They Simply Went Too Far

Micky Arison

     After more than 30 years at the helm of the company that brought us the "Fun" ships, its embattled CEO stepped down this week. Micky Arison, will remain at Carnival as Chairman of the Board, but his role as Chief Executive Officer has come to an end.  Mr. Arison, the son of the Carnival founder will be replaced by Arnold Donald, a long time Board Member. It seems to me that this is nothing new in American business.  When companies attempt to save their way to success, disasters can happen.  When you have cut your staff to the bare minimum, the only category left for big savings is upkeep and maintenance.  In our past, airlines have cut back on "capitol" or upkeep costs, with disastrous results and now we see it in the cruise line industry. 
     It shouldn't surprise us.  When times are tight economically business's look for ways to bring more revenue to the bottom line.  This is called flow-through.  The problems come when the balance gets skewed.  In the case of Carnival;  maintenance, staff reductions and poor planning probably played a large role in their recent list of very public failures. 
        As companies reduce their staffing levels they not only incur a people-drain, but depending on the depth of those reductions they begin to develop a talent-drain.  Talent for our purposes here points to skill and knowledge levels.  If you layoff your three top engineers for example or sometimes even those mid-level manager types you just may be courting catastrophe.
        I don't know what happened that led to this string of failures with the ships in the Carnival fleet. I do know or at least I believe that if the blame is not found in a conscious effort to cut costs then these failures have no other cause than negligence.  I prefer to think that Carnival was simply trying to run its business in the most cost effective and efficient manner possible; they simply went too far.