In pursuit of ambidexterity

Abstract

The aviation industry is a fast moving and extremely competitive environment, where companies need to continuously invest in order to be at the forefront of innovation in the eyes of the customers, hence always delivering an excellent service.
This graduation project was carried out at KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines, in the department of the Operational Excellence. KLM Operations are proud of their unique way of working allowing for a mutual reinforcing relationship between Operations (namely all the processes connected to the aircraft's’ flying) and Development (namely X-Gates or any other operational department willing to improve). Such a collaboration is referred to in the literature as Ambidexterity. The assignment addresses this collaboration:
“Design a way of working for X in Operational Excellence that supports safety and regulations, copes with variability of activities needed, adds speed and flexibility while integrally lowering costs. The new design (namely a vision, a visual or an infrastructure) should make sure that, step-by-step and over time, all employees are able to work on exploration and exploitation activities to bridge the gap from corporate vision to product implementation.”
The research was carried out with an Action research approach, which saw mainly the deployment of semistructured interviews and stakeholder mapping exercises. The results allowed to define the focus of the study, the “Lack of vertical alignment”, the main barrier to the project's’ implementation. In order to bridge this gap, a visualization of the unique way of working of Operations was produced, in order to realign the organization towards greater employee engagement and purposeful results. The design aims at aid the first steps the organization is undertaking towards a more ambidextrous organization, by triggering conversations and engagement in the employees.