In the first of two articles, Tony Collins reports on efforts to
tackle fear, uncertainty and doubt at National Air Traffic
Services.
It reads like the hackneyed plot of a paperback potboiler, only
it's true. This is the story of a large company, National Air
Traffic Services, which is responsible for the lives of millions of
air passengers every year. In statements and interviews, its
executives talk about the company's exemplary safety record,
success with new technology and the culture of openness.
But a leaked report written for the board at Nats reveals that the
company has ongoing problems with a £337m system for supporting air
traffic controllers at the En Route Centre at Swanwick, Hampshire.
The report says there is low morale among air traffic controllers
at Swanwick, poor internal communications and a rift between
management and staff.
Meanwhile the company faces debts of more than £1bn over 20 years,
although it plans to invest in new technologies that are
desperately needed.
But it is the chasm separating staff and managers that is the most
serious and enduring problem for Nats. Some air traffic control
staff believe that managers are not taking seriously enough their
concerns over, for example, weaknesses in new technology. They
worry that the large safety margins of the past are being slowly
eroded.
But managers at Nats insist the levels of safety are higher than
ever and, in their internal notices and talks to staff, they attack
their workforce for leaking documents to the media, particularly
Computer Weekly, about the company's problems. In response staff
continue to leak information and to issue their own circulars,
which attack managers.
And so the gap between staff and managers widens: staff see
measures to end leaks as the actions of self-protective managers
who do not want the public to know the truth about the depth of the
company's problems; and managers see staff who divulge internal
information as wreckers who will do the company down come what
may.
Recently the breakdown in the relationship has led to staff
accusing managers of trying to stop leaks by asking administrators
to monitor closely the use of photocopiers. "People are offering to
copy our documents for us," said one controller.
Management denies this.
There are also disagreements about whether managers pass to
controllers workloads that are sometimes excessive.
The leaked report for the board makes it clear that managers do
their best to limit the flow of aircraft into the sectors handled
by controllers, such that safety is not compromised. But the report
concedes that controllers sometimes feel overloaded. It says
controllers may, on rare occasions, feel they are in danger of
"losing the plot" under the pressure of work.
And there is no surplus of controllers to spread the workload. Such
is the shortage of staff that managers are paying controllers up to
£500 a day to work on their days off. But controllers can work only
so many hours.
To the disinterested observer it appears that the rift between
management and staff grows more marked by the year. Staff do not
doubt that managers at Nats are thirsty for reform. But they
question whether any individual, however talented, can change the
long-established defensive culture of a large company. Yet if Nats
continues as it is, with profound differences between management
and staff, some air traffic controllers doubt the company and staff
will ever be able to work as a team to reduce further the risks of
a mid-air catastrophe.
Nats says there has been no mid-air accident caused by air traffic
control for 50 years. And safety is improving: for the last two
years there were no incidents of the most serious "Category A"
near-misses.
Each side is doing the best job it can in the company's interests.
But could the volatile exchanges and mistrust between some staff
and managers be mutually damaging?
The story unfolds...
Seeking to put the company's difficulties in the past, Nats has
appointed a new senior manager who wants to change the defensive
culture of the company. Paul Louden is general manager of the
Swanwick En Route Centre.
Some wonder whether he has set himself a task that cannot be
accomplished, that the company's culture is immutable. For example,
when the Swanwick centre opened in January 2002, nearly five years
late, it was hailed as a technical success by senior management at
Nats. Yet there were difficulties with the software. Flaws that had
existed during testing became evident in operational use by
controllers. Staff regarded some of the defects as potentially
serious. Management did not.
Affable and open, Louden seems a good choice to run Swanwick. He
used to be an air traffic controller. Now that he is a senior
executive at Nats he can see from both perspectives the "them and
us" divide between management and staff. "We are trying to create a
climate that is about openness," he said. "It is of paramount
importance that we are open about addressing the concerns of staff.
We are doing our very best to address them in each and every
instance."
To succeed, Louden must, to some extent, try to erase memories of
the past. The challenge is to convince controllers that the company
is not fundamentally flawed. For in the past Nats has suppressed
reports that recommended safety-related changes to systems and,
when it eventually published the reports internally with a narrow
circulation, the concerns of the authors were toned down.
Nats has not always kept the Department of Transport informed about
the seriousness of problems with technology. And in statements to
Parliament about its internal affairs it has at various times told
the truth, a semblance of the truth or nothing like the
truth.
When, for example, Nats was asked by the House of Commons transport
committee how things were going on the Oceanic IT contract for a
new air traffic control system in Scotland, the company gave a
glowing account of progress with the contractor, service supplier
EDS. But when giving this assurance, the board of Nats was in fact
considering cancelling the contract with EDS - and several months
later it was cancelled.
One especially positive development for Nats is the report for its
board published on the company's intranet site in April. It was
written by the safety review committee of Nats which comprises a
former safety director at British Airways, systems and human
factors experts, the chairman of the safety committee of the
British Airports Authority and the director of operations at
British Airways.
One of the report's recommendations was that the document should be
disseminated widely to staff. It was a refreshing recommendation,
considering this was a report to the board that contained sensitive
information about structural weaknesses within the company.
The report gave a fascinating insight into Nats' culture. On the
plus side, the report said the safety performance of Nats was
better last year than in any year since records were compiled in
their present form. And the report made it clear that managers at
Nats made safety a top priority.
But it highlighted the need to improve technology at the Swanwick.
Some controllers regarded the screens as out of focus. Screens at
times displayed data that was inaccurate, unclear or garbled. The
confidence of some controllers in the efficacy of technology was
"being gradually eroded" said the report. The available technology,
for example, did not give controllers enough warning of bunches of
aircraft. Bill Semple, chairman of the Nats safety review committee
and a former chief executive of Nats, signed the report.
At a higher level, the report suggested there were some profound
cultural problems. "At its roots the problems of communication are
perpetuating an 'us and them' mentality and lack of trust,
confidence and respect between managers and staff which must be
tackled," said the report.
It also affirmed what staff have said for many years: that Nats was
absorbed by how it was perceived by the outside world. "On the
broader communications front, a mature organisation should be able
to discuss issues openly without undue concern for the possible
public relations consequences," said the report. It called for a
"sea change in behaviours within the company" and it suggested that
managers should be less defensive. A "reputation for openness and
honesty is a sign of a confident organisation able to tackle the
challenges ahead".
Yet, as the report was published internally, controllers claimed
that Nats was classifying as "internal" documents that had hitherto
been unclassified.
It also seems to staff that Nats has become even more sensitive to
the way it is portrayed in the media. When in May the BBC broadcast
a drama documentary The Day Britain Stopped, Nats complained to the
chairman of the BBC board of governors. The programme featured a
fictional mid-air collision between two aircraft caused in part by
an air traffic controller who made mistakes under pressure. Nats
complained because it believed a crash could not happen in the way
depicted.
But it is the second complaint Nats has made to the BBC this year.
In January, close to the first anniversary of the live running of
Swanwick's systems, the BBC broadcast a regional television news
item on the centre. Nats complained that too much time had been
given over to the broadcasting of an interview with Computer
Weekly.
Nats has also in the past written letters of complaint after
negative publicity in national newspapers. The company attributes
the low morale of controllers to exaggerated and inaccurate
reporting. And this is blamed, in part, on staff. "The fact that
some staff had chosen to leak stories that were invariably
sensationalised and misrepresented in the press has contributed to
the general feeling of low morale at the unit [Swanwick]," says the
report of the safety committee.
But controllers said the bad publicity was a symptom of problems
within the company, not the cause of low morale.
In 1999 a report on the Nats management of technology projects by
independent auditor Arthur D Little made points that were not
unlike those made by the Nats safety review committee. The auditor
said there was an "unwillingness to face up to and discuss bad
news, and a style which inhibited an open and frank discussion of
difficult problems". There was also a "lack of openness" by Nats in
its reports to the government.
So has the culture of Nats changed fundamentally since that report
in 1999? Senior managers believe it has. In January, Richard
Everitt, chief executive of Nats, gave an interview to the Radio
Four's Today programme in which he spoke of the company's "policy
of openness that is true of the whole culture of Nats".
But controllers say the culture of Nats has not changed noticeably.
If anything the divide between managers and staff may be
widening.
In April, for example, staff disseminated internally a letter which
ridiculed an earlier attack on controllers by managers. The latest
unsigned letter has a veneer of humour, but it seems intended to
make serious points.
It attacked managers at head office for "claiming that the New En
Route Centre [Swanwick] is an unmitigated success". The unofficial
letter continued: "Sometimes we use the word "management" to excuse
unacceptable behaviour which can be evident in press releases and
media statements".
All this seems to be a response to an official letter from managers
last year in which they accused a small number of controllers of
unacceptable behaviour.
Looking beyond Nats, IT projects in the NHS for example have shown
that staff who respect and trust their managers are likely to
accept new technology and will find ways of circumventing any
defects. Conversely, staff who distrust their managers may seize on
any fault to denigrate attempts by managers to modernise.
With Nats and its staff regularly attacking each other, this being
a symptom of the lack of trust between the two sides, one wonders
how and if the company's technological and other problems can ever
be overcome. This is challenge for Louden. But can one man save
Nats from itself?
What we can learn from Nats
When hostilities break out between management and staff, a
company is bound to suffer. Openness and transparency are the
hallmarks of a company that relishes a challenge and wants a
culture of positive criticism. But suppression of criticism breeds
internal resentment, conflict and failure.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the history of National Air
Traffic Services. Computer Weekly has charted cultural and systems
problems at Nats for more than five years.
Our findings provide a cautionary tale of what happens when a
company fails to secure the buy-in of staff to a major IT project.
The backdrop to this tale is the safety of millions of air
passengers.
The moral of the story is simple: you can attempt to change a
large organisation's systems, staff and offices, but unless you
address its existing culture, you will fail to achieve lasting,
remedial and successful business change.
This week and next week, and drawing on a mass of leaked
material and interviews with current and former employees, we
reveal the story behind the relationship between Nats' personnel
and managers. For the first time, we present a fly-on-the-wall
study of attempts by a major organisation, over several years, to
manage change.
Our investigation shows what has gone wrong and why. Whether you
are planning a major project of change in your organisation or are
already managing one, you cannot afford to miss the lessons that
emerge. Karl Schneider Editor, Computer Weekly
Next week:
"One controller was quoted in the report as saying that,
after an overload, he was shaking all the way home'"