". The fact that these investment corporations have so far been validated in their confidence of taking a risk to invest in Qantas (so to speak) is no testament that they know how to run the airline.
At least the mum and dad investor can bring the important perspectives of customer service and corporate social responsibility to the fore better than the investment corporations, who won't do so and won't
care to do so. Yes, that is not directly profit, and Qantas is a company that needs to make profit, and extra services don't come for free (and also involve risk), but at least mum and dad investors are more likely to comment on how the business is run from a
service or
customer point of view (ironically by virtue that they probably lack the profit / business acumen of the representatives from the investment corporations).
Can you give reasons why those insults are unfounded or untrue?
