Everything Is Part of a Bigger System

Issue #2 🧩 Everyday struggles with broken systems 🧩 The Red Bead Experiment 🧩 Performance depends on the system 🧩 How to improve the management system

Welcome to this 💎 premium edition 💎 of BPMexplained🧩, the newsletter that helps us manage better. For more information, check out the About section.

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Photo by Arnaud Mesureur on Unsplash

How often have you approached a Shop Assistant, Customer Care Representative, or similar, shared your problem, and then received the reply that they were truly sorry, they absolutely wanted to help you (and they probably knew very well how to), but that would be against the company policies?

And you were standing there, thinking: “Doesn't this company want to provide a good service to its customers? If yes, why would it hire someone to do the job and then tie their hands with some policies?”

Read on 👇

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📑 NOTE: Treat my posts like mini-guides: choose what’s relevant or interesting.

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✈️ Dr. Dao & United Airlines

On April 9, 2017, at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Dr. David Dao was peacefully sitting in the plane of his United Express Flight 3411, headed home (United Express is the brand name for the regional branch of United Airlines). What Dr. Dao and the rest of the passengers didn’t know was that 19 minutes before their flight was scheduled to take off, four employees of Republic Airways (a regional airline contracted by United Airlines) were rebooked onto it, even though everyone had already boarded, taken their seat, and the aircraft was fully occupied.

At first, United Airlines requested that four passengers volunteer to leave the plane. The deal was sweetened by $400 in travel vouchers, a hotel stay, and a seat on a flight leaving more than 21 hours later. With no volunteers, the offer was increased to $800 in vouchers - again, to no avail. Just before the scheduled departure time, United Airlines announced that four passengers would be selected by computer and involuntarily removed to accommodate the four Republic Airways employees.

Three of the selected passengers cooperated with the directions to leave the aircraft. The fourth one, however - Dr. Dao - refused. You see, he was a pulmonologist and he needed to see patients at his clinic the next day. And even though he explained all this, United Airlines decided to remove him from the plane by force.

This decision resulted in Dr. Dao being taken to the hospital with a broken nose, missing two front teeth, sinus injuries, and a significant concussion. Moreover, videos of Dr. Dao - bloodied, bruised, and unconscious - being dragged by the arms down the aircraft aisle (past rows of onlooking passengers) immediately went viral all over the Internet. One such video was shared 87,000 times and viewed 6.8 million times in less than a day.

United Airlines CEO, Oscar Munoz, issued a statement the following day that downplayed the treatment of Dr. Dao, referring to the incident as “re-accommodating the customers”. Munoz also sent an email to the United Airlines staff commending the crew's actions for following established procedures and blaming Dr. Dao for not cooperating, calling him “disruptive” and “belligerent”.

Munoz and United Airlines were sharply criticized for their initial statements. As a result, two days after the incident, Munoz issued another statement, apologizing and promising that such an incident would never again occur on a United Airlines aircraft. This time, he was determined that no one should ever be mistreated this way. He added: “It happened because policies were placed ahead of our shared values, and procedures got in the way of what we know is right.”

❗️The following video contains disturbing material. Viewer discretion is advised.

Two years later, Dr. Dao broke his silence and spoke about the incident. When asked what he would say to those men who had pulled him off the plane, he replied: “I’m not angry with them. They have a job to do; they had to do it. If they don’t do it, they may lose their job. So I’m not angry with them or anything like this. That’s their job.”

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🔴 The Red Bead Experiment