Sunday, January 15, 2017

leadership dot #1689: stranded

Last week, the last leg of my flight was cancelled. American could not get me another flight until the following day, which would have left me stranded at O'Hare for 36 hours. Instead, I rented a car and drove the three and a half hours home in weather that did not seem to warrant air travel disruption.
I learned the news about the cancellation when I landed, so there never was a gate assignment and a group of people gathered that were heading toward the same destination. I wished there was a way to get in touch with the others on my flight, as I was sure that at least some of them would have been happy to ride along with me.
A software developer should create a new app for similar situations. You would type your flight number into the "Stranded" app, and show that you wanted to share a Plan B transportation with others. Or maybe it is more broad than that and just becomes "Ride Share" so you could use it at the airport, but also at other events, like wanting to share rides home from a sporting event or concert. Either way, if someone responded, you could connect via the app to find a location to rendezvous and take it from there. 
With today's air travel entwinement, being stranded happens regularly. Why doesn't someone do more to minimize the cost and disruption of such occurrences? And think about your organization and points in the process where things frequently do not go according to plan. How can you have an alternative ready to seamlessly step in and mitigate the problem?
Don't leave yourself or your clients who are stranded to handle the resolution on their own.

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