It's simple really. According to their website charter , "Transport NSW is the lead agency of the NSW transport portfolio, with primary responsibility for:

    * Transport coordination
    * Transport policy and planning
    * Transport services
    * Transport infrastructure

This streamlined transport structure is intended to deliver integrated transport planning and service delivery, and consolidation of like-functions to reduce costs and provide additional funds for front-line staff and services. In collaboration with other transport agencies, the agency is progressively rolling out key service initiatives to deliver a more capable, safe and reliable transport network across metropolitan, regional and rural NSW."

Unfortunately, their charter doesn't include one reference to commuters, passengers or the public, the very people this agency is supposed to provide services for.

So the problem here is that the mission statement is flawed and that everybody, from the top management to the front line is potentially doing the wrong things. Their mission has nothing to do with passengers and providing them with an efficient and effective means of transport.

In a similar situation to this, British Airways employed high priced consultants for a period of nine months to tell them what their core competency was. The result of this work was the finding that British Airways core competency was to fly aeroplanes. So immediately, anything outside the scope of flying aeroplanes was not considered core, much of it was outsourced and this has led to a significant degradation of both service and experience for customers. The result is the mess they find themselves in today.

What needs to be done is for Transport NSW to look at themselves from the outside in, or from the public's perspective. Then they need to realise that their mission, like many other organisations in this world, should be about moving people. With the simple mission of moving people, then and only then will they be able to plan for the future and provide the necessary services and improvements to satisfy people's requirements for moving around this state.

This lack of alignment to customers is the key problem with the strategy and mission statement of almost all modern organisations, both public and private.

To rectify the problem, what needs to be done initially is to understand what the successful customer outcomes are. People want to move around the city, getting where they need to go the manner in which people choose to travel needs to make their lives easier, simpler and more successful. It is possible, it just needs someone to look at it from the Outside In.

Outside-In may be behind Freeconomics and an organisation's ability to increase the customer value chain. This allows them to reduce the costs of the products or services they offer their customers and this is often to the detriment of their competition. RyanAir is one such company that knows this.

At a time when British Airways in dire financial trouble, RyanAir is on the verge of making air travel free. Here is a breakdown of where Ryanair gets its revenue from. Once again, knowing your customer and knowing where their journey starts and ends is the key.

http://bit.ly/11bJNJ

Last month, British Airways posted a record annual loss of £400 million (US$656 million). Here is what contributed to this record loss:

• demand for the airline's passenger seats and cargo holds fell during the last financial year
• its fuel bill rocketed to almost £3 billion (US$4.7 billion)
• British Airways, like its premium-class competitors, is losing customers to cheaper rivals

So what has the airline decided to do?
The company has made a switch in strategy, trying to tempt passengers with lower fares, sacrificing profit per seat for "bums on seats." This idea is not new and comes from the budget airlines such as EasyJet, who know their customers and what they want. See http://bit.ly/pnQTr.


Interestingly that it should take a crisis such as this to force the company to provide its customers cheaper seats when this has been going on for some time now.

See here for the details of the crisis http://bit.ly/P90Nk

This strategy is unlikely to help significantly because the company is still looking at things from the inside out and it would take a complete re-evaluation of the company's focus, looking at things from outside in, to dig it out of this hole.