Career Missteps

Have you ever heard of a guy who gets fired from the plant for stealing some tools?  You know, he loses his job for $100?  Or takes pictures of a hot new prototype and gets canned for it.

Out of the UK comes a story of an executive at BlackRock Inc.,  a financial services company.  He figured out a way to save about  £21.50 a day on his commute between his palatial suburban home and his London office. After about 4 years of this, he was caught.  Oh, by the way, the fares on this neck of the track were based on the honor system.

From Les Levin at Dealbreaker.com, August 2014:

Jonathan Burrows has been unmasked as the mystery fare dodger of East Sussex who hit the news after settling a £43,000 bill for unpaid tickets over five years. The 44-year-old investment executive is thought to be the biggest fare dodger in history – avoiding the £21.50-a-day fee, despite owning two mansions worth £4million. He had hoped to avoid prosecution and publicity by reimbursing Southeastern trains just three days after being caught by a ticket inspector last November. Law-abiding commuters were outraged when the story broke in April that the rail firm had allowed him to quietly settle the allegations without being prosecuted…His commuting scam was uncovered last year when a ticket inspector at London’s Cannon Street station, close to Burrows’s office, saw him swiping through the ticket barriers with his pre-paid Oyster travel card. The inspector realised Burrows had been charged only £7.20 – the modest penalty imposed when a passenger has failed to swipe in at the start of a journey. Burrows admitted having failed to use his Oyster card to tap in for five journeys between London Bridge – where he got off his train from East Sussex – and Cannon Street, which should have cost him just £2.30 a time. However, further inquiries revealed that until 2008 Burrows had been buying an annual season ticket from Stonegate, which has no ticket barriers, to Cannon Street, which costs around £4,500 a year for standard class. A standard daily single fare is £21.50. He had then stopped buying season tickets, but simply continued working in London, apparently only paying £7.20 for the brief final leg of his long train journey. Southeastern told Burrows he owed them £42,550 in unpaid fares, plus £450 in legal costs.

Burrows  "mentioned" the incident to his management, was suspended, and when more questions were asked he resigned during the last week of July 2014

Today we learn (Money.CNN):

A former managing director at BlackRock has been banned from the industry for life by U.K. regulators.
The Financial Conduct Authority said the crime showed Burrows lacked honesty and integrity, and was therefore not a "fit and proper" person to work in financial services.

Not only did Burrows lose his job, but he can never get work in the financial industry again. At least in the UK.  I wonder if he could get work here.  The financial industry is pretty jittery about irregularities like this.

"Nut Rage" Lessons Learned

I peripherally was aware of some incident in Korea leading to some executive's resignation.
Today I read that

Sales of macadamias soar in Korea after nut rage

A headline like that peaks my interest. The story is that the daughter of the of the CEO, who is also an executive whose role included head of in cabin services, caused a delay in a flight she was on because she was served incorrectly by a flight attendant.

Cho Hyun-ah, the daughter of Korean Air's chairman, forced a flight attendant off a Dec. 5 flight after she was served bagged macadamia nuts, not on a plate. (Reuters via Omaha,com)

This reminds me of when a manufacturing team responds to a quality incident with "the employee did not follow procedures".  Or they respond with a worse response, "the employee did not follow procedures and was disciplined", as though that makes me feel better.

The correct response when a process is not followed is to figure out why the process was not followed and take measures to ensure those root causes are addressed.  In the case of the "nut rage" incident I could not find details about why the nuts were improperly served. Had the pantry been restocked with clean plates?  Had Ms Cho arrived at her seat too close to lift off? What were the circumstances?

Here is how the whole thing went down.  If I saw this in a movie I would say it was over the top and unbelievable, but this actually happened.  Really?

Cho Hyun-ah, who has since resigned as head of cabin service at Korean Air, was angered when a flight attendant in first class offered her macadamia nuts in a bag, not on a plate. She ordered him off the plane and forced the flight to return to the gate at John F. Kennedy airport in New York City.
"People who haven't experienced will not understand that feeling of being insulted and shamed," senior flight attendant Park Chang-jin told South Korea's KBS television network on Friday.
After being confronted about the nuts, he said he and his colleague kneeled down before Cho.
He said Cho poked the back of his hand with a corner of the flight manual book several times.View galleryCho Hyun-ah, who was head of cabin service at Korean Air and the oldest child of Korean Air chairman …
According to Park, Cho yelled at the crew to "call right now and stop the plane. I will stop this plane from leaving." Park said that in such a situation, he could not dare to refuse the "owner's daughter."

Kang Kyung-hee (from the Chosun Ilbo) had a good perspective on this incident:

   There may or may not be good reasons to depart from in-flight service practice. But at issue is not how macadamia nuts should be served but what kind of service the airline provides and where its priorities lie.
   Cho Hyun-ah was indeed in charge of Korean Air's in-flight service, so the issue fell within her remit, but it is clear she had no idea what matters or not. She owes her notoriety to her fixation on trivial details without any grasp of the big picture.
   Now many people will remember Korean Air as the carrier that delayed a flight over a bag of nuts. The carrier spends W50-60 billion (US$1=W1,103) a year to promote its corporate image, but it took nothing more than a salted snack to undo that massive expense.
   Management guru Jim Collins, in his book "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don't," makes a useful distinction between corporate leaders for whom rules are important and those who run around enforcing them at every turn. The former put rules to good use, while the latter turn them into serious impediments.
   Korean Air then made matters worse with a desperate attempt to defend the heiress' actions by claiming her behavior aboard the flight was legitimate. That only threw into sharper focus the nepotism and servility that are rampant throughout such organizations.