I know someone who is a Senior Manager at CHQ and who primarily supports the field stations. He started working on the US/HP integration in general and then more specifically on GITP (Global Infrastructure Transition Program - a.k.a. the computer upgrade project). Works ungodly hours and does excellent work. Once things started running a bit more smoothly with GITP and he finally got a chance to do his "real job," he was told to drop everything and run and re-run numbers for the DL merger effort.
He was so looking forward to getting back to "his" station managers, who are both his internal customers and friends. Especially getting back to requests from the East station managers for the tools they need in the stations and in order to do their jobs. But he hasn't had time to tell them he's been pulled off his regular job, so the Station Managers are feeling ignored by CHQ again.
A lot of the East station managers have not been trained as to the new administrative procedures, which are all West procedures. They're not bad procedures, just new procedures. In fact, many of these West procedures are superior to the East procedures. Funds are watched closely; everything has to be justified in advance of disbursement; there are paper trails.
Airport Customer Service holds divisional meetings in Tempe at least quarterly, but the East Station Managers still don't know where to send expense reports and invoices. Apparently the ACS Divisional meetings are all spent talking about baggage. Baggage is important, duh, and it's great that Station Managers from Honolulu to Rome converge upon Tempe to talk about baggage 24/7. And, surprise, the Station Managers are not always pointing the finger at PHL and/or Express!
But what is happening is that when the Station Managers get back to their stations, they are too busy trying to figure out how to pay vendors - vendors the legacy US Airways screwed in bankruptcy - on time. Heck, they're too busy trying to figure out how to pay their own employees on time.
The Station Managers don't know how to run p-card reports. They don't know how nor to whom to request a move of a simple bag tag printer (a "MAC" to the "TAC"?). The Station Managers nor the Station Administrators don't know how to code their invoices ("I don't even know what my cost center is, let alone what nominal to pick from this list!") nor where to send them ("Mark Center closed when?"). They call ACS Finance or AP for direction, but these departments don't get back to them because these departments are so overwhelmed with all the extra work from having gained so many stations in so little time.
Anthony Mule needs to have a trainig session for all Station Managers as to the new procedures for Purchasing, Payroll, Accounts Payable, Facilities, and IT requests. Mr. Mule needs people from these departments to present to the Station Managers directly, and not have the Station Managers be told to ask their senior manager or send their question to ACS Finance or Airport Services.
Then the Station Managers will leave the next Divisional meeting knowing clearly what to do and not waste time trying to find answers from CHQ about how to perform administrative tasks. They'll have time to prevent baggage mishandlings and RUN THE OPERATION instead of writing reports AFTER the baggage mishandling.
Sure, writing reports about baggage and meeting in Tempe every quarter to discuss baggage sure does make it look like the America West management is better than the legacy US Airways management at addressing the baggage problem. But it doesn't solve the root cause of the problem, which is that you have Station Managers who are sitting on conference call after conference call and writing reports and trying to find out answers to simple questions than out there looking at the operation.