Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance
My dear Sir, I look at you askance
You suffer from cognitive dissonance
How can you pity the starving poor
When you waste your food all o’er
And blame it all on happenstance?

We observed Cognitive Dissonance when we once pitched for a Workshop Series with a Key Account. We had done several similar assignments for this company and we had communicated this to them quite clearly as there was a new bunch of decision-makers now. We trusted that this history and experience of our work with them in the past would give us a clear edge over the competition.

We finally met with the Sales head who was the Decision Maker, and while creating a connect with her and breaking the ice, we talked of her prior experience and how it was so different from the industry she was now in. She had recently joined this company, having worked in other industries in the past. The Sales head enthusiastically asserted that sales experience and learnings can be applied to any industry, and she did not see this as an impediment to her success in this new leadership role. We agreed and then went on to make our presentation pitch. Somewhere in the middle of the pitch, she came up with the objection that though we had done several assignments with their company in the past, we had not specifically covered the topic that they were seeking in this project. We lost the pitch subsequently, and I was left scratching my head in bewilderment… I mean, we had all the credentials and the experience with fantastic reviews of our work done in the past with this company. Yet, the Sales head felt we did not have the necessary experience to handle their current need… strange, when she herself (having had no experience in this industry), had been given charge of her sales domain in this company; and had claimed earlier to us that the Sales domain was a common domain regardless of industry!

Cognitive dissonance is a mental conflict that occurs when your beliefs don’t line up with your actions. It’s an uncomfortable state of mind when an individual has contradictory values, attitudes, or perspectives about the same thing.

I could recount countless such examples, and I am sure you, as the reader, will recollect such situations of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (aka Cog Diss) occurring around you.
  • When a key decision maker of a company, booking a banquet function, brags of having done similar functions in the past at premium hotels in India and abroad, and then goes on to ask for an abysmally low rate (as ludicrous as expecting a Mercedes for the price of a Santro), bang! That’s Cog Diss.
  • Or, what about an ostentatious parent booking his daughter’s wedding function, flying in people from all over the world, and he is the MD of a Fortune 500 company touting its ESG values… bang! Cog Diss.
  • And then you have a government having the capability to produce a vaccine to control a pandemic, yet asking the populace to bring out their thalis et al to create an obnoxious din, loud enough to supposedly scare the virus away (but which barely scares the crows away), bang! That’s Cog Diss again.
  • In British India, when the xenophobic Britishers disallowed Indians from joining or entering establishments, they forgot that these same Indians, earlier, had access to more magnificent edifices and establishments in the past, bang… Cog Diss!
  • Many organisations claim their employees to be their biggest assets, and also include this in their mission statement, yet when calamity, ego, or circumstance strikes, the employees are the first to be let go, quite ruthlessly… remember Kingfisher airways and the Promoter? Bang, that’s Cog Diss!
Leon Festinger’s theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957) proposes that inconsistency among beliefs or behaviours causes an uncomfortable psychological tension, leading people to change one of the inconsistent elements to reduce the dissonance or to add consonant elements to restore consonance. What it means is that when we believe and act oppositely, we are suffering from Cog Diss. To be in consonance, we either need to change our beliefs or else change our actions, each to match the other, and thus be apposite to each other.

Hence, when we use plastic bags despite knowing that we are treading shamelessly on Cog Diss since we are hurting the environment; what we need to do is either change the action (stop using plastic) or else change our belief that plastic is harmful to the environment. Since the latter is a lie, and untrue, the choice of modelling our action to the belief is obvious, and we need to stop using plastic. That feeling of mental discomfort when using plastic bags is an example of cognitive dissonance. This is because our beliefs are clashing with our actions or behaviour. We believe that humans need to protect the environment, yet we still use plastic bags. The internal conflict that this causes, keeps us in turmoil.

I have seen a few leaders with commendable values, who say and act what they think and feel, in all sincerity… these are the highly respected ones. Cog Diss rarely appears on their horizon, and they are considered stable, level-headed, and looked upon as true role models. Mahatma Gandhi is one of the greatest examples of this consonance between thought and behaviour.

So, what stops us leaders from ducking away from Cognitive Dissonance and embracing Cognitive Consonance?

 

This article appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Feb 2023

Posted in Human Resources, Leadership | Leave a reply

A ‘Dear John’ Letter

My dear John, my candidate
Really, what’s with you mate?
You haggled & took the job offer
Then ghosted and did us fob off
Morally, is that the right etiquette?

Dear John letter is a written communication in which the letter writer ends a relationship with the recipient. The term was popularized during World War II when many Americans spent years away from home. A letter written to impart the bad news of the end of the relationship would start in a formal way, such as “Dear John.” (John, being the most common first name of adult males during the 1940s).

After a series of interesting recruitment attempts gone wrong, wherein potential candidates backed out unscrupulously and unfeelingly, I paused to give thought to the Dear John letter concept and soliloquized to myself that perhaps it was time to write one such generic letter to errant candidates. So, here it is, dedicated to all who fit the bill!

Dear Candidate,

Thank you for your interest in the position you so eagerly applied for. Your initial enthusiasm and comportment, along with a feigned passion for the job on offer sure pulled the wool over our eyes. What we missed out on was that it was all an act, worthy of perhaps being nominated for the ‘Recruitment Oscars,’ if ever there was any. What we failed to pick in our interactions with you was that in your case ‘still waters run deep.’ (a euphemism from Shakespeare’s King Henry VI – part 2, referring to a deceitful person)

Your ‘Benedict Arnold’ like behaviour has sure hurt our company… we wait for months for candidates like you who sign on, and then, a day or two before joining, express their inability to join for ludicrous reasons. Your recruitment cost is something we bear with nary a protest, and while we spend our resources wastefully on you, you earn more by using our offer and negotiating a better salary on the strength of our letter of intent. (Either with your present company or even with another opportunity!)

You send a WhatsApp message or email to communicate your last-minute decision, but do you not know that to be an upstanding human, it is best to face us live, by calling and speaking to us instead? To top it all, you are then incommunicado thereafter! Is it playing the game, I ask? What if the shoe was on another foot, where, God forbid, you were to receive a “Dear John Letter” from your loved one? Would you then, not have preferred your loved one to have faced up to you and given you the good ‘ole brusheroo in person?

In hindsight, we are grateful for your act, as it has strengthened our recruitment process and style. It has made us that much smarter to spot the decoys and fakes in the future, from amidst a sea of potential candidates. It would be foolhardy on our part to forecast that people with guile, as you so well concealed, will never get through our fishing net; but yes, we are working towards identifying and throwing back the unwanted fish into the sea of recruits. Experience makes us wiser, and we have incongruous candidates like you to thank for this.

Are you familiar with the poem by Dale Wimbrow titled ‘The Guy in the Glass’ written in 1934? Allow me to quote you a couple of verses from it:

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

 

Companies will come and go, and so will candidates. Many have learned that ‘bucking’ a company never makes sense, for the world is round, and our sins have a way of catching up on us. If you feel that your cozenage is now ‘water under the bridge,’ and you lightly disdain your act of elusion, then you have another think coming!

I am pretty positive that you have been taught not to burn your bridges. Well, my friend, for you, this bridge has burned, and while it may seem that you have rejected us, in truth, you have only eluded us… and now, our company has rejected you!

Nevertheless, with a heart of compassion, we wish you an honest and ethical future, where you may be able to look back confidently at the guy staring back from the glass!

Best Regards,

The Recruiter

 

This article appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Oct 2022

Posted in Human Resources, Leadership | Leave a reply

Guest Centricity

Guest Centricity
Guest Centricity

In our workshops on Guest Centricity, our earlier poser was ‘What changes have happened over the past two decades.

Damn, now it is ‘What changes have happened over the past two years!’

Over the past 2-3 decades, Guest Service Levels have striven to move from ‘Satisfied’ to ‘Very Happy or Pleased’ to ‘Delighted Guests.’ Now, over the recent past, Guest Delight has also taken on additional and neoteric dimensions. Earlier, it was mostly about delighting the ‘Guest ego and needs.’ Now it has forged ahead to a more philanthropic perspective.

Today, the guest is ‘Delighted’ to stay at properties that also tick the box on corporate social responsibility needs. The presence of fulfillment standards of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is in effect an altruistic self-actualisation for the guest and the new normal for enhancement of guest centricity.

To cite an example, earlier, guests would be delighted to be served by the same person over breakfast and dinner. Not anymore. Now guests take umbrage when the employee is being overworked and has no proper work-life balance.

The conundrum for us hoteliers is how to satiate and delight the guest, whilst not over-working employees.

We have called this upon ourselves by exploiting our employees over the decades… and now, post-pandemic, we have no choice but to work with fewer resources. Recently, we are seeing hoteliers and owners apologizing for the historical evils of exploitation. Now, we need to put into action, innovative employee best practices, to eradicate these evils of the past. Unfortunately, there is no magic potion for this, and this will best happen by a positive intent to change, rather than being wedged in a shell of the past.

What works against this relatively new realization that we need to adapt to ESG needs is that currently, the hospitality business is anyways hitting the roof. Hoteliers are exulting in business trends ziplining north, that too, from the domestic travel market. With the international traveller soon to touch Indian shores for our tropical winter season, business trends will positively implode further. Where then, is the bandwidth for introducing corporate social responsibility?

Yet, we need to note that delighting guests also encompasses delighted employees, for how can Guest Centricity exist without empowered, motivated, and delighted employees?

The ‘S’ in ESG is explained as the social aspect. This focuses on people and relationships and includes working to support equity, gender, inclusion, and diversity, in addition to enhancing guest delight and employee engagement.

Though Guest Centricity has of late, taken on the additional dimension of Corporate Social Responsibility through Environmental, Social, Governance (CSR-ESG), the basics of Guest Delight must still not be forgotten.

While enhancing Guest Delight is an art – a natural, and therefore intrinsic art for a few talented guest-centric associates, there is also a behavioural science backing this art.

Here is my must-have formula for Guest Centricity, which I exhort you to supplement and enhance.

SINCERE PERSONAL INTEREST IN GUEST WELL-BEING: Unless we really care for our guest’s well-being, we will deliver services clinically. Clinical service becomes procedural, and while it may satisfy the guest, it will not delight them. It is the convivial service that delights, and when delivered sincerely, with a personal interest for the guest, it is a clear winner. If the chicken and egg story confuses us, the Guest Delight saga need not do so… for guest delight clearly must come first, for supreme guest loyalty and word of mouth, higher sales and profitability, higher ratings, and motivated associates to follow, thereafter.

MOTIVATED ASSOCIATES: This has already been expounded as part of the ‘S’ of ESG.

EMPATHY: One of the most misunderstood concepts. It is easy to say ‘Empathy is all about putting yourself in another’s shoes.’ The challenge normally overlooked here is that before doing so, one has to remove one’s own shoes first! Only when one keeps aside one’s opinion, advise, and life-viewing prism can one truly get into the skin of the other person and understand their angst. There is this story about the hotel staff at a B&B in Canada who displayed solidarity with their guest, by shaving off their hair completely, when they got to know that a single father was bringing his son on R&R post his chemo. That is Empathy!

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: This encompasses the ability to perceive, reason with, understand, and manage emotions within yourself and others. While EI embraces all points mentioned in this list and is complex in its understanding; being emotionally intelligent to take responsibility for one’s mistakes and handle criticism maturely is directly connected to Guest Delight. Oft times ‘Guest Angst’ can be converted to Guest Delight. However, the logjam comes from justifying, instead of taking responsibility for the guest’s issues and handling feedback positively.

ACTIVE LISTENING: The most important subset of listening, Active Listening, entails Understanding before Responding. This cannot be compromised. Sadly, it is, at most times. Understanding includes the intent to understand (displayed by one’s body language) and the ability to understand. (Characterized by paraphrasing, questioning, and summarizing one’s understanding.) Only after doing all of this, should one Respond (agree, no judgement, or disagree)

Some of the most delightful guest interactions happen when the associate takes the effort to understand the guest before responding.

EMOTIONAL CONNECT WITH GUESTS:

Robin D’Souza, an Indian settled in Scotland, was a regular at The Leela Goa during my stint there. Amongst several regulars, I often interacted with him and his Scottish wife. I learnt that two decades prior, he was from my school and suburb in Bandra, Bombay (St. Stanislaus High School). We both were avid readers and fans of P.G Wodehouse, and this too drew us close, in spite of the several years and seas separating us! During one of our many conversations, Robin had reminisced of flying kites as a youngster; so, on his next trip, we organized the paraphernalia required for this sport (colloquially known as ‘phirkee with manja,’ along with a dozen colourful paper kites). On check-in, he was delighted and emotionally overwhelmed when he saw that besides the regular amenities, there were these multicoloured kites along with their trappings. His wife told me later that Robin actually cried when he saw these ‘thoughtful amenities,’ as they had evoked fond memories for him.

Guest Delight is ignited best by evoking a positive emotional reaction from a guest!

And, on a lighter note…
Chef Joe from Denver city
Was all for Guest Centricity
His version of Prairie Oysters
Deep-fried Bull gonads as starters
Delighted all guests blushfully
This article appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Sep 2022

Posted in Business, Leadership | Leave a reply

Gimme the right environment!

Gimme the right environment!

The despairing cry of many an employee before they eventually look for greener pastures elsewhere has been Gimme the right environment!

A lot has been written about the great exodus. No, I ain’t referring to Moses, or the wildebeest migrations of the Maasai Mara and Serengeti, or even the Pied Piper!

On the topic of the hospitality employee exodus, much water has flown under the bridge, and I will not squander words on the post-mortem of this skill-drain. Suffice it to say, the industry is almost up s**t creek as far as quality of skilled personnel.

While there are numerous possible solutions to tackle these, we are seeing the tried and tested path of talent search challenged by a diminished show of hands for positions that organisations are struggling to fill.

This long-term decay is the result of not listening to the employees crying out, “Gimme the right environment!

The Zoomers (aka Gen Z, born 1996 onwards) graduating from hospitality institutions do not see this industry anymore as the ‘promised land.’ The millennials (aka Gen Y, born 1981 – 1995) are a disillusioned lot after the treatment meted out to them over the past 2 pandemic years. And, the surviving Gen Xers (born 1965 – 1980) are striving for relevance and at times, even retention.

A millennial who works as an H.R. Manager for the corporate office at an international hotel conglomerate was sharing his angst with me recently. Having worked in this company for the past nine years, he has a brilliant future with the group, hence I was startled to note that he no longer felt like continuing with them.

The reason? He feels overworked, underpaid, and consequently, undervalued. His reporting boss, the V.P. – H.R., seems insensitive to a work-life balance and hearing his plaint of ‘gimme the right environment.’ He calls on holidays and weekends, for reports, and clarifications, and even gives assignments. He expects his people to work after hours and also loads my millennial friend with work assignments beyond his scope, as he is highly capable of doing so, when compared to all of his other colleagues. While my millennial friend values the learning he gets by going way beyond his job description, what really irks him, and is akin to rubbing salt on his wounds, is that his organisation, to match market remuneration, is hiring like positions for significantly higher salaries.

The result? Another one bites the dust, and the industry can notch up one more unwilling deserter! My millennial friend is now looking for a job without the industry, as he feels that working in other fields would be more rewarding, structured, and more work-life balanced.

A ‘brain drain’ is what is happening in our industry before our very eyes.

This is something we need to guard against; for, not only does this give us abysmal scores in employee retention, but also in talent attraction.

The culture of commodification and our old ways of operating stand in the way of differentiating hospitality organisations. This sustained traditional culture also does not foster active talent management and the meaningful personalised experiences that create return guests and make our businesses thrive.

While some factors are out of our control, what we can control is the pace at which we can stop, reflect, and feel for the benefit of our team members. They say, ‘Gimme the right environment.’ If we give them this, not only will it result in more engaged employees, but it may also just have the added benefit of helping an organisation stand apart from the pack of commoditization.

In my recent conversation with a senior and retired IHM principal, now heading a hotel management institute in Agra, I was aghast to hear that 40 of a batch of 60 Zoomers (students) who passed out this year, took up jobs in other industries, mainly retail.

The reason? Pretty much what one would expect: Salary not good enough, long working hours, poor work-life balance, and a lack of adequate rewards and incentives.

The result? Hospitality organisations are now going to regular colleges and non-hospitality institutions in remote areas to recruit staff; since they cannot find talent in regular hotel management institutions. Moreover, Zoomers are now preferring only white-collar jobs and refusing to slave it out at entry-level salaries. Consequently, hospitality organisations are now welcome only if they are sourcing for Management Trainees and the like.

We need to introspect on whether we are creating the right environment for our employees in today’s context.

After all, the work environment is now paraded outside of ‘glass doors,’ literally and figuratively. If an organisation’s environment is toxic, it is clearly bared on websites like ‘Glassdoor,’ which host employee reviews for companies they work in or have worked in.

So, how do we create the right environment? Are employee engagement initiatives, perks, work-life balance, and commensurate salaries and promotions the only way?

Along with all of this, employee empowerment is really the elephant in the room. To achieve this, one needs to work on the following, by asking oneself:

DO OUR EMPLOYEES KNOW:

WHAT TO DO: Do they know what is expected out of them, or are they just left at the deep end and asked to swim by themselves? Do they comprehend their Job Description clearly?

HOW TO DO: Do they have the skills and understand the processes (SOPs) to perform their job?

WHY TO DO: Do they understand why they do the tasks and why they need to do so? This defines the purpose for all tasks they are expected to do and is best channelled from the employee’s inner motivation and passion.

ARE OUR EMPLOYEES:

ABLE TO DO: Have they been trained/skilled to perform their tasks? And, having done so does the employee have the capability to perform the tasks. Do they have the Tacit Knowledge, aka Experiential Knowledge, i.e., knowledge, skills, and abilities one gains through experience that is often difficult to put into words or otherwise communicate?

ALLOWED TO DO: Are they empowered in their jobs, and are they given the requisite freedom to do so? The organisational motivation, culture, and ethos are what lubricates their empowerment, rather than SOPs.

Considering the way ahead, where employee-to-room ratios have come down and will now continue to be below pre-pandemic levels, assessing and then reacting to the above will improve efficiencies and effectively support lower employee ratios.

A hotel group for whom we recently did an L&D workshop, had its participants bemoaning the perceived lack of empowerment in the organisation. Having interacted with their ownership and COO over the past 8 years and conducted workshops with their teams, we found a dissonance with the ground-level managers asking for this empowerment. In this case, truth be said, the organisation is keen to empower, but the managers are waiting for some hand-holding for the same.

I say empowerment must also be taken (within reason, by the employees) and not just given by the ownership. So here is possibly a rare example of empowerment on offer, but not taken. Perhaps the management could single out ‘driven,’ self-motivated leaders from within to begin the process of empowerment from the top, by coaching and mentoring these select leaders for empowerment. The trickle-down effect would eventually happen, wherein employees watching these select leaders, would be encouraged to emulate their style.

‘Gimme the right environment,’ is the entreaty of the new age employee.

Hospitality organisations need to sit up and take notice, and consider their employees’ needs in the route given below:

  1. Physiological needs (Food, Hygiene, Mise-en-scène at the workplace),
  2. Safety needs (Emoluments, job security, safety)
  3. Their need to Belong (Diversity in the workplace, respect for all, trust, acceptance)
  4. Their Esteem needs (Workplace Recognition, Awards, etc.)
  5. Having achieved this, organisations would finally reach Employee Self-Fulfillment (an Empowering culture, Creative leadership, etc.), thus helping the employees to achieve their full potential, aka Self-actualisation.

The first four are the D-needs (deficit needs) and these must necessarily be fulfilled by organisations for employee basic needs satisfaction.

The fifth need of Self-actualization is highly individualistic, where the self is ‘sovereign and inviolable’ and entitled to their own tastes, opinions, and values, sometimes coined as ‘healthy narcissism.’ Here the employees pride themselves on their enablement, and this is the stage that an employee feels empowered to the fullest!

Here is an ode to the originator of this theory which applies to our current predicament…

Abe Maslow was a psychologist

A hierarchy of needs did he list

“Physical and Safety needs

Belonging and Esteem needs

Leads to self-actualisation,’ he hissed.

This article appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Aug 2022

Posted in Human Resources, Leadership | Leave a reply

Where are the Role Models Gone?

Where are the role models?

Where are the Role Models?

A Swiss hotelier, Chef Tim Madl
At work sought a good role model
He looked far and wide
Much in vain he tried
Then fumed off to the Alps to yodel!

Mentor, exemplar, paragon, shining example, star, hero, superstar, epitome, idol, motivator – these are a few words one may find in Thesaurus to synonymize someone worth imitating.

In a freewheeling conversation a few weeks ago, with an industry paragon, the former president of the Leela Palaces, Hotels & Resorts, Mr. Rajiv Kaul talked to me of hospitality industry professionals nowadays in search of good mentors. He likened it to Don Quixote attacking the windmills, mistaking them for giants. Mr. Kaul gently remonstrated, “where are the genuine role models, those industry stalwarts, gone?” He shared his angst at the fact that both domestically as well as internationally, he receives this feedback from associates working in the best of brands, constantly in the hunt for a genuine role model.

This set me pondering… are we barking up the wrong tree and being quixotic when we look far and wide, like Chef Tim Madl (in my limerick above), for a good role model?

Don Quixote, the paragon of chivalry, in the book by the same name, written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605 & 1615, battles the windmills as he believes them to be ferocious giants. He thinks that after defeating all of them, he will be able to collect the spoils and the glory as a knight. However, when he charges the ‘Giants,’ his lance gets caught in a sail, and he is knocked off his horse.

Many of us hoteliers battle our hospitality demons quixotically, hoping for mentoring and motivation, and leaders to coach us. Along the way, we are knocked off our steeds in this quixotic search. For, the truth is that Hook, Line, and Sinker Role Models (viz. perfect role models) are as hard to find as an ‘ignis fatuus,’ a ‘will-o’-the-wisp,’ or a ‘chimera.’

Is an ideal role model the real McCoy, in the hoteliering realm today?

I have never personally had an ‘ideal’ role model in my 23 years of active hospitality career, and most of us are probably in similar boats. Along the way, I realised I would have to create my role models from leaders around me… a ‘pick and choose’ if you please. Our industry is largely labour-intensive and there is no dearth of leaders to select ‘best practices’ from.

What stops us from identifying the good qualities of our leaders, and then emulating them into our hospitality DNA?

I had European bosses at one point in my career, and I noted them always bending and picking up paper trash while walking around the property… a sight to behold, as both towered over six feet tall. This discipline was wanting in my DNA, and in that of the 650 employees of our resort. Watching this humbling leadership trait, I followed suit, and soon, I noticed many people in my department doing so too! This has become a part of me now, and I do this wherever I go.

Antithetical to simply observing ‘best practices,’ I also advocate identifying ‘worst practices’ by looking to leaders with questionable praxis, to self-learn and pledge to yourself that you will never do what they do, even as you grow up the corporate ladder.

Here are personal examples of the benefit of identifying and utilising ‘worst practices.’

A General Manager I worked under, shunned meeting guests, perennially saying that he was busy. Another General Manager once told me that I could never hope to grow beyond the Head of Department level, as there would always be an expat in that position. These ‘worst practices’ of guest orientation and employee centricity spurred me to excellence, and I always made it a point to meet and make myself available to all my guests; and also, constantly exhort, coach, and motivate all subordinates in my organisation to grow.

Arguably, modelling yourself on your leader’s ‘best practices’ can be easier than modelling oneself by identifying and avoiding ‘worst practices.’

Why? Because at times you may have to go against the flow to avoid doing ‘worst practices,’ more so if your superior endorses these poor practices. Also, avoiding these bad practices is hard work, as opposed to following the right ones.

To illustrate my point, here is an example.

Sajid, an Executive Housekeeper worked at a luxury hotel in Chennai and saw his General Manager always avoiding meeting guests. He noticed that most of the HODs followed suit, and the complaining guest was often left to ‘dry on a hanger.’ He decided to go against the flow after watching this ‘worst practice,’ and made it a point to meet with all guests who wished to share their feedback. This was harder work than if he would follow his General Manager’s example. If conversely, his GM followed the ‘best practice’ of meeting with his guests, the HODs would do the same too, and Sajid would not have had to run from pillar to post, placating guests complaining about the hotel.

Hoteliering is a passion,’ opines Rajiv Kaul, and I concur to this with knobs on!

A manager who is not inspired, I guarantee you the fish stinks at the head,’ says Anthony Lark, who, at one time was the General Manager for Adrian Zecha’s first Aman resort, Amanpuri, in Phuket, Thailand, and who went on to open 3 Aman hotels thereafter. Strong words, perhaps, but the takeaway is that passion is one of the most important things to look for in a Role Model.

A role model Doyen must possess these Dozen ‘conditio sine qua non.’
  1. PASSION – This is underlying, and a must for all successful leaders.
  2. ONE WHO LEADS FROM THE FRONT – Leaders who follow the rules themselves, and who will never ask their subordinates to do something at work that they will not do themselves.
  3. CHANGE LEADER – Champions change, and is ever ready to innovate, especially in times of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity).
  4. RESPECT – Commands and gives respect.
  5. E.S.G. CHAMPION – Cares genuinely and acts positively for the Environment, Social, and Governance guidelines.
  6. DISCIPLINE – Self-care, self-discipline, respect of time (self & others), mastery of thoughts, focus, ability to resist impulses, and one who sees projects through to completion.
  7. COMMITTED – Focused Leaders honour their word, and always do what is promised. If unable to do so, they set re-aligned commitments as close as possible to the original commitment.
  8. ETHICS, HONESTY, FAIRNESS – Strong moral fibre, truthful, straightforward and honest, being mindful of the impact on others, not doing anything one wouldn’t like done to oneself, etc
  9. OWNERSHIP & ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY – Accepts one’s own, or team’s mistakes… Do not try to cover up mistakes or brush them under a carpet.
  10. EMPATHY – Tries to understand another’s point of view, and hears all sides; re-routes wherever feasible, to enhance productivity. More importantly, is caring and gives a hearing ear to others and their challenges.
  11. MOTIVATOR – Enthuses teams, appreciates their work, exhorts them with a vision to grow, and helps employees improve or sustain their performance.
  12. TRUSTWORTHY – Builds trust through deeds and actions, rather than through words. A ‘Rock of Gibraltar’ to people who rely on them.
‘Tis a Tall task worthy of a Tall Leader to have All these Tall Tenets!

Should you ever find such a leader, make the most of your time with them, as the odds are heavily stacked against you finding another such, in your career.

When you do not find the Ideal Role Model in your job, go ahead and use the ‘pick and choose’ option for emulating their ‘best practices,’ along with circumventing and learning from their ‘worst practices,’ to achieve excellence.

For those of you who have read my earlier blog in ET Hospitality World titled What would you like your WORK Tombstone to say?, you will note that the above ‘Dozen to be a Doyen’ leadership traits are what many of us would also want our people to remember us by.

And, as we look for all of these qualities in our Role-Models, remember that we also need to pay this forward, and one day become role models for others too.

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM June 2022

Posted in General, Leadership | Leave a reply

What would you like your Work Tombstone to say?

What would you like your Work Tombstone to say about you?

What would you like your work tombstone to say about you?

Imagine an epitaph inscribed, ‘I’m glad I gave my all to my job! Nothing else matters.’

Now visualise your life represented as a stove with four burners on it, each burner symbolising a part of your life. The first burner represents your family, the second burner your friends, the third burner your health, and the fourth burner your work. The Four Burners Theory by James Clair says that to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And, to be more successful you have to cut off two. The Four Burners Theory reveals a truth everyone must deal with: nobody likes being told they can’t have it all, but we all have constraints on our time and energy. Hence, every choice has a cost.

Which burners have you cut off? Are you aware of the burners you have cut off, and the consequences of the same?

Many of us turn on the work burner to a high flame in our 20s and 30s, alongside perhaps, the friends’ burner. By the 40s & 50s, the health and family burners generally get more active. Thereafter, the work burner largely fades, and the health and family and friends’ burners interplay. While this is not cast in stone, there are exceptions to the rule. Captain CP Krishnan Nair, the founder of the Leela Palaces and Resorts, is a prime example of this exception, who turned up his work burner to the highest level once he crossed 60, an age when most hang up their work boots. To some extent, this also applies to P.R.S. Oberoi, for he became more active in his golden years.

For most people, the perspective on life changes as one approaches the golden years.

Spirituality, happiness, peace, equanimity, a Zen-like attitude, work-life balance, and stress management, are the buzz-words for Gen Xers as they approach self-actualization. While some continue to keep the work burner in a conflagration mode, many begin to realise that time waits for no one, and they turn to their friends, family, and health burners, to achieve a different and more holistic purpose in life. The recent pandemic has also spurred this thinking, as many have lost friends or family over the past two years to this dreadful virus.

Albert Einstein was once staying at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel when a courier came to the door to make a delivery. The courier either refused a tip or Einstein had no small change, but Einstein wanted to give the messenger something nonetheless. So, on a piece of hotel stationery, Einstein wrote in German his theory of happiness: ‘A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.’ The bellhop saved this note. Subsequently, in an auction in Jerusalem, this note on happiness was sold to an anonymous European bidder for $1.56 million. Einstein was estimated to have an IQ of 160, but his Emotional Intelligence (viz. EQ – Emotional Quotient) seems pretty much to have been up there too, for he realised the worth of the pursuit of happiness over work success.

Whatever the choice one makes, one needs to make peace with it. There is no right or wrong choice, as long as one is content with the decision one makes on which burner to tend to.

However, whatever choice we make on which burner to concentrate on, one day, we will be in the past… whether work-wise or life-wise.

What would you then like your epitaph to say about your work achievements? What should your Work Tombstone say about you?

In the pursuit of this article, I called and spoke to several Vice Presidents, Managing Directors, and Entrepreneurs within the hospitality industry, and asked them what one legacy they would like to leave behind at their workplace, once they would graduate to the next phase of their lives, and what would they like their work tombstone to say about them?

A few wished to be remembered for their tenacity at work, their passion for excellence, or for giving their utmost (100%) to their jobs.

The majority spoke of professional soft strengths and ethical qualities they would like to be remembered for – being a great mentor, a caring leader, or a straightforward, fair, and honest leader.

How many of us can define our contributions to our jobs which are beyond the regular profitability parameters?

While, generating EBIDTA for our owners is important, and it is the primary reason for us being recruited for our jobs; it is the legacy of passion, ethics, impartiality, and mentoring that we will be remembered for.

Even as we are delighted and proud when our son or daughter is successful and seen as a ‘regular chip of the old block,’ we are also thrilled to see our legacies living on and practiced by people we may have mentored in our professional lives. More than achieving our work targets, the accomplishments of one’s mentees, which they duly credit to you, tend to give us much more far-reaching delight than other KRAs we may have achieved in our jobs.

Personally, my greatest joy is being remembered for the work I did, which has benefited my associates, colleagues, and teams. I am gratified when people come up to me and say that my passion and interest in their learning and development far outweigh any other work relationships they may have had with other leaders. And, I am equally elated when people remember me for my ethical qualities, rather than my professional achievements.

So, what keeps you ticking in your job?

What is the reason for your existence? What is it your Work Tombstone would say about you? For which attribute would you want to be remembered most? Your achievements for yourself, or your achievements for others?

On a lighter note, here’s a topical limerick I have composed for the occasion…

There was a hotelier from Boston
Who wrote his own tombstone
“I worked all hours, etched he
Not caring for friends or family
Now eventually, I’m all alone”

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM May 2022

Posted in General, Leadership | Leave a reply

What’s your BATNA?

What's your BATNA?

A BATNA, or Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement, represents the best option for either party in a negotiation if the talks fail. Known colloquially as ‘Plan B,’ this is your alternate plan when your negotiations begin to wobble out of control. It can also be your trump card to make the deal happen to your advantage. Having your BATNA prepared enables you to walk away from the deal altogether if it is not suitable for you.

In any negotiation, the party with the strongest BATNA has the least intrinsic incentive to come to an agreement, which means it can easily walk away from any agreement that it does not consider adequate. Think about the time you walked away from a street vendor while haggling for a price. As long as you genuinely walked away with no real intention of returning, you would receive the least possible price… but if you walked away hesitantly, the vendor would probably have given you a marginal discount, just to appease your ego.

Consider this example:

Assuming you may need the below products or services, grade the Seller’s BATNA in each of these situations (1 being the highest & 4 being the lowest)

  1. Retailers selling mobile phones
  2. Doctor prescribing medicines
  3. Mortician offering a variety of coffins
  4. Beautician offering a variety of hair treatments

Most would choose option 2 as the answer. However, let me put forth this extreme poser – do you not go for a second and even third opinion if your heart specialist asks you to immediately undergo a bypass operation for your clogged arteries? If so, then can we still say that the Doctor’s BATNA is infallibly strong?

You may have options on Retailers and Beauticians, but imagine option 4, wherein you have to organise a coffin for a recently deceased relative. Would you bargain or walk away from the seller if you felt he was asking too much? Are Coffin sellers available all over to choose from? Doesn’t sentiment take over reason sufficiently enough to override your misgivings over an expensive coffin? After all, time is of the essence, and a decaying corpse cannot be kept endlessly whilst you go from undertaker to undertaker attempting to wrestle a good price!

Peter Drucker was known for stating the obvious, ‘the purpose of a business is to create customers.Harvey Mackay famously wrote, ‘Take care of your customers or someone else will.

The idea of stating the above is to caption that a strong BATNA should never be misused, for the consequences of customer exploitation can be disastrous.

While working for a leading luxury hotel brand, and on a sales blitz to Mumbai many years ago, I met with several Key Decision Makers of corporates who expressed angst against our Bangalore Hotel for overcharging and pricing rates way above the Plimsoll mark. While these corporates were ready to pay a premium for luxury, they felt the rate negotiations were one-sided. Not only were the rates too high, the corporates felt that they received no significant benefits or preferential services while contracting. We were the closest hotel to the airport at that time, and there was no competition nearby. The traffic congestion on this airport road was very severe during peak times, and other hotels took over an hour to drop off or receive their guests. With such a strong BATNA, the hotel milked its customers for several years.

A few years later, the airport shifted to North Bangalore. The Result? Room, as well as F&B occupancies, dropped drastically overnight, and the hotel GM and sales teams had to go out and meet up with their ruffled corporate KDMs, to re-establish a sound bipartisan relationship… a process which took over a year to stabilise.

In the pre-Covid era, some hotels sacrificed their goose for its golden eggs, at the altar of instant gratification; by squeezing the client dry as long as their own BATNA was strong. After all, didn’t the clients squeeze them dry when their BATNA was high? Not anymore though, as all has changed over the past couple of years. With corporate travel just beginning to open up, hoteliers are busy vying for a share of the minuscule, but growing pie. With supply being far greater than demand, the obvious BATNA is firmly in the Client’s camp, for the nonce.

So, what must a Salesperson do to improve his/her BATNA?

  1. The first possibility is to strengthen one’s BATNA. The second way is to weaken the BATNA of the other side, or at least affect the other team’s perception of their BATNA.
  2. Ask what other options you might employ that could improve your bargaining position. Brainstorm the situation with all the key players in your organization. Your planning must also factor in the other negotiator’s priorities, interests, and options.
  3. Improve Your BATNA: Endeavour to expand your options. One possibility is to consider bringing more vendors or buyers into the mix. If you weaken the other side’s best alternative by adding valuable new terms to your offer, the game takes on a whole new slant.

The answers for the above lie in today’s reality, wherein hotels may strengthen their position (BATNA), by considering the following:

  • Most employees consider corporate travel a perk, millennials consider business travel an enriching experience, and frequent business travellers also feel more empowered and engaged. Can hotels use this nascent customer mindset to strengthen their BATNA?
  • Companies are desperately wooing their employees to prevent attrition in today’s scenario, where many are not keen on returning to offices. Companies will offer more flexible travel policies to their employees and even support blending business with leisure travel – Bleisure or workcations.
  • Work-from-home (WFH) will encourage localised corporate business.
  • Consider ESG Travel (Environmental for carbon footprint, Social, and Governance).
  • Pay attention to the Quality and Safety of Technology (Wi-fi) for online communication platforms.
  • Look at Immersive technologies, Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality – AR/VR technologies where people will be able to take a virtual tour of their hotels, for reassurance before travel.
  • Safety Initiatives – Travel managers will assess Travel Risk Management and see if the travel is essential, assess if the employee is fit to travel for their age, evaluate risks & business ROI for each trip, and do robust scenario planning. Apart from this, they will need to give employees the autonomy of managing their business trips
  • Travel patterns are resetting globally (leading to more international corporate travellers to India).

The battlefield landscape has changed and only the fit and adaptable will survive – Darwinism at its best! So, what’s your BATNA?

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM March 2022

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Felix Culpa

Ancient legends recount the tale of the immortal phoenix, a marvellous bird that rises from the ashes of its own funeral pyre.

According to these legends, when the bird senses that it is close to death it builds a bonfire from scented woods and myrrh and takes its place amidst the flames. After its body is consumed, a new phoenix emerges from the ashes of the old one.

Now that we seem to be done and dusted with the severity of the pandemic, it is time to rise like a ‘phoenix from the ashes.’

For this, we have to understand and accept ‘Felix Culpa’ with pragmatism, both from an individual and organisational perspective.

Felix Culpa is defined as an apparent error or disaster with happy consequences. Colloquially this may be condensed to a ‘Happy Fault.’ This is the Yin and Yang of Tao. The principle of Yin and Yang is that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites. The pairs of equal opposites attract and complement each other.

While I am loathe to crown the pandemic as ‘happy,’ it most certainly has been an aberration (aka fault) in our lives over the past two years

Can the pandemic, having wreaked its havoc, now open our minds to see the world differently? It already has!

From AI (artificial intelligence) to ML (machine learning), from IoT (internet of things) to VR (virtual reality), from digital wallets & payments to cryptocurrencies, from working formats to holiday formats, and from the value of life to the meaning of life itself, Felix Culpa is revealing its hand in the fastest-changing era ever seen in the history of this world.

Many of these terms may be paradoxical and even borderline oxymoronic… AI, VR, ML, working holiday. These have been in existence pre-covid19, yet they have all been accelerated by the pandemic.

Consider this ludicrous, whimsical, and oxymoronic statement: “The ‘tragic comedy’ is that the last couple of years has been ‘pretty ugly’, a ‘fine mess,’ and in fact ‘clearly confusing’ as to whether working in my ‘unpaid job’ was better than ‘doing nothing,’ and instead, existing as the ‘living dead;’ ‘silently screaming’ away while we were ‘social distancing’ ‘alone together’ and ‘peacefully battling’ Covid-19.”

Oxymorons may seem illogical at first, but in context they usually make sense.

  • The oxymoronic phrase of ‘working from home’ has opened a new vista of business for hotels. While leisure hotels benefit largely, this phenomenon is no stranger to city hotels either.
  • Business-leisure,’ another oxymoron, more popularly known as ‘Bleisure,’ is another oxymoronic trend, heightened now, thanks to the pandemic.
  • VR (Virtual Reality) has opened doors to more distanced, or even hybrid events… a new business segment birthed by Covid-19

What this tells us is that the newer oxymoronic-named business segments birthed and home-grown by the pandemic are not just ‘definitely possible;’ they may actually be paving us a ‘near-future’ path. That’s Felix Culpa working overtime!

In the hospitality industry, the last two years have enlightened and prodded many stakeholders to the potential and need for change.
  • For 5-star hotels, no longer is 1:2-2.5 the gold standard for employee to room ratios. Closer to home, in India, hoteliers have realised that they can work with far less… the bets are high that acceptable ratios will range between 1:1.5-2.0 once business kicks in. Even uber-luxe hotels will drop from 1:3.5 to 1:2.8. Felix Culpa at work!
  • Decreasing touchpoints with the customer for their comfort and ease has changed processes in most departments. Simpler and uncomplicated processes, often using technology, provide for fewer windows of interaction. The challenge here for hoteliers, of course, is how to keep the human element still contemporaneous for guests to enjoy the nuances of luxury service, while adequately ensuring non-invasive privacy and social distancing.
  • Guest needs and segmentation have changed. While certain segments have been hived into hibernation for the nonce, new potential business trends arising from this Felix Culpa are significant. Thus, for example, hybrid versions of weddings and MICE will keep business ticking, while hotels continue to innovate with the other new segments.
Ferrucio was a successful tractor manufacturer of humble origins in Northern Italy.

He was constantly irked by the poor clutch of his expensive 250GT Ferrari car, and tired of having to travel to Maranello to have it constantly replaced. He pursued his complaint to the point of meeting Enzo Ferrari – the founder of Ferrari. Here is where the story differs. Some say that Enzo never really respected any of his customers and dismissed Ferrucio’s complaint lightly. Others argue that it was Ferrucio’s agricultural background that offended Ferrari who couldn’t accept the idea that the tractor manufacturer knew more about cars than him. A third version of the story suggests that Ferrari simply didn’t see the problem with his car and insisted that the problem was in his thinking rather than in the 250 GT.

In every version of the story, Ferrucio Lamborghini was affronted, and this Felix Culpa led to him deciding to create a superior product that addressed all the flaws that Enzo Ferrari wouldn’t acknowledge.

And, just like that, Lamborghini was birthed from this ‘happy fault!’

Whilst we have had a tough 2020-21, and we may still need another year to recover, the phoenix is ready to rise from the ashes, and we can be optimistic of better days ahead.

Let this Felix Culpa give birth to a new age-hospitality phoenix, with enhanced and professional hospitality standards, systems, and processes!

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM February 2022

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Wanted – A Passionate Hospitality Salesperson

Wanted – A Passionate Hospitality Salesperson. 

Where has the passion of the salesperson gone? Or, was it ever there in the first place? Is glib-talking a pre-requisite of a salesperson? Does an MBA warrant a quality salesperson’s potential? And does experience suggest supremacy in the art of selling?

‘Madam, kindly grant me a couple of days to assess your requirement vis-à-vis other booking options we have – accordingly allow me to revert if we can permit your conference at our hotel,’ said the Sales Head of a 5-star resort hotel, glibly. While the terminology sounded very impeccable, there was no warmth or caring for the client’s needs in this script. Also, it stank of a shade of arrogance. This choice of words was sufficient to convince the ‘Key Decision Maker’ following up on a possible closure for a 250 room nights sales conference, that this was not the place for her requirement.

In a rare moment of candour, this senior corporate professional who books 1000+ room nights (international + domestic) annually for her company, confessed that she is still looking for a salesperson who cares for the client with a passion only superseded by that of a mother bear for her whelps! Wanted – A Passionate Hospitality Salesperson!

A truly wanted passionate hospitality salesperson brims with passion, has a caring heart, an unselfish attitude, and a desire for the client’s needs. When the customers feel this, they are more likely to be motivated to reciprocate and give the order to this salesperson. Helping customers succeed or get what they want is not being philanthropic. It is a powerful means of achieving one’s sales budget. That’s the paradox. The more important it is that one makes the numbers, the more important it is to stop concentrating on one’s budgeted targets, and start concentrating on the customer’s needs.

Here are some typical situations I notice happening far too frequently over the past few years.

  • The client calls the salesperson to elicit rates and details and is told the salesperson is in a meeting, sales review, or budget review.
  • The salesperson cuts the client’s call and sends a pre-set or automated message… then does not call back.
  • The client does not get a revert from the salesperson, even though it was promised in a specified time.
  • No apology is forthcoming for the delay in revert, nor any intimation from the salesperson as to when they will now revert.
  • The client is connected to the Sales Head, who diverts the query to a team member, then disconnects from the conversation thread, rationalising that their underling is now handling it.

It would be an interesting exercise to audit the client’s impression of the salesperson handling the client’s account. Startling revelations may tumble out and help hotel leaders re-engineer their sales orientation. When we take guest feedback for departments and people in our hotel, why should we not do the same for our corporate and MICE clients in their dealings with our salespeople? This way, we would identify the truly wanted and Passionate Hospitality Salespersons from amongst the team.

So, where has the passion of the salesperson gone? Or, was it ever there in the first place? Is glib-talking a pre-requisite of a salesperson? Does an MBA warrant a quality salesperson’s potential? And does experience suggest supremacy in the art of selling?

Skills are cheap, Passion is priceless,’ says Gennady Vaynerchuk, a successful Belarusian-American entrepreneur.

This brings me to the Root Cause Analysis as to why a Passionate Hospitality Salesperson is a rarity and is so wanted! After coaching sales teams and conducting numerous sales seminars over the past decade, my understanding of this issue is far greater than when I was a General Manager with sales teams reporting to me. I have also been fortunate to meet some passionate salespersons during this time, albeit far less in numbers than I would have expected.

I enumerate below, the possible reasons for this ‘lack of passion.’

  1. Has the salesperson entered the profession by intent or by default? Most salespersons enter the selling space without initially planning to do so. While this is not inherently wrong, and also happens with other disciplines, it limits potential performance vastly. In our industry, graduates who take up Food Production (Kitchen), Front Office, F&B, Spa, and even Housekeeping, normally opt for these verticals knowing what these departments entail. Not so in Sales, as they normally do not get industrial experience in this line.
  2. No takers for ‘sweat & toil’ field jobs. For hospitality sales, where personal connect will remain the ‘sine qua non’ for successful client relationships, one nowadays observes the hotel salesperson preferring to connect online from the office, rather than trudging over to the client’s office… There are enough excuses not to meet personally, what with alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and now omicron!

Of course, all this may sound Greek to Eureka Forbes (market leaders in water purifiers and vacuum cleaners), who has been a pioneer and trendsetter in direct sales in India and is amongst the larger direct-selling companies in the world. The company has gradually extended its sales efforts online, but it has not given up on its ‘tried & tested’ direct selling model. So now they connect with potential customers online, get a prior appointment, and then visit their homes. But all this is hard work and not for the faint-hearted.

  1. No allure in Sales Jobs. Pre-Covid, my business partner hosted a sales seminar series with three different management institutes. The students were to graduate with an MBA in Sales and Marketing. He asked the participants which vertical they were interested in opting for, now that they were almost ready to graduate. The majority raised their hands for Marketing, then Advertising, then Brand Management, then Product Management, then P.R. & Marcom. Finally, only 3-5% raised their hands for a career in sales!
  2. India has yet to offer a concerted MBA graduate program for Sales. The closest it comes to it, is an MBA in Sales & Marketing. While we know that these are two distinct topics, the institutions are yet to act on this and create separate streams. The students are more attracted to Marketing, even as a moth to a star… (remember the English poet Percy Shelley,who saw the moth’s desire for the light of the stars as a symbol of our heart’s desire for something distant, maybe even transcendent?)
  3. Recruitment considers Degrees, Experience, and Personality. I have interacted with extremely proficient salespersons having moderate education and linguistic skills, but who are super-stars in their organisation. H.R. departments know that these unpolished jewels are star performers. Yet, I find that organisations still recruit for skill over will. In spite of experiencing great sales performers who do not necessarily have the H.R. job specifications, this does not change the mindset of the recruiter, and the malaise continues – thereby building a plethora of nonpassionate salespersons in the field. Would it not make sense to brush and polish the passionate salesperson, instead of concentrating on the stylish, yet ineffective one?
  4. A high churn in Sales. This department suffers from one of the highest employee turnovers. Adequate options, burgeoning competition, the lure of better salaries, a demanding work landscape, a perceived lack of development, and an escape from performance review (especially for salespeople who have been promising business thus far eluding them as the ‘will-o’-the-wisp.’) are reasons enough for this high churn.
  5. Are we at fault in this, as leaders?
    • How often have salespeople been told that to be considered good at their job, they need to have the skill set to sell ice to an Eskimo, or a comb to a bald man? Salespeople believe that they need to be slick talkers, and be able to talk a dime a dozen to impress their clients. Sadly, both these beliefs are incongruities, and they instead end up antagonizing the client. This philosophy propagated by leaders stuck in a time-warp when demand was greater than supply, is one of the principal reasons why clients avoid salespeople.
    • As an organisation, do we develop our sales team on a continuous basis? Most salespersons find themselves intermittently developed, with ‘training’ conceived in organisations, more as a KRA rather than an ethos. How can a training workshop, for example, be effective if given once in 3-4 years only? Most sales-people we ask, tell us that this is the average gap since the last time they attended a sales-training intervention.
    • What accountability do we proportion to the salesperson for the development we have initiated for them? Do we review their learnings, to ensure an adequate ROI on their development cost?
    • Do monetary incentives always work? In the months when sales budgets are steep, the mediocre salesperson does not seriously attempt to achieve it, as he/she knows that incentives cannot be achieved. In lean months they work to achieve their incentives, as budgets are lower. For the nonpassionate salesperson, if they get incentives in half the number of months in a year, with a marginal effort, they are gratified.

We need to ask ourselves tough questions which may help us understand why our sales teams are not passionate and ‘cutting the mustard,’ as desired by the organisation. Can we better motivate them and achieve higher retention of our sales teams? Can we feed their passion for the customer rather than only talk of sales figures they need to attain? Can we also lead from the front and keep the customer ahead?

Achieving organisational revenues by selling to the customer resembles the ‘chicken and egg’ story – a metaphorical adjective for a causality dilemma… Which one comes first?

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM December 2021

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Of Waffles, Baggage, and More…

Customer delight goes way beyond regular SOPs.

Breakfast at a luxury resort… somewhere in India

“Can I have a waffle please?” asks a young, sarong-wrapped guest gaily, looking excited to be in this environment on her family holiday.

“Yes Madam.” says the young chef at the waffles and pancake counter. There were a host of toppings on offer, though not of the frozen variety.

“Can you put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it?” asks Ms. Sarong, demurely.

“No Madam, we do offer ice creams at lunch and dinner buffets, but not at breakfast,” answers the budding chef.

Ms. Sarong persists, “But can you not serve my waffle with a scoop of vanilla ice cream?”

The young waffle & pancake chef chimes a collective ‘nix,’ ‘nada,’ and ‘nyet,’ by uttering “Sorry Madame.”

A last-ditch effort by the petite sarong-wrapped damsel floored me (I happened to be waiting to order my waffle, and hence had a birds-eye view)… she told the ‘The Rock of Gibraltar’ chef coyly, “It is my birthday today.”

The Rock wavered for a moment, batted his eyelid, and then continued to stick his feet in, refusing to budge from his Saran-wrapped position. “Sorry madam, I cannot serve you ice cream at breakfast,” he averred.

T’was a wretched sight to see the guest agreeing to the ‘Waffle a la mode du Chef Rock of Gibraltar,’ as she traversed dejectedly back to her table, to anticipate an average breakfast on the beginning of what was supposed to be a celebratory day for her!

There is a chance that this guest may go elsewhere the next time.

Moral: Guests may forget what the hotel associate says, but they will never forget how the hotel made them feel.

Check-in at an airport counter… also, somewhere in India

“Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of travelling is to travel without baggage” … Henry David Thoreau.

Alas, Henry never married, and hence probably did not fathom the lady traveller!

On a busy pre-Dassehra weekend, I had a first-hand experience of revenge travel mayhem at an airport. I was standing in an abominably long line, awaiting my turn at the check-in counter.

I finally pushed ahead to the counter, and asked the gaunt, harassed check-in counter assistant about my flight. He claimed he had already called out for passengers for my destination, and now the counter had closed for my flight. Reminding him that we were still 50 mins from the flight, I asked how he could dare close the counter before time. I put my luggage on the belt and insisted he check us in.

Looking for an excuse to stall us, he told me our single suitcase weighed 30 kg. I told him it was so, as we were two passengers. He objected, splitting hairs on the fact that we had two separate PNRs, which permitted us to have one bag each of 15 kgs. As my wife and I were the travellers, I asked him what the problem was, so long as we had 30 kgs between the two of us. He continued reading me the rule book. Amidst this arguing, he nevertheless printed the baggage tag and initiated the process of handing over the stub.

My wife, standing afar thus far, and understandably cheesed at this Balaam’s ass’ stuck-up behaviour, vented her exasperation on his comportment. This annoyed our Paper-Tarzan at the counter, and he audaciously tore the just-printed luggage stub, telling me that now he was not checking our luggage in. I had to bite in my angst and apologise to PT, who was probably weighed down by his own emotional baggage, and request him to re-issue the luggage stub. PT did so, grumbling away, and then nearly threw his back out while trying to straighten the bag on the belt whilst attaching the stub… retribution from the skies I guess!

Moral: Keep your ego aside while dealing with a customer. Standard Operating Procedures must delight and not red-tape the customer.

Standard Operating Procedures, aka SOPs, define a path, a process for associates to walk on. However, the service industry must realize that SOPs have the ability to frustrate the customer, aka guest; and must be flexible to the guest and situation, keeping within acceptable parameters.

The service industry promises features, advantages, and benefits. Somewhere it has lost out on delighting the customer! Customer delight may vary from person to person. At an airline check-in counter, customer-orientated processes along with conviviality are sufficient at most times. Yet, how often do we ask for seats of our choice and are told by the airline associate that the flight is sold out; then board the aircraft, only to discover empty seats galore?

Customer delight goes way beyond regular SOPs. Decades ago, it was sufficient to be proficient with SOPs in order to delight a customer. Not anymore. The traveller today expects to be delighted impromptu. No longer does the customary complimentary cake delight the guest on their special occasion… they want an in-the-moment delightful experience.

They need ice cream on their waffle!

Why the kerfuffle
Over a waffle
Or, the commotion
Over a check-in
Put the guest ahead
Don’t be pig headed
Follow SOPs
Yet, delight to please

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM October 2021

Posted in General, Leadership | Leave a reply

A Shared Vision enhances Profitability

A Shared Vision enhances Profitability, and it is what you and your team members want to create or accomplish as a part of the organization.

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 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 did he fare? Semco’s revenues subsequently 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 3000, with an employee turnover of about 1 percent.
Ricardo Semler’s leadership style can best be described as radical. This approach encourages followers to share their ideas and apply their creativity and ingenuity to reach the company’s goals. The employees have the opportunity to offer suggestions to improve the company.

Findings through a survey by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman revealed that People leave Managers, not Companies.’ This apophthegm is one we all have heard of, and is oft-repeated; yet strangely, it is referred to others rather than to oneself!

Henry Ford said once, ‘if everyone moves forward together, then success takes care of itself.’

Beyond a point, an employee’s 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.

Jack Welch of GE once said, ‘Much of a company’s value lies between the ears of its employees. If its bleeding talent, its bleeding value.’

Ponder for a moment the cost of losing a capable member of staff. The cost of substitution entails:

  • The cost of not having someone to do the job in the interim
  • The cost of recruiting, and then skilling the new incumbent
  • The loss of the company’s reputation (Every person who leaves a corporation becomes its representative, for better or for worse)
  • The loss of clients and contacts the replaced person had with the industry
  • The loss of morale amongst co-workers
  • The loss of trade secrets this person may possibly share with others

Too often, Shared Visions really mean, ‘I have a vision; you share it!’ 

A General Manager of one of India’s 5-star hotel chain worked hard at bringing up his ageing hotel’s brand equity in the market. From an ARR of ₹5600, he took it up to ₹7560 over 24 months, with a slew of efforts. He facilitated the improvement of the brand’s perception in the city – interestingly by staging niche F&B events, P.R. interactions, Revenue Management interventions, involved Guest interaction, and through intense sales and behavioural Training for his team. Unfortunately, the ownership did not share his progressive vision of differential pricing to achieve a better RevPAR. Instead, they insisted that rates should not be offered below a mandated level of ₹7500/+ taxes including breakfast. The owners forcibly cancelled all signed RFPs (including those producing 500 – 2500 room nights per year) and Travel Agent contracts and made the hotel sales team create new contracts which most clients refused to sign. The result? Irate clients (Corporate/Travel Agencies, etc) took their business elsewhere. All this occurred at the beginning of a financial year, and the repercussions were immediate. From a top line of ₹63 crores (ARR ₹7560), the hotel dipped to ₹45 crores (ARR ₹5200) over the next 3 years (incidentally, all this was pre-pandemic, when business elsewhere was stable, if not increasing).

The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a Shared Vision. 

On the other hand, another hotel owner I know shares his vision and allows the operator to function with optimum freedom, his only caveat being that major policy decisions be discussed with him, for his opinion. The General Manager is equally competent as in the earlier example – the difference here is that in this second case, the owner and operator work towards a shared vision. The operator also shares this collective vision with his team. It is no wonder that the top line grew y-o-y at 12-15% pre-Covid. [In fact, during the current pandemic, the hotel has managed to stay out of the red, thanks to innovative changes in the hotel’s business plan, expense reengineering, and operating policies]

Peter Senge, the author of The Fifth Discipline identified ‘Shared Vision’ as one of the five disciplines necessary to create a learning organization. A dynamic organization adapts and transforms itself to function effectively in a complex and dynamic world. These are organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results that they truly desire, where new and expansive thinking patterns are nurtured, where collective aspirations are set free, and where people are continually learning to see the ‘big picture together.

A Shared Vision must be strongly evoked by all leaders on the team, and be capable of driving them relentlessly, if need be, towards a common goal. A quote attributed to Helen Keller says, ‘The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.’ To rephrase this quote in the context of Shared Vision, it would stand as, ‘The most pitiable organization is one who can see, but has no vision.’

A Shared Vision enhances Profitability, and it is what you and your team members want to create or accomplish as a part of the organization. It is derived from common interests and a sense of shared purpose for all organizational activities… and leads to sustained profitability. 2000 years ago, the Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu said, ‘Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say: We have done this ourselves.’

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM September 2021

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Will the Hotel Salesperson ever get obsolete?

Circa 1991, when just an Assistant Manager in the F&B department of The Oberoi Towers, Mumbai – I was summoned to the office of Mr. S.M. Datta, Chairman – HLL (now H.U.L) by his Executive Assistant to discuss plans for a business lunch. I casually strolled across to the HLL building and met his E.A. who, without any further ado, introduced me to Mr. Datta. I spent a good 15 minutes with the chairman, understanding his requirements and then strolled back to work, to initiate the execution for his lunch event.

It never struck me how fortunate I had been to have gained entry to an office, which the most experienced and accomplished sales head would consider hallowed ground! In those days, there was very little competition, and I was a cog in arguably the country’s most professional hotel company – hence I took this tryst for granted.

Today’s scenario is a far cry from those days. Competition has mushroomed, and how! Customers have the upper hand, and they are spoilt for choice; even as hotel products are fast becoming commodities, and the digital age is ushering in a ‘selling from a distance’ mode.

In the Indian hospitality context, salespeople had to struggle less in the 1990’s, while the 2000’s brought in more competitive field battles. This acutely intensified in the second decade (2010’s) of the third millennium. The current and third decade (2020’s) has been augmented by the pandemic, and the entire sales model has taken on a different hue. Are we now seeing signs of a possibly exacerbated demise of the conventional salesperson?

A star salesperson’s results have always been the exponentiation of Motivation, Activity Level, Direction of Efforts, and Effectiveness.

“Hard Work for the Unutilized-Talent-Salesperson,” and “Smart Work for the Work-Horse-Salesperson” is the success mantra for a successful sales team, made up of assorted performers.

Today’s salesperson deals with a different market. Hotel General Managers, Sales leaders, and Owners that we talk to, mention a transmogrified segment of source business, and clientele with diametral needs. No longer can salespeople be reactive and work like order-takers. Salespeople need to come out of their comfort zone, and be pro-active in this ‘new-normal market.’

In his book ‘All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,’ Robert Fulghum explains how the world would be improved if adults adhered to the same basic rules as children. Likewise, salespeople must appreciate that they need to get their basics right, in this new adjusting world.

One of the concerns we are often asked to mitigate while designing and delivering a sales intervention workshop for a hotel sales team, is how to craft conversations with a senior resource of a corporate. Hotel Owners, Sales Leaders, and General Managers bemoan the fact that their sales team members are relatively inarticulate when meeting with a company’s senior most Decision Maker. Through decades of conducting such programs, and having interacted with thousands of salespeople, we find that interactive conversational skills by most salespeople lack the following:

General Awareness: It still surprises me to note that by a show of hands in any session, approximately 2 of 15 participants read the newspaper, daily. Another 5-7 claim to read it online in bits and parts – these when probed further, have no real depth of knowledge of current news. Specific awareness of any industry visited, along with the overall economic scenario, is a sine qua non for any salesperson. How otherwise then, can they have a cultured tête-à-tête with a well-travelled C-Suite leader?

You, before I pattern: Even as the word ‘business’ has u before i, a smart salesperson understands that putting the client first will eventually help in achieving business targets. Sadly, often salespeople kill the golden goose to take all its gilded eggs at one go!

Creating Trust: This is defined by the salesperson establishing commonalities, showing positive intent, and through trust transferred by the brand represented by the salesperson, its people, or its customer-speak.

Creating a connect: The salesperson who invests time and integrity into his client relationships will tower over colleagues. Mark McCormack in his book “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School” cites an interesting observation all salespeople would do well to reflect upon: “All things being equal, people will do business with a friend; all things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend.”

Salespeople sell three things: their product, their company, and themselves. Selling themselves is actually the differentiator, as products and companies tend to be similar. Can the salesperson become an enabler-assister offering altruistic support? If so, then the ubiquitous salesperson now advances from being a hunter-gatherer to a trapper, ensuring long-term business relationships with clients.

Talking less: How often have salespeople been told that to be considered good at their job, they need to have the skill set to sell ice to an Eskimo, or a comb to a bald man? Salespeople also believe that they need to be slick talkers, and be able to talk a dime a dozen to impress their clients. Sadly, both these beliefs are incongruities, and they instead end up antagonizing the client. Remember, the empowered client now lives in an era where social media is stronger than direct communication with the company… a progressive take on the metonymic adage ‘the pen is mightier than the sword.’

Listening to the client: Talking less definitely helps salespeople concentrate more on their listening skills. To hone this, they need to first understand what the client is saying, before responding with their opinion. Here, their body language and ability to understand, need to be attuned to client-needs, rather than their own. Savvy hospitality companies today, are capturing digital signals on websites, to hear from customers in real time, what information they need upfront to be informed enough to successfully complete transactions. Needless to say, if the digital world is doing this, the human interface needs to do this more so, to stay ahead of the curve.

Adept probing skills: Asking situation questions and problem questions is a skill yet to be mastered by many a salesperson. Post trust-building, and creating a connect, the salesperson must understand the client’s clear and strong needs through skillful probing; using open, closed, and leading questions – with the clear intent of using the answers gleaned, to resolve the client’s challenges.

Decades ago, the telephone operator was replaced by the EPABX. At the turn of the new millennium, computer salesmen grew redundant thanks to commoditization of the laptop. Today, the famed Mumbai Dabbawallas are having an axe to grind with food aggregators Swiggy, Zomato and the likes.

Digital Marketing is the current big innovation. Using AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning) and IoT (internet of things), Digital Marketing is challenging the traditional ‘hunter-gatherer’ salesperson, and is already beginning to perform the role of the ‘digital hunter-gatherer.’

Half a century ago, legendary business thinker Peter Drucker said, “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him or her and sells itself.

So, should the salesperson worry about redundancy?

Is the digital age a clear and present danger to the universal salesperson?

The answer lies in how the salesperson attempts to stay relevant, so as to continue to exist, and in fact, flourish. Value creation is still within the sphere of the human intellect, and salespeople will always exist as long as they can create a higher value in the customer’s mind – greater than that within the product.

In order to stay ahead of the tech-age, salespeople need to append the farmer mode to their hunter-gatherer approach. Farmers (in the sales context) are specialists at servicing the existing customer base; keeping relationships going, and staying attuned to opportunities to sell to it again. This will be hard for machines to emulate.

The left brain (aka digital brain) deals with linear thinking, while the right brain (aka analog brain) emanates creative or spiral thinking. As of today, the IoT is taking over left-brain tasks. Right-brain tasks are yet very much exclusively within the human domain. What salespeople need to do is to complement their left-brain along with their right-brain, to maintain selling dexterities that cannot be mimicked by machines.

No longer are salespeople required to simply take orders. They need to ‘value-create’ inspired solutions that will benefit both, the client, as well as the hotel.

It would bode well for the salesperson to be cognizant of this!

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Aug 2021

 

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Adapt or Perish

H.G. Wells famously wrote, “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.”

This quote (Adapt or Perish) very tastefully summarizes evolution itself. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus never ceases to adapt, but then, neither must we.

Flux is always unsettling, and most find it undesirable. However, inaction could mean death. The international business world abounds with faux pas made by business leaders, leading to the demise, or de-growth of their business.

  • Steve Sasson, the Kodak engineer, actually invented the first digital camera back in 1975. The leaders of Kodak failed to see digital photography as a disruptive technology. They were comfortable with their achievements in the film market and thus missed the digital revolution after starting it. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
  • Once worth $125 billion, Yahoo eventually sold to Verizon for less than $5 billion. Yahoo, in 2002 almost had a deal to buy Google, but the CEO of Yahoo refused to go through with it. And in 2006 Yahoo had a deal to buy Facebook, but when Yahoo lowered their offer, Mark Zuckerberg backed out. If Yahoo had taken a few additional risks, we would all be yahooing right now instead of googling.
  • Xerox was the first to invent the PC, and their product – the Xerox Alto, released in 1973, was way ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the management thought going digital would be too expensive and they never bothered to exploit the opportunities they had. They were convinced that the future of Xerox was in copy machines. Xerox failed to understand that one cannot perpetually make money on the same technology.

We have interesting corporate gaffes within India too.

  • For those of us growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, Onida was the go-to brand when it came to home-grown electronic appliances. However, the company failed to adapt post-liberalization. A combination of internal issues within the owning family, failed advertising, new entrants in the industry, an ageing customer base, and poor after-sales service led to its downfall.
  • Tata Nano was a revolutionary innovation; but it was an idea, which failed to align with a changing India, burgeoning with an aspirational lower middle-class population. Being marketed as the ‘Cheapest Car of the Nation’ backfired. The makers positioned it as a cheap vehicle which, in India, translates to low quality. In a country where emotions play such a vital role in everything, this disconnect spelled doom for the Nano before it even hit the roads.
  • The downfall of Kingfisher airlines from being India’s most premium airline, was due to its refusal to adapt to the vortex of business forces, coupled with egoistic decision-making by its flamboyant owner. Acquiring the loss of Air Deccan, the sudden launch into the international arena, the change in segments giving rise to competition, along with external dynamics like the rising cost of aviation fuel, and the company’s inability to follow the ‘adapt or perish’ lessons on adopting cost-saving initiatives for survival led to its demise.

The need to ‘adapt or perish’ in the context of Indian hospitality, is accentuated through umpteen examples of businesses perishing due to in-flexibility, a fixed mindset, and resistance to change.

Some promoters have realised the essentiality of instituting a professional team, distinct from the family, running the show. The particularly applies to investor-led hotel companies, who insist on a professional approach and team, to increase their returns in as short a time as possible.

Alas, there are many who believe that ‘papa knows best.’ These owners refuse to delegate decision-making to their ‘Papier-mâché’ board. Today’s market is abuzz with news of one of India’s 5-star family-run hotel chain prospecting for suitable buyers for its prime properties. While Covid-19 has already broken the back of several small hotels which have given up the ghost, and are scouring buyers; a professionally managed larger hotel chain should certainly have had a better chance at survival. If only they had evolved from a feudal approach to a professional mindset!

Mövenpick Hotels entered India over a decade ago, with ambitious plans to grow in several destinations pan-India, once they would consolidate their flagship hotel in Bangalore. While Mövenpick Bangalore opened in 2011, the company’s vision perished over the next few years. Kicking the India-bucket, they exiting in just over six years. The reason? They failed to give India its due as a fathoming hotel market with a growing expertise and potential for quality. While Mövenpick Hotels are an established Swiss hotel chain, they failed to adapt to the Indian market. Their apparent detachment and relative indifference for their pilot project in this country were the reasons the owners eventually dispensed with their services.

Adapting does not necessarily mean going along with concurrent success stories. Adapting may also necessitate going against the grain, whilst incorporating a protracted vision of the market.

Ninety years ago, Ellsworth Statler, father of the modern American hotel industry, was quoted as saying “There are three things that make a hotel famous – location, location, location.” Yet, Capt. C.P. Krishnan Nair selected sites for the first 3 hotels of his hotel group – The Leela group (Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore) totally against the grain of ‘location, location, location.’

Capt. Nair, a feisty hotelier, knew how to roll with the punches. While choosing locations for new properties in Mumbai and Bangalore, he was able to foresee that an emerging India needed luxury hotels closer to the airport. In the case of Goa, he foresaw the need for a pristine location in the south, far from the madding crowd of the then internationally branded, North Goa hippy culture. In all three locations, their hotels had a first mover’s advantage, as there were no luxury brands there. By going against the grain, until the competition eventually came up several years later, the group had a chance to milk revenues in a relatively monopolistic micro-market, and consolidate.

Today’s environment has spurred the industry to innovate. Who knows – the new mantra for successful hotels will probably change from ‘location, location, location’ to ‘innovate, innovate, innovate’!

An example of this is ‘Bungalow Stays,’ where due to the pandemic-induced social distancing, travellers now prefer exclusive stays in spaces enhanced by space and natural surroundings. The bane of the hotel industry – Airbnb, and it’s like, have more of an edge in today’s environment. The hotel industry can no longer claim that such disruptors do not affect them. After years of denial, the hotel industry is now onboarding this segment… ‘Adapt or perish’ is being taken more seriously, and large international chains like Marriott, Hyatt, & Accor have already begun dabbling in extended stay hotels, short-term rental markets, and private residence rentals.

It is for the hotel industry to take the bait and innovate. Today, one is seeing smaller uber-luxury hotels, with single-digit keys mushrooming up, to adapt to customer needs, accelerated by the pandemic. The ‘One Key Hotel service’ of Postcard Hotels allows one to book out any of their Goa hotels, to holiday in complete privacy with friends and family. One Key – and the entire hotel is yours. So why just book a room? Book the entire hotel, is their clarion call.

IHCL (Taj group of hotels) has emerged from its chrysalis over the past two decades. The turnaround, scripted by its recent and present leadership has converted what was once a traditionally run organization to a progressive hospitality outfit. Recently crowned the world’s strongest hotel brand by ‘Brand Finance,’ they have ventured into new age spaces with in-depth market study backed by its 115-year-old legacy. The company is creating experiences for guests through their newer brands like SeleQtions, amã Stays & Trails, Food trucks being launched in various cities, Qmin – their signature food delivery platform, etc.

Evolve Back Resorts recently ran an ingenious one-time, and time-bound coupon sale. Proffering up to 25% discount on its regular tariff, customers could redeem their purchase till Mar 2023, and even ask for the money back if they were unable to travel. This mopped up within a short period, a substantial chunk of their annual revenue, and more importantly, revived their cash flow. Such a model sits at the intersection of customer loyalty, revenue, and cash flow – guaranteeing business for as long as a customer is locked in – making the benefits of the model obvious.

A newer reference in the hotel trade for ‘Adapt or Perish,’  lies in Sustainability – the next big word in the industry. We will see more organizations looking to sustain the Environment, Communities, and Economy, aka – Planet, People, and Profit.

Hyatt’s ‘Environmental Sustainability Strategy’ and ‘Hyatt Thrive,’ along with Accor’s ‘Planet 21’ program are a testimony to efforts being made in this direction.

Changing regional dynamics and consumer behaviour in different cultures can make it tricky for even the biggest businesses to understand and adapt to. In that sense, the pandemic has been a unifier. If one is willing to keep customer’s needs and expectations at the apex, the rest ain’t rocket science!

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Jul 2021

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The Catspaw Chronicles

Over a century ago, children’s author Aesop relates a fable of the monkey, the cat, and the chestnuts.

Once upon a time a Cat and a Monkey lived as pets in the same house. They were great friends and were constantly in all sorts of mischief together. What they seemed to think of more than anything else was to get something to eat, and it did not matter much to them how they got it.

One day they were sitting by the fire, watching some chestnuts roasting on the hearth. How to get them was the question.

“I would gladly get them,” said the cunning Monkey, “but you are much more skillful at such things than I am. Pull them out and I’ll divide them between us.”

Pussy stretched out her paw very carefully, pushed aside some of the cinders, and drew back her paw very quickly. Then she tried it again, this time pulling a chestnut half out of the fire. A third time and she drew out the chestnut. This performance she went through several times, each time singeing her paw severely. As fast as she pulled the chestnuts out of the fire, the Monkey ate them up.

Now the master came in and away scampered the rascals, Pussy Cat with a burnt paw and no chestnuts.

Therein originated the phrase “I was used as a catspaw.”

How often have you been used as a catspaw in your various jobs? As a General Manager, I was given to sign termination letters and file cases against various employees who had rubbed the owner on the wrong side. Sometimes I may not have agreed with the harsh step taken, but job insecurity may frankly have led me to comply – not my proudest moments for sure!

I was used as a catspaw!

We all have our values, our code of ethics, our ways of looking at life… yet moments arrive when we find ourselves being used as a catspaw.

You may relate to situations like these:

  • Your client gets a kick-ass deal out of you, promising you loads of business; only for you to find out later that future business prospects from this company are very low.
  • Your colleague convinces you against your better wishes to go along with their plans or ideas.
  • Your subordinate entices you into approving their leave with flimsy excuses, and you do so to gain their approval.
  • Your boss, or even colleague, gets you to do their work using flattery to keep you motivated…
  • Your boss takes your idea and implements it without giving you due credit.
  • Your superiors may be nice to you only because they need something from you, and not necessarily due to affection or care for you. If you are the front person for your company, oft and on, you could be told to misrepresent a situation, even though it may be against your ethical code.

All of the above may happen, but at a cost to you. Remember how pussy’s catspaw was singed while pulling out chestnuts from the fire for the monkey?

On the flip side, once we are done with admonishing the memories of our ill-users, for using us as a catspaw in the past – let us honestly look into the same past and acknowledge wherever we may have done likewise!

  • Have you ever sweet-talked your team members and cajoled them into putting in extra hours or effort into achieving what you know is your own Key Result Areas, and subsequently not rewarded them for the same? I have seen managers justifying this by saying that since they were never specifically rewarded when they had slogged for their growth, why should their subordinates expect any better?
  • A Salesperson over-promising and under-delivering. Is it possible that in such a situation, the client may feel that he has been used as a catspaw? Remember, the client’s performance rating in their own company is indirectly dependant on the services received from your contracted services. For, if delivery is not up to expectations (inflated by the salesperson at the time of making the sale), it is the booker who gets an earful from his company.
  • Examples abound of first-mover hotels that over-priced themselves due to their monopolistic or locational existence. However, the moment other options are available, the clients tend to move their business away to emerging hotels, as these clients may possibly be seething with indignation (like the proverbial singed cat), for being taken advantage of by the primary hotel in the past.
  • Even servers may use their guests as a catspaw. In a restaurant where the order taker, to fulfil his target, pushes an extensive menu selection, and succeeds in convincing the guest to order the same; the guest may eventually realise he/she has been had!
  • How often have we even used our boss as a catspaw to obtain our needs, regardless of the business need? Examples abound in planning for manning positions, leave planning, salary increments, budgeting, etc. While most owners are wary and discerning, every once in a while, one comes across a kindly owner accepting lower revenue budgets or higher cost budgets from the operator, only to discover that an opportunity to run a tight ship with much better profits, was missed.
  • And how about our treatment of the ubiquitous trainee? In my early days when I trained at Oberoi Hotels, Mumbai, in the IRD department (in-room dining), I was made to do IRD clearances twice in my shift, for the entire 23 floors (700 rooms) by a senior steward, who used to traipse off to the lockers for R&R, whilst I slogged away.

All of us know the phrase: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” If you are diligently following this ethic, chances are that you may not be amongst those who use others as a catspaw. And, in a utopian world, if everyone followed this principle, no one would ever be used as a catspaw!

However, the truth is that this catspaw adage will keep occurring. As a good manager, you need to guard yourself against using others, and conversely, be aware when you are being used. Your action thereafter needs to be based on each circumstance, keeping in mind that while you must certainly avoid using others as a catspaw, you may still be used as a catspaw by your superiors, peers, subordinates, or even your guests.

Awareness is crucial here… thereafter it is left to your emotional intelligence on how to react to the situation.

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM Jun 2021

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The hunt for the Will-o’-the-wisp Recruit

Even as full employment is the will-o’-the-wisp that politicians have been chasing for decades, so is the hunt for the perfect recruit.

Will o’ the Wisp is the name given to mysterious lights that were said to lead travellers from well-trodden paths onto treacherous marshes. Wirt Sikes in his book British Goblins writes of a Welsh Will o’ the Wisp. A peasant, who is travelling home late in the evening, sees a bright light travelling before him. Looking closer, he sees that the light is a lantern held by a dusky little figure which he follows for several miles. Suddenly he finds himself standing on the edge of a great chasm with a roaring torrent of water rushing below him. At that moment the lantern carrier leaps across the fissure, raises the light over its head and lets out a malicious laugh, after which it blows out the light leaving the unfortunate man far from home, standing in pitch darkness at the edge of a precipice. This allegory may be equated to the hunt for a perfect recruit, wherein ever so often organizations run after the fancy bright lights… recruits with a quality experience, high intelligence, or splendorous personalities. What we need to guard against, is that some of these may not be suitable for the organization’s goals. They just may not be a perfect fit, and may lead your establishment’s vision to the precipice!

So here we are back into another reboot, cresting this second Cov-Indian wave! Talk about being forced to learn resilience… sheesh! Nature – God’s creation – was never made to be messed with, and I do wonder if we humans will ever learn a lesson through this.

The current lockdown gives us time to re-look into our workplaces and our watered-down teams. Which of us would not like to begin, post-reboot, with a team filled only with Jewels? But is this viable? Take a look around your workplace, and understand your key wealth creation prospect ~ your depleted teams. Let’s face it, whether in the past, present, or future, recruiting only ‘polished jewels’ is akin to chasing the ‘will-o-the-wisp.’ Rather, we are oft forced to rummage for the mud-encrusted ones available in the marketplace.

In today’s scenario, manpower search has new challenges. Many industry professionals have deviated to other work options. Some of these may never want to return to their earlier jobs or industry. All this, thanks to Reverse Migration, Depressed Wages, Tougher Work Conditions, and Employment VUCA brought on by this pandemic. (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)

Apart from this, numbers have dropped to half or less, of earlier manpower numbers. Even when things return to normal, it is doubtful whether these numbers will go higher than 75% of pre-covid-19 numbers. In this scenario, recruitment quality must improve.

The truth is that a perfect recruit is as elusive as the will-o’-the-wisp (a person or thing that is difficult or impossible to reach or catch) and as utopian a concept as can be.

Oft times, logic advises us to select for experience, intelligence, or determination. Talent, if mentioned at all, is an afterthought.

Conventional wisdom says that either Experience, Grit, Brainpower, or Willpower makes the difference.

  • Some managers place a special emphasis on experience, paying close attention to a candidate’s work history and brands worked for. They see his past as a window to his future.
  • Other managers put their faith in raw intelligence. They say that as long as you are smart, most roles can be ‘figured out’.
  • Yet other managers believe in the ‘success is 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent perspiration’ school of thought. Managers from this school believe that the technical part of most roles can be taught, whereas the desire to achieve, to persist in the face of obstacles, cannot. When selecting people, they look for past evidence of grit.

So, is the perfect recruit a misnomer? No doubt experience can teach valuable lessons; intelligence is a boon, and willpower – which great managers label a talent – is almost impossible to teach. What we fail to take into account is that there are so many other kinds of talents. The right talents, more than experience, more than brainpower, willpower, or grit, are the pre-requisites for excellence in all roles – talents such as a restaurant steward’s ability to form opinions, empathy in order-takers, assertiveness in salespeople, or, in managers, the ability to individualize or bring people together.

Conventional wisdom assumes either that these behaviours can be trained after the person has been hired or that these characteristics are relatively unimportant to performance on the job. Both assumptions are a false hope that leads one on, just like the will-o’-the-wisp.

You cannot teach talent. You cannot teach someone to form strong opinions, to feel the emotions of others, to revel in confrontation, or to pick up on the subtle differences in how best to manage each person. You have to specifically select, for talents like these. Talents like these prove to be the driving force behind an individual’s job performance.

It is not that experience, brainpower, grit, and willpower are unimportant. It is just that an employee’s full complement of talents – what drives him/her, how he/she thinks, how he/she builds relationships – is more important.

In these compelling times, we are looking at rebooting with up to half the earlier numbers. Hence, we need to select only the mud-encrusted Jewels that we can polish… then have them perform effectively, at twice the efficiency, once they are inducted and trained.

When you recruit, try looking for talent in an individual and then offer them an enhancing & nurturing environment. Then sit back and enjoy the show…

This article has appeared in ET HOSPITALITY WORLD.COM May 2021

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