If only life were so simple, I remember thinking at the time, and his cheekily facile advice has been brought to mind again with the publication of the report into the power outage that brought Heathrow Airport to a 24-hour standstill in March.
Mr Woldbye has been the subject of a pile-in, both online and offline, in the media and even in parliament, and over the weekend, the CEO of Virgin Atlantic added his voice to the chorus of condemnation. “The last time I put my phone on silent when running an airline was – never”, said Shai Weiss. “This is a 24/7 job.” Much has been made, too, of the fact that Mr Woldbye is paid £3.2m a year to run Heathrow (while clearly a substantial salary, it nevertheless doesn’t seem out of kilter with a job of such responsibility).
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The fact that Ms Kelly’s report into the incident states that, had Mr Woldbye been awake through the night, it would have “had no impact” on the decisions made during that time, has been treated of little consequence. No one has, as far as I can see, commended Mr Woldbye on his achievement in establishing a command structure at Heathrow that didn’t require his presence or input during an emergency. That, surely, is a vitally important part of a chief executive’s job.
There is also the question of our reliance on mobile phones as the sole means of communication. I assume that Mr Woldbye lives within commuting distance of Heathrow, so it’s not beyond reason that someone could have been deputed to go the CEO’s house and wake him up. And maybe one of the learnings of this incident for all business leaders is that they should have a secondary means of communication in the event of emergency. A good old landline, perhaps?
In any case, it strikes me as rather unfair that Mr Woldbye should now be synonymous with corporate failure. The power outage was not his fault, and the correct decisions were made by the Heathrow executive in the face of an unprecedented chain of events. I am not qualified to speak on whether Mr Woldbye is good at his job or not, but he is immensely experienced, and it would be a regressive step if he felt he had to resign as a result of his somnolent, temporary unavailability, for which he has expressed his regret. Public outrage is not always a reason to throw the towel in.
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