Make Your Trip a Success

A visit to the field, by its nature, leads to the conclusion that your experience is definitive - that what you see happens all the time. To make sure your experience serves as an effective reality check, it pays to prepare thoroughly.

Determine what you want to accomplish prior to setting foot outside your door. Design your visit with help from knowledgeable people in the organization to make sure you won't just be in the way and that you will get information you can use. Before I did my stint as a flight attendant, the in-flight services team helped me prioritize what I wanted to get out of my visit - including a better understanding of the sequence of tasks that must be completed during a flight. They also made sure I wouldn't hinder the work of the professional flight attendants or compromise safety. I worked in both first-class and coach, assigned to jobs that allowed me to experience the full range of interaction with customers.

A prepared script comes in handy at this point, because it keeps you focused. The script should include questions to get answers to, as well as information you want to impart while visiting that particular operation.

Depositing information while out in the field is just as important as getting it. CIOs have enough credibility as members of the senior management team to answer employees' questions and give information about current business problems or their possible solutions - including information about subjects that are not IT related. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your script includes information that you want to make sure to impart when you leave. Before I took off as a flight attendant, I made sure I was up to speed on all the flight attendants' issues, such as our route scheduling plans.

Now, Get Going

There's no formula for getting out of the office. For me, an ad hoc system works best. Whenever there's something about our operations that I don't understand, or haven't checked out in a while, I get on the road.

Of course, there are a million excuses for staying at the office: The budget is due this month; that major system is rolling out next quarter. It's easier not to get away. But if you're serious about adding value as a leader, you have to make the commitment to get in the end user's and the customer's shoes.

Monte Ford is senior vice president and CIO of American Airlines