Shared Vision

Ramiah addressing the corporate team of Auromatrix Hotels, Appollo Finance, Aloft Starwood & Sparsa Hotels General Managers and Finance Heads… Chennai, 14 Mar 2014

In a recent presentation made out to the corporate team of Auromatrix Hotels, Appollo Finance and Aloft Starwood and Sparsa Hotel General Managers and Financial Controllers, my theme revolved around the fact that a “Shared Vision enhances Profitability”.
  • Bill Marriott famously once said “I want our associates to know that there really is a guy named Marriott who cares for them“. He understood that if his team were to share his vision, they needed to know of his existence as a caring, understanding and existing personality!
  • Ricardo Semler who pioneered the Semco story and articulated his success in empowering and creating a common vision believed in a decentralized, participatory style and has let his employees set their own hours, wages, even choose their own IT. In 1990, the Brazilian economy went into a severe downturn, forcing many companies to declare bankruptcy. Workers at Semco agreed to wage cuts, providing their share of profits was increased to 39%, management salaries were cut by 40% and employees were given the right to approve every item of expenditure. How has he fared? Semco’s revenues have jumped from $35 million to $212 million in NINE years, with an annual growth rate of 40% and the firm grew from several hundred employees to 3,000—with employee turnover of about 1 percent.
  • Henry Ford said once that “if everyone moves forward together, then success takes care of itself“

Beyond a point, an employees primary need has less to do with money, and more to do with how he’s treated and how valued he feels. If you are losing good people, look to their immediate supervisor/manager. Findings through a survey by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman revealed that “People leave Managers, not Companies.”

Is a shared vision possible? If so, then is it also possible that senior resources who hold the reins of a hotel company re-look at these phrases?

  • The General Manager… a) must take ownership… b) is the owner of the P&L… c) is a stake-holder.
  • The Owner / Investor / Promoter must… a) have empathy… b) understand operational needs… c) care for the operational team

With the Auromatrix Corporate Team, Apollo Finance & Aloft and Sparsa Hotel GMs/FCs

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Election Tourism

As election season peaks, tourists are in for a unique experience — be part of a political rally, meet a leader, take part in a heated political discussion in a village chaupal.
It’s the season for “election tourism” as the political climate in a state with the highest number of seats and the most number of PM aspirants heats up. A tour operators’ guild in Gujarat is hard-selling politically-hot places like Varanasi — from where the state’s CM is trying to realize his prime-ministerial dreams — to both foreign and domestic tourists. They have planned circuits with politics thrown in. The Delhi-Lucknow-Varanasi-Delhi circuit has been marked as “Banaras: The heart of elections” and the Lucknow-Ayodhya-Lucknow circuit is named “UP Central.” Varanasi followed by Ayodhya and Lucknow are the hot destinations.
Tourism organizers are booking trips for people, many of them NRIs from the UK to Middle East.
The mystique of India has been peppered with political excitement. And the colour of Indian elections is sure to add to the glamour. Since tourism is all about innovation, this is working and Tour operators have been attracting foreign tourists by projecting the elections in the world’s largest democracy. Their brochures say: “Mere scale of Indian elections is a factor — 814.5 million voters to choose their representatives in 543 constituencies. The colours of Indian elections such as huge public gatherings, diverse ways of electioneering which includes human mascots, singing and dancing groups besides passive means like posters and banners…”
Tourists will be able to be a part of political rallies, interact with leaders in party offices to discuss on party strategy, ideology and mission and also spend nights in villages where political discussions are at a crescendo.
“Indian elections have always fascinated researchers and policy makers from across the world. No wonder it will attract the common man too. Tourism around elections certainly sounds interesting,” said a retired EC official.

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Initiating Change

Initiating change means getting started, turning pressures for change into change initiatives, and taking first steps to move change forward. Research shows that six competencies define the extent to which change professionals initiate change:

1)       Ensure that key leaders are aligned around major change initiatives

2)       Help people understand why change is important (i.e. create a sense of urgency)

3)       Identify and overcome sources of resistance to change

4)       Help set the direction of change with clear outcomes

5)       Build commitment of key people to support change efforts

6)       Articulate key decisions / actions that must happen for change to make progress

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How to implement new ideas

How should one implement and bring about changes in one’s workplace or company? Some say the top-down approach is good while others feel that the bottom-up approach is best.

However,according to the contingency school, the choice of an appropriate strategy and the implementation diagnosis consist of assessing eight independent variables or factors in the organizations.

  1. Available time (short / long)
  2. Clarity of the need for change (clear to all / clear to few)
  3. Organization size (small / large)
  4. Effects of existing controls and incentives (encourage initiative / encourage focus)
  5. Organizational concentration of relevant knowledge (concentrated at top / concentrated at bottom)
  6. Expectations of people regarding involvement in implementation (none / extensive)
  7. Potential resistance (small / great)
  8. Total power base of change agent (great / small)

Thus, for example, if there is very little time variable, the crisis or need for change is clear to all, if it is a small organization and so on, then the appropriate change strategy is top-down, directive and fast; while if clarity for need to change is not apparent and the organization size is relatively large, then the appropriate change strategy would needs be bottom – up.

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Guests expect Personalization

IHG recently surveyed more than 7,000 international travelers and found during the last 12 months, guests from emerging markets are traveling more than those in developed markets and have the highest expectations for hotels to deliver personalized experiences. Other findings from the report include:

  • Travelers think global hotel brands do a better job than local hotel brands in several areas including safety and consistency.
  • For the majority of travelers the biggest benefit personalization delivers is increased comfort during their hotel stay — 59% of travelers said their hotel stay will be significantly more comfortable.
  • 62% of Millennials said being able to access personal content such as movies or music would motivate them to return to a hotel compared to 55% of travelers of all ages.
  • 72% of travelers over 65 said a hotel that made it easy to make healthy food and beverage choices would motivate them to return, compared to 61% of Millennials.

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