Why it is counterproductive to let passengers know how long waiting lines are

People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery?  What would you do? You would run to the store and mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win.

Same for airports? Suppose you knew the waiting time at checkpoints like at Dulles International Airport. What would you do? Experience shows that when there is not much waiting time passengers tend to dwell and get to the checkpoint later. Which may create a problem later. It also shows that when there is long waiting time passengers tend to go to the checkpoint immediately. Which increases the problem now.

I think that airports should endeavor to steer the passengers indirectly based on the information they have. They may wait to announce gates until they see that there is capacity at checkpoints. They may change gates of arriving flights or bring passengers to other arrival halls.

Airport business is full of decisions and judgements and guesses, and also looking outside of the box.

When to publish the gate information?

How many hours before departure should the gate information be published? Airports would usually publish this information at fixed times, maybe when the operational day starts, maybe a few hours prior to departure, depending on whether it is an international, regional or domestic flight.

I am sure airlines will want the airport to publish the gate information as early as possible because they want the passengers at the gate to make sure that there is no delay because of late passengers. Now here comes retail and tells operation to publish the gate as late as possible in order to keep the passengers shopping. In other words, to increase the dwell time.

I  had a rather bad experience as a passenger last year in a shiny new terminal which seemed to be run by retail. There was no gate info available, neither on my boarding pass nor on the FIDS screens. This was not a problem, I was sure, I would get that information in due time. I used the time before the indicated boarding time to stroll around, maybe actually do some shopping. When the expected boarding time came closer, I noticed that I had changed my behaviour. I had started sneaking around a FIDS screen, hoping to get some update. Nothing. The expected boarding time passed by and we were getting towards the scheduled departure time. Now my comfort level dropped immediately. I started to check on other screens. The same. Then, right before the scheduled departure time, the gate was published and I was rushing to the gate. Upon arrival at the gate, the latest information there told me that the flight would be delayed by 20 minutes. Now, apart from this experience, do you think that the delay would only be 20 minutes without the boarding having started?

So, you have both extremes where the passenger already knows the gate upon check-in, and the other end where the airport waits until the latest possible moment which includes possible gate changes. Maybe the answer is something in the middle, where the gate is published based on the best information available, actually known as dynamic gate publication. In such an 'intelligent airport' the passenger will actually be steered through the terminal, i.e. the airport operation can direct the passenger flow. There is evidence that this works and even increases retail spend. See also this older post.

Disney uses a command center to shorten lines at rides

Does this problem and approach somehow sound familiar?

According to an article in the New York Times, Disney has spent the last year outfitting the Disney Operational Command Center to address that most low-tech of problems, the wait. Located under Cinderella Castle, the new nerve center uses video cameras, computer programs, digital park maps and other high-tech tools to spot gridlock before it forms and deploy countermeasures.

In recent years, according to Disney research, the average Magic Kingdom visitor has had time for only 9 rides — out of more than 40 — because of lengthy waits and crowded walkways and restaurants. In the last few months, however, the operations center has managed to make enough nips and tucks to lift that average to 10.

So this April, when we (my family) are spending some of our holidays in Disney World I will not only look out for improvements but also ask whether I can visit their nerve center. Actually, I am going to ask right now.

Effective use of information

The difference in how airports are able to deal with their complexity is directly related to how well they manage and use information. In the words of the head of IT of a major European airport "It is not about measuring, it is about the use of information."

This reminds me of a discussion with an executive of an airport retailer. I had thought that they differentiate themselves from competitors by their shop concepts, by the range of products or in its collaboration with its brand and airport partners. Yet, he told me that the way they collect and use data about airport customers made the difference. Based on business intelligence they would know what to offer, when and where. Their key asset was not logistics but information about their customers.

What about airports and their knowledge about their customers? How well do airports use their information?

Dashboards versus Scorecards

There have been ongoing discussions about the difference between scorecards and dashboards.

In the book Drive Business Performance the authors refer to Wayne Eckerson (Deploying Dashboards and Scorecards, July 2006) with a nice overview.

	Dashboard	Scorecard
Purpose	Measures performance	Charts progress
Users	Managers, staff	Executives, managers, staff
Updates	Real-time to right time	Periodic snapshots
Data	Events	Summaries
Top-level display	Charts and tables	Symbols and icons

Is it important to differentiate? Not really, both present a structured view of the goals and objectives for the organization. Key is to drive efficiency and help them focus on what matters.

Only good news make it to the top

Every manager knows that there are processes of selective filtration which occur in information transmission in organizational hierarchies. In other words, good news travel in lightning speed, bad news are filtered out. In fact, in my experience, they are filtered out only until an underlying problem eventually escalates.

I am not an expert on organizational behavior. Research indicates that interpersonal factors like subordinate's trust in his superior, subordinate's perception of his superior's influence on his career and subordinate's career aspirations are factors influencing the upward communication. The first one seems to be most important.

I am sure we need to work on the trust thing. At the same time we need to make sure that management has access to action-relevant operational information in due time in a simple and straight-forward format. You will now shout 'dashboard' but be aware, dashboards tend to be either over-simplistic or too complicated. The trick might be a good mix of relevant performance indicators in a dashboard format with a filter on what is important and drill-down possibility.

In a later post I plan to write about dashboards, the difference of dashboards to scorecards and why you should not ask managers i.e. users what they should look like. Well, at least not in the beginning.

Culture of intelligent execution

I found this expression 'intelligent execution' in a book from Bruno Aziza and Joey Fitts. The title of the book is 'Drive Business Performance' and it is about the importance of business performance. It addresses organisation-wide cultural transformation as it relates to the adoption of performance management. This book illustrates that empowering individuals and holding them accountable is an absolute must.

Without going into the conceptual part of the book (there's a six phases approach), what I like about 'intelligent execution' is that individuals must have the capability and tools that they can make well-informed decisions where and when it matters. So, all great scorecards and dashboards with flashy graphs and charts are only as great as they deliver actionable information.