Unlocking High Performance: The Metrics Strategy That Transformed My Team's Success

Uh, I'm, I just make sure I understand. I'm setting, I'm setting, uh, targets for operational people.

OK. Hm. That's a tricky one because Maybe it's way too different to the way we we still set up targets in the old fashioned way, you know, you go ca cascading down people and so let me try, uh, to tell you how, how I do it and, and not try to tell you how, uh, Laca or big old corporations does it, uh, so, so, so I tell you how, how I did, uh, um. Uh, this year, this, this, this past year for, for the, the metrics that we have, uh, that I have set up for 2022. Uh, so I have this situation that I told you, right, uh, the, the affected passengers that we want to, to, to diminish, to, to cut down on, on, on, on them, uh, but, uh, in, in for that I have to, to go after root causes, but something else that I can do is try to. To, to, even if I have the, the, the affected passengers because we do have, there is such a, just a limit that I can go on preventing that, you know, the planes don't fly, something happens to COVID, and I don't know, uh, I can distribute the money more intelligently. That this is something that I could do. So, I, I was Uh, last year we were constructing a budget for this year and I had to come up with the, the num this number of, of, uh, not related to the quantity of passengers, uh, we would, uh, pay, uh, affected passengers, but the, the median cost of each of these, uh, payments. And so this is, this is what I had to do. I had, and I knew we had uh budget constraints. So even not only the quant, I was trying to reduce the quantity with this guy that I talked to you about. I was also trying to reduce the, the, the median tickets that we would uh spend with unaffected passengers. So I had to work on that as well. So I, I set up, uh, investigating. A historical number of this, this amount, how much do we spend with one passenger, uh, and it, and, and, uh, it pretty much depends on two things, the kind of, um, and I, that's what I discovered going deep in the numbers. It depends, it varies according to the type of, of, uh, disruption that the person had a delay. The delay is different than a 15 minute, 15 minute delay is different than a, a cancellation, you know, a 2 day cancellation. And when I, uh, when I tell this passenger he's going to be affected. So it's different if I tell you, Brandon, your flight's not gonna fly and you're still in your home. I, I, I, I spend much less when I do that than if I let you go to the airport. And then on your way to the airport or at the airport, I say, you know what, your flight is not, your flight is not gonna uh fly as according to, to your schedule because if you are in the airport, I have to pay you more. I have to pay for food, I have to maybe give you a hotel and transport you back to, I don't know, to your home or a hotel. So, I, I, going uh fir, the first thing that I did then was to analyze historical data and, and try to, to get the, the drivers on this number. What makes me pay more or what makes me pay less to a disrupted passenger. And I, and I came up with these two, main reasons. Uh, when I told the passenger that he was affected and the type of, of, uh, of problem that uh I knew he was going to, to face. And by, by doing that, I was able to, to set a target with the team, you know, let's push down on this number and let's commit, you know, with a smaller budget and let's push uh The agents at the airport, they work with some tables because when they have a passenger that in front of them that had a denied boarding or a downgrade for any kind of affected situation, they have to uh pay the passenger according to the table. So I went on revising all these tables, you know, all the policies of how much an agent, uh, an airport agent would. Pay the passenger. I revised uh the hotel as well, um, maybe we could go negotiate with a chain of hotels if I would pay cheaper than, you know, one hotel here and another hotel there. So it was again a bunch of things that I was able to propose because I knew beforehand the data and I. You that you can be concentrated with these two drivers that uh I realized and because a group of people was on board with me in in my group and we were digging into those numbers, I had more commitment from them as well in terms of, OK, let's do it let's let's approve a smaller number and then let's go for, for, for it, uh, and. Again, the budget that I have approved for this year, it, it counts not only all the initiatives of reducing the quantity of passengers affected that I, that I worked with our operation, but also takes into consideration that I'll be spending less, uh, for pets, uh, because of this, uh, deep dive that, that we did. Uh, what I, what this teaches me, each and every time I go for it is that when you set targets together with a group of people, and when, when you fragment information like that, it's easier for people to understand, to digest. Yes, and to come onboard with you. So I'm, I'm, I'm a firm believer that targets are, are better when you build them up with the team, alongside the team and not just give the target to a group of people and say, you know, you should pursue this. Let's do it.

OK. Um, Let me give you an example, in terms of uh uh numbers. OK. With this deep dive, I knew that we used to pay about 125 per hotel for affected pets, uh, in my previous analysis, OK? And I knew I made no difference if it was a normal passenger or a high value passenger. And I knew, uh, something else that we wanted to do is to treat high-value passengers differently. And I didn't have any money. So, uh, how could I come up with this? Uh, what we try to do is I would have to know beforehand, what is the percentage of high-value passengers that I impact, and I found this number, and what's the percentage of, uh, it was about um 10 to 15% high high-value passengers that we have. I, I set up a group of uh biggest routes and identified the high value passengers in this, in this, uh, big, uh, in this uh sample. It was a a good sample uh of uh routes, uh, I, I. Came up with this 10 to 20% of these passengers are high value, and I want, if they are affected, I want them to go in a four-star hotel. In a four-star hotel today costs, let's say the 125 uh or the 125 that I have, uh, talked to you about. On the other hand, I know that 85% of these people are not high ed, and I was able to pay them to, to budget for them to stay. In a three-star hotel, so 85% of these, uh, this group of passengers, I can budget less money and I budget around 75 to $85 per passenger, so they would stay in a cheaper hotel, but I would be in compliance with the law and everything else the same way. It's just that I would, uh, set up a, a, a more money for the high value and uh good money, you know, reasonable money for, for. The non, non, the non-hig value. So when you fragment like that and when you try to, to come up with uh groups of uh costs, unitary costs differently, you, you are more able to identify, uh, uh, it. And, and again, as, as a result, uh, if I diminished, if, if I, the way, uh, we did reducing the cost in this set of passengers, I was able to In this group of the, the coastline that I have of contingencies and compensation, one so good is hotel, and I was able also to reflect the, the, in, in, in about 25% of the cost in the hotel. I was able to get, to get the line uh uh also uh reduced uh because we have this analysis uh that.

OK. Two things. We are always and constantly uh measuring NPS, uh, NPS net promote, promoting score is the way that the passengers recommend or don't recommend flying, um, LATA. So if, if something comes out in the NPS, uh, measure, if, if, uh, we have more detractors, people saying, I wouldn't recommend LATA, that's one of the metrics that we have. Uh, as almost as opposed to that, um, uh, we also measure the, the costline anyway. So the, the unitary cost and the, the, the amount of cost at the end of the month, so. Uh, one of the things that I did when I realized that, uh, I had, I had reduced the 25% on, on hotel, uh, costs is to send this, uh, we send the high values first, uh, um, an, an inquirer, how to say, uh, an NPS, um. Questionnaire, uh, asking him, you know, what, what do you think about the hotel? What do you think the way I, I manage your contingency? Uh, do you, what, what grades do you give me for that? And this way, I balance, uh, and I, in, in by measuring this, I, uh, I got a Contingency NPS are negative because, you know, you are in a contingency, you don't give a, a higher grades to, to the company that affected you. So our NPS contingency number is around -45. Uh, which, and, and, uh, I was able to see that the NPS for the high value, uh, they're still negative, you know, those guys don't want to be, um, affected, but it went up from -45 to -42, that, uh, we are still monitoring to see, you know, These 3 points are just a hiccup or you know, because of something else or if it's due to really because I changed the, the 3 3-star hotel to 4-star hotel, and I also managed the group of common passengers and I and I found out that uh uh the, the NPS also got down. Uh, 5, percentile points, uh, with this group as well, besides measuring the amount of money that I was, I was spending with them.