Menu

Aargh…frustrations with Air Canada reservations

October 12, 2006 By Uncategorized 6 Comments

I am trying to book a flight from Vancouver to Penticton.   The Air Canada website is giving me all kinds of errors tonight and I have been ploughing away for about 45 minutes trying to secure a booking.

In an effort to just cut to the chase, I called the reservations centre.   They normally have a $20 fee for booking over the phone, but I assume that they will waive that to get me a booking as the web site is clearly down.

To my faint surprise and astonishment, Kevin, the reservations agent, says he can’t do it.   He suggests I call Air Canada tech support and get them to phone him to tell him that the web site is down so that he can waive the fee.   That strikes me as not my job.

Here’s a better way to handle it, Air Canada.   Trust your customers, especially your frequent fliers.   Isn’t Aeroplan a “loyalty program?”   Is loyalty one way?   When we tell you there is a problem, believe us, make the booking and sort it out at your end.   If I’m lying, you’re out $20 (but you have my fare), and you can put a note on my Aeroplan file saying I’m a scam artist.   It would save you having a blog post written about you at 1:41 in the morning by a tired and irate customer.   Also, trust your staff to make the call to waive the fee without someone in tech support okaying it.
If WestJet flew to Penticton, this would not even be an issue.   They would have had my $472 in a flash and they don;t charge a fee for phone bookings.   For want of a $20 fee, Air Canada sends me packing.   When I told Kevin I would call Westjet (just out of sheer frustration) he said “Sorry we can’t help you.”

Yeah, well.   I’m still stuck needing to take your airline to Penticton.   Cold comfort.

[tags]air canada, customer service[/tags]

What is really evolving

October 10, 2006 By Facilitation, Open Space, Practice 5 Comments

At the Open Space List, there has been an interesting little discussion about the evolution of Open Space Technology. Michael weighed in with a lovely observation and then Harrison Owen himself summed it all up:

Michael You said, ” i would say that i think there is *definitely* a next generation of ost… and another and another… but it’s not the *process* that’s changing — it’s the facilitator!”

I think that is a marvelous insight! It is certainly true for me. The essentials of OST, and the way I “do” them has changed so little in 20 years (with the exception of some omissions — several things I thought of NOT to do) that it seems almost frozen. Had it been anything else, we would have now been on version 22.5 — and the truth of the matter is that I am really at 1.0. Well maybe 1.2 or 3 🙂

But the same cannot be said for me. Still feels like me, but hardly the person I saw in the mirror 20 years ago. Bigger, broader, spacious, comfortable — I like it! Was it all OST? Probably not, but much of it happened in, or thanks to, OST.

It is journey I would covet for anybody. And truth to tell setting new people on that journey, at least getting them to the head of the trail, is probably the only reason I still “do” Open Space. Sounds odd I guess, but turning people on to themselves and their world is magic — hopefully for them, and definitely for me.

This is such an eloquent summation of my whole career too. If you are a facilitator looking to deepen your practice, heed this lesson: it is not the tools that need changing and constant improvement; it is you. Let your use of tools shape you to working with people in the ways which feel most natural. From that place, we develop the approach of inviting leadership. From inviting leadership we develop excellence and ease in making good.
Peggy Holman and I were talking about this the other day. She is in the final stages of completing the second edition of The Change Handbook, which will be a mammoth collection of tools and processes. And despite this “last word” on the tools of dialogue and deliberation, we agreed that even that tome is simply the proverbial hand pointing at the moon.

Immerse yourself in these tools, practice and then see how YOU change. That is the secret, the golden elixir, the pearl. Master practice, practice mastery.

[tags]inviting leadership, michael herman, harrison owen, peggy holman[/tags]

Island Time podcast

October 5, 2006 By Podcast 2 Comments

Many of you know that I have been writing for five years about living on Bowen Island, off the west coast of Canada. With the advent of Artisan Radio, a small community radio station that also streams to the web, I have returned to my radio roots with a show produced by my family, called “Island Time.” The first episode of Island Time is online, as a podcast. You can find it hosted at the Internet Archive, where you will also find show notes and three different audio formats.

Download the mp3 here.

Shownotes

00:00 Intro
00:38 Bowen Moment – Cocoa West Soundscape
02:31 Our Island’s Ours Again
06:41 Bowen Moment – Deep Bay summer afternoon Soundscape
09:53 Searching for plumnose anemones at the Union Steamship marina
16:43 Bowen Moment – First fall rain
19:04 Making jelly from wild berries
28:04 Outro and creditsProduced by Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, Aine Corrigan-Frost and Finn Corrigan-Frost for Artisan Radio (http://www.artisanradio.com0 88.7FM, Bowen Island, BC, Canada.For more information chris@chriscorrigan.com

Enjoy!

What is our work?

October 4, 2006 By Being, Poetry

cultivate eyes
that enable you to see
through the storms that are right here
to the storms that are coming

in that depth –
great beauty and peace.

photo by damaruc

The biggest problem

October 2, 2006 By Appreciative Inquiry, Being, Conversation, Practice 2 Comments

I was in a conversation this morning with people who work in a big systemic field: early childhood education. It is one of those fields that is rife with research telling us what all the problems are. We have more information than we could ever use about childhood obesity, drug addiction, abuse, longitudinal studies on literacy and employment, links between diet and capacity, intergenerational issues of dependence and parenting…this list goes on. We know everything about every problem but one.

The one problem we don’t know about is how to solve all of these problems.

My suspicion – and this will not be a huge surprise – is that the answer to that one lies in a couple of key things. First, we need each other. No one person can solve that one. Second, we need to learn how to converse in a way that is generative and not destructive. We need to take the opportunities of our time together in conversation to be deliberate about making things better, and not get too wrapped up in the shadow side of our work even though we can see our heart in the shadow sometimes, and it draws us there very easily.
In truth, I’m not interested in answering the question of how do we solve this biggest problem from the outside. I think the best we can do is to get inside it and start practising, start to find ways to bring to life the integration we sense is needed.

[tags]shadow, problem solving[/tags]

Photo by .serena.