Last week, Adrian Gonzales wrote an insightful article which Alex Lennane reblogged on The Loadstar, both claiming rightfully that “in logistics, somebody has to own the assets”.
And there sure is a need for this message in a world, where many logistic providers take considerable pride in being “asset free”, (whatever that actually means…).

Gonzales urges us to re-embrace (and along the way redefine) assets, as something “useful to foil or defeat the competition”, and again, I could not agree more.

Yet, there is an imminent danger for all of us here as well.
It is the danger of becoming starry eyed plane lovers, ship huggers and truck fans, eager to present our shiny and quite impressive toys to customers, clients and partners as a proof of our abilities and importance.

Why would this be dangerous?
Because clients and customers simply don´t care.
All they care about (and all we should care about) is whether we can turn those assets into something that provides them with an advantage in the market, that delivers to them a much needed service, that makes them ultimately more successful.

Our entire business is not (and never was) about owning assets.
It is about using, utilizing, orchestrating assets, about connecting them into an intricate web of transport and fine tuning this web to create unique solutions for each and every of our clients.

If we fail here, if we do not, in the words of Gonzales “leverage the assets creatively”, all pieces of hardware, even the shiniest ones, are just that: hard ware and ultimately useless.

We need planes and trucks and trains and ships much in the same way a carpenter or a surgeon needs his tools. They are essential to what we do, but what makes us (or a carpenter or a surgeon) truly special and irreplaceable is something else entirely:
It is what we are able to do with these tools.
It is the fact that we are able to turn all those shiny assets into assets for our clients.

Thank you for tuning in.

Oliver

Do you remember the days when we were boys in a, well, boyish industry? How hard-nosed we were, how tough-talking, how shoulder- clapping and steady- drinking? How we used to talk aeroplanes, old and new, like some of us and others talk shiny cars?
Those were the days…
 
Then our topics changed, from good ol’ hardware to software, from mechanics to electronics, from full freighters to e-freight, and the new topics were suddenly interesting for men and women alike, and our industry began to attract the other gender. In rather small numbers, true, but it was a start.
And the times kept a-changing ever after, in favour of a higher share of female colleagues in our industry – albeit with the slow pace of history which makes trends so hard to detect unless you pause and look back.
 
That is what I did as I glanced at last week’s Doha WCS conference.
(Wo)Man, we´ve come a long way indeed! A long way from that all-male, testosterone- fuelled boys’ club we had been for the longest time.
Forget (well, not really, but in terms of “top ten small-talk issues”) payload and wingspan and Triple Seven versus A-350 and “what´s the best burger joint in – wherever”. Today it’s all about people, leadership, training. We are now almost as fluent talking soft skills, teamwork, motivation and talent scouting as we once were discussing full freighters versus bellies. But most important of all: we are much, much better today at inviting the - at least - equally smart, and (as many say) better half of mankind, to our industry and events.
 
Make no mistake, much too often it is still no piece of cake being a woman in our industry –but our (male) focus has shifted significantly. The opening and closing plenary at the WCS, the FACES initiative and not least the ever increasing level of civility and politeness among our air cargo crowd are clear indicators of that fundamental sea change.
A change that comes down to this:
Just as we as individuals have learned to respect, trust and even look up to women in our private lives, we finally do so as an industry.
And we are much better for it.
Now that is what I call growing up.
 
Thank you for tuning in.
 
Oliver

Imagine you are a native on a beautiful, remote and isolated island somewhere in the Southwest Pacific. One day, out of the blue, strange looking people of a race you have never seen before land on your shores. They go on to build very large and mysterious places, flat fields of grass or something that looks like stone, weird looking buildings, mystical masts.  And suddenly gigantic bees or birds or whatever they are fall humming from the skies and unload vast amounts of strange riches.

You do not know that to these strangers the year is 1942 and what they are bringing to your island are the means to sustain a war that is raging on in much of the rest of the world. You do not know, what a modern landing craft is, much less an airplane. And you do not know the concepts of “cargo” or “supplies” or “logistics”.

Think about it for a minute: what would your conclusion be? The famous science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once noted that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 

This clash of cultures did happen during World War II, and the tribal societies of the islanders arrived at the only logical conclusion to be drawn from what they knew about the world: this immense array of strange goods had to be a gift from the gods, delivered to the white or yellow people who had come to their shores because they performed certain religious rituals.

So, when the newcomers left (because the war was over) and the flow of goods from the gods (read: cargo) suddenly came to an end, the islanders founded a cargo cult of their own.

By building crude imitations of landing strips, aircraft made of straw and radio equipment made of bits of old wire, they tried to attract further deliveries from the gods. They even mimicked the behaviour they had observed of the military personnel operating the airfields.

Natives building airstrips in the middle of nowhere? Hoping for the gods to bestow some of their riches upon them? Isn´t that exactly what is happening today all over the Middle East and elsewhere? You bet it is.

 And you know what? It works.

Ask all those people walking the streets of Dubai or Istanbul with their new Swiss watches or smart phones. 

Thank you for tuning in.

 Oliver

During the last days our Chinese friends have, with a lot of boom and bang, celebrated their New Year of the Snake. It struck me how appropriate this year’s symbolic animal is. The snake presides over a year which has clearly not yet decided which way it is headed, and I cannot think of any other animal, living or mythical, which would be more fitting for a fledgling 2013.

Why? Because everything about the snake strongly hints at virtues and aptitudes that could serve us well in the dozen or so moons to come.

A snake is always well-grounded, something that is very useful when rates decide to go on a rollercoaster again, or brighter skies suddenly turn dark – or vice versa. Being well-grounded also makes for excellent stability, which is what you need when business models come under pressure and cargo stubbornly refuses to flow along the routes it so reliably followed since, well, since I can remember.

What is more, a snake is perfectly designed for moving from side to side, and we better be as well, with a market that defies traditional peaks and troughs, and has become as unpredictable as the weather.

The snake does all of that and more based purely on the strength of its flexible and prodigious belly. Now, wouldn´t that be something if executives and CEOs in the airline industry take this cue, and reflect on how much they rely on and profit from the much under-appreciated underside of their airplanes?

Above all, snakes are nature’s masters of adaptability. No matter what the environment throws at them, they find ways to cope and to come out stronger than before. They do so by instinct, of course, and herein lies maybe the most important lesson to learn from an animal which many cultures view as a source of wisdom: the willingness to act instinctively.

We will always live in an environment with too much information, or data, on one side, and not enough information, or insight, on the other. So it might actually be wise to let our instinct take the lead from time to time, and trust it to find ways where rational thinking is prone to get stuck.

That is the wisdom of the snake.

And that is my Chinese New Year’s wish for our industry.

Thank you for tuning in.

Oliver

A dramatic shift is happening right now in the way we manufacture, buy and, as a result, transport goods around the globe. This shift is so fundamental, it will change, make that: it is already changing supply chains and the composition of air cargo.
Yet sometimes dramatic shifts happen without direct reference to them, only to their many, seemingly disconnected symptoms, until…

So, here is what I believe is happening:

Back in the old days, commerce was rather straight-forward. A producer, well, produced goods, and these were ferried in large quantities (aka big shipments) to logistics centres everywhere, from where they made their way to shops and stores, in which we would have our first chance to evaluate and eventually buy them.

How quaint and old-fashioned.

Additive manufacturing makes production of almost any goods possible in the most unlikely places. Smart phones and micro-finance make entrepreneurship flourish far from the so-called developed, industrialised world. And the internet puts all of us in immediate touch with all of us. Today we, as individual customers very often kick-start our own private supply chain by ordering something or other directly via the internet, which then is sent directly to us as a single item.

The consequences for the producers are mind-boggling.

Yet, although some manufacturing giants already see their shares tumble, and some venerable high-street retailers are biting the dust, most companies continue to behave as they have always done, and adapt sufficiently to the now apparent small cracks in the familiar business model. But these cracks will soon become yawning gaps and we will see companies raise and others fall on the single factor of their ability to adapt to a fundamentally new set of rules.

And our tried and trusted airline-forwarder model?

The integrators or postal organisations with their ability to serve “the last mile” should be the natural beneficiaries of supply chains evolving from B-to-B (manufacturer-to-dealer or retailer) into a I-to-I (individual-to-individual) or at least a b-to-C (small business-to-consumer) sort of relationship. And indeed, they already feel a surge in demand.
But before we allow ourselves us to be scared by – or slow to adapt to – the emerging Me Trade that is substituting parts of the familiar World Trade, we should remember the one fundamental truth about change: for every business pattern that dies away, two new opportunities are born. At least.

The volume of air cargo will not shrink.

On the contrary, it should increase exponentially as manufacture spreads to far-flung places and splinters, and millions of new consumers demand their share of the cornucopia of invention. And I am certain that the Me Trade generation will be no less demanding in terms of speed, reliability and security of delivery. So the unique skills and knowledge that we have today will serve us even better tomorrow.

Last Christmas, when time to buy presents for my family was even shorter than usual and for the first time I had to resort to Amazon & others big time, I turned into a very big fan of Me Trade. It made my (Christmas) day and I am sure it will make the industry’s day as well – if we only embrace the opportunities.

Thank you for tuning in.

Oliver

Last Friday, I put on my grey suit and tie in order to pay my respects at a memorial service for Roland Bischoff of Kuehne & Nagel.

Roland Bischoff made his mark on the air cargo industry not only through his professional management of relations with the carriers throughout many years, but also through his participation in, and indeed leadership of, Cargo 2000 and other industry initiatives.

 Then on my way to that service, I heard on the radio that Claude Nobs, the founder and leader of the Montreux Jazz Festival, had passed away also. So my attire (and my respects) were due to 2 unforgettable individuals, Roland himself and Claude Nobs, whose week-long festival was and is one of the highlights of anyone’s annual music agenda, and was the inspiration for this blog.

As I attended the service high up in the hills overlooking the lake of Zurich, and walked back through the drifting snowflakes, my thoughts wandered like a gentle jazz tune:

A professional career, I thought, is not confined to one organization, but influences, guides or inspires all who come in touch with that individual: colleagues, customers, suppliers.
It does not matter whether we are bound together as allies or market adversaries.  What happens during the course of a career in our industry is what happens in every inspired jazz concert: knowledge and ideas are borrowed, visions are adapted, sparks of insight are picked up and transformed in one endless, irresistible flood.

The ideas might change direction and rhythm, sometimes they turn from brighter major chords to sadder minor ones, sometimes they run away with themselves or slow down. But for better or worse, from the moment the first chord is struck it is impossible to tell where the journey will lead.

That is, what makes jam sessions, and careers, so wonderful.

In the obituary for Claude Nobs on the Jazz Festival website, one can read that “each jam session can be the last”. And while that is certainly as true as it is sad, we can take comfort in the fact that life, like jazz, never ends.

Thank you for tuning in.

Oliver