A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

54 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
forward-looking airline executives looking at business travel. What questions
should we ask ourselves?
The first question might be: What drives business travel? Obviously,
the answer is the need to do business face-to-face. Are there alternatives to
doing face-to-face travel other than alternative means of transportation?
Sure. One can not only talk on the telephone, but can fax material, e-mail
material, communicate over a computer, or even have a video conference.
These methods are a lot quicker and less expensive than air travel. If this
is so why is business travel preferred for business? Business travel is necessary
when face-to-face meetings are essential because other means of
communication are less effective.
The next question is whether there could be any other way enabling
face-to-face meetings aside from travel? We already noted video conferences,
but there are limitations. There are time delays, blurred images,
and other issues. Still, technology is advancing. Without too much imagination,
one can visualize a holographic video conference incorporating
stereophonic sound. Maybe two companies are in the final stages of negotiations,
but on opposite sides of the world. After several days of serious
negotiations, no executive from either company has left his or her home
city. However, from all physical clues, it’s as if these executives have been
involved face-to-face, and only separated by inches rather than thousands
of miles. Through holography, each side has seen the other in three
dimensions. With high quality sound systems, the images of all parties
look and sound real.
An executive from one company puts a document in a fax machine on
a table. Instantly the document arrives in the fax machine on the table of
the other company thousands of miles away. It takes not much longer than
if the document were passed across the table, hand-to-hand. Would such
a negotiation save money over having one set of executives fly halfway
around the world? You bet!
I’m told some airline-industry thinkers are redefining their business, at
least for the business travel market. They are considering re-inventing
their future by investing in communication technology instead of faster or
more economical jet aircraft. They want to do what the mighty railroad
companies that dominated transportation in the 19th and early part of the
20th century failed to do. That is, invest in the potential of a newer future
technology instead of focusing exclusively on optimizing the instrument
of their past success.