Complex challenges
ASA’s top management was facing complex challenges, such as how to act and respond to the needs of an insular context; having 500 employees distributed over eight of the archipelago’s nine islands; managing an air traffic control center, three airports and five airfields; an international environment increasingly competitive, particularly concerning the airports of Tenerife and Dakar; and playing a significant role in promoting country’s cohesion and development, especially the tourism sector, and also bet on Cape Verde's position as oceanic hub/gateway to Africa and a support base for some routes between Europe and South America.
Consolidation work
ASA’s management emphasized on strategic, organizational and operational alignment, enhancing Human Resources, and improving strategic management tools through a model of management indicators and a business intelligence system. To ensure this task, the company had the support of LBC which advanced with the consolidation of a permanent culture of innovation and development, with accountability and results orientated, strengthening ASA’s positioning as a reference company in the Cape Verdean economy.
In an early stage ASA advanced with the development of an organizational revitalization program, which included restructuring and defining a support system for monitoring its activity. This enabled an effective control of the activity held in each island and each of the infrastructures managed by ASA, the necessary modification of the status quo and incrementing it’s capacity to respond to challenges.
Reformulate operating logic
More than a mere change of the organizational units, it was about developing new skills. It was necessary to redesign the operational logic, focusing on activities that generate value by optimizing internal relationships among geographically distant areas, clarifying those responsible, as well as the respective control mechanisms, and measuring the efficiency of those activities. Soon there were significant changes in the performance, with greater involvement on the manager’s part and increased accountability concerning the decision making. In addition, the business intelligence system conceptualized by LBC, and programmed by Darwin, allowed ASA’s management to access in useful time to key performance indicators.
For Jorge Cravo, partner at LBC, “a major inference of ASA’s case is the safe value of the constant search for strategic, organizational and operational alignment, while investing in people and corresponding to the highest international standards and excellence in management”.
