If we're all in a gloomy mood as we close out one year and anxiously wait for another, there is certainly plenty to make us all pretty gloomy indeed at the moment. Read the latest IATA report? Maybe the biggest surprise over American Airlines' bankruptcy was that it took so long. The FAA chief resigns over a DUI. And the weekend before I wrote this, federal agents in New York actually broke up a drug-smuggling ring orchestrated by baggage handlers at JFK.
But I've never been one to put too much faith in automatic progress and, rather, taken a hard-headed approach to the slings and arrows of the world. The most fundamental problems in life have to be managed and contained and can never be entirely eliminated. It also doesn't mean that things will always get better. And some things are never so bad that they can't get worse.
But then again, things are never so bad that they cannot contain a liberating element to them. However difficult a problem is, there is always something constructive we can do. However bad things seem, there is always some good we can rally around and try our best to see if we can't get it done.
So when I get together with friends, as I did last weekend over that traditional Yuletide feast of cheeseburgers, French fries and beer, it's only natural in these times for all of us to throw down our own pity parties and attempt to one-up everyone else.
I wish I could lay claim to being the guy who says this, but it's the sole woman at our Round Table who will always eventually say, "Yes, but other than that ... " While not an automatic restorative, it does help you refocus, take stock and make some productive plans. It calls out to your leadership skills no matter if they're currently buried under pessimism.
We're just polishing up, depending how you look at it, our last issue of the year or the first issue of the next. Our cover story is on JetStream Ground Services. Business certainly wasn't "bad" for the company, but the owners did find themselves at a certain level of revenue that they couldn't easily climb past.
So the owners hired a new COO with some expertise in these matters that they themselves didn't have. (Never an easy measure to admit, particularly for a couple of entrepreneurs.) And that new COO? He didn't look down his nose at a company that was oh, about, a few thousand percentage points smaller than just the operating budget he used to oversee. Nope. He was simply excited about the future and has put some measures in place during the past year and a half that have helped train his employees and motivate and incentivize his general managers - and brought in new contracts.
The cold reality is he and his new vice president of sales and marketing know a ground support company has to offer a service at a low price, but they both prefer to reframe the argument and see it as delivering a better product at a lower cost.
So, but other than "that," (take your pick), how are you doing? What's going right? What's going wrong? What are your plans for the year ahead? What do you think you want to take on? Where's the "good" and the "bad?" As always, your editor wants to know.
