Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn

The hospitality sector has begun to recognize the need for constant training and up gradation of human skills: they also understand that training is a motivator and one of the many reasons for staff wanting to stay with an organization, if done professionally. So here’s the upside of training: while the principle reason is for improving skills, whether technical or behavioural, the subsidiary reasons of employee motivation and employee retention are enough to justify the training efforts… in fact a lack of adequate and quality training is considered as a “dissatisfier” for Gen Y, if one were to refer to Herzberg on motivation.

Alvin Toefler had an interesting perspective on the definition of an educated person of this millennium: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

In an earlier blog, I had talked about a recent training session conducted where it was interesting to note how the participants unanimously felt that the guests they engaged with were targets for achieving their revenue budgets. Traditionally this would not be viewed as a doodah since the bottom line of all business is profitability. However, what if we were to try another approach…service the customer empathically and watch how he helps you with your revenue targets and conversions in the long run?

Hence training is not just about cramming ideologies and skills into the employees – it is also about helping them relearn and let go of their mindsets of the past… for as the world is fast changing, so is our industry… into a newer paradigm.

Remember – The truth will set you free… Happy Independence Day, India!

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Phases of Organisational Growth

When organizations grow from a young to mature stage, they pass through five phases of evolution where each phase ends with a period of crisis and revolution. Evolutionary periods are characterized by the dominant management styles to achieve growth, while Revolutionary periods are characterized by the dominant problems that must be solved before growth continues.

  • Phase one of a newly-born organisation is characterized by creating a viable product in a promising market. However, by the end of the first phase, a crisis of leadership emerges. The solution usually lies in locating and installing a strong business manager who is acceptable to the founders and who can pull the organisation together.
  • Phase two happens when the manager is given a free hand and zealously accepts most of the responsibility for initiating direction. In the course of growth for the organisation, the lower level managers demand more autonomy in decision-making and the stage is set for the crisis of autonomy to come to the fore.
  • In phase three the crisis of autonomy is resolved through the delegation of authority which helps in gaining expansion through heightened motivation at lower rungs. But one serious problem that eventually evolves is the loss of top management control over highly diversified field of operations. The crisis of control emerges here when field managers run their own shows without aligning plans, money, technology, or manpower with that of the organization. In order to achieve more efficient allocation of the organization’s limited resources, an elaborate network of cording mechanisms is usually introduced at of the organization’s growth.
  • In phase four the organization becomes typically much more formalized; rules, regulations and rigidities increase almost exponentially. For some time, the new systems prove useful for achieving growth through coordinated efforts. But soon procedure takes precedence over problem-solving, the chronic conflict between line and staff become acute. The organization becomes too large and complex to be managed through formal programs and rigid systems. Thus begins the crisis of red-tape.
  • Phase five of an organization’s growth is characterized by strong inter-personal collaboration in order to overcome the crisis of red-tape. Developing the team becomes the theme, social conflict and self-discipline take over formal control, more flexible and behavioural approaches are adopted to attack the problems of managing a large organization.

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It’s not about the Money, Honey

Just concluded a one day program on “Enhancing Promoter Effectiveness” for ‘Promoters’ of United Spirits Limited (USL) in Bangalore… Promoters are tertiary employees who are placed in outlets to promote their brands over other brands displayed in the mall or retail outlet.

It was interesting to see how the promoters unanimously felt that the customers they engaged with and tried to convert were targets for achieving their revenue budgets. Nothing wrong in this principally as the bottom line of all business is profitability. However, what if we try another approach?… try to service the customer empathically and watch how he helps you with your revenue targets and conversions in the long run?

Doing role plays showing this principle of caring for the guest’s needs before ours, we were able to make them understand that if we become guest-centric, then the guest will help us achieve our targets, rather than if we remain totally revenue driven and oblivious to the guest / customer.

It was heartening to see that the Promoters were able to grasp this concept quickly enough and they have pledged to be more customer oriented than earlier. I am sure that they will see improvements in their conversions in the future.

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“Dar ke Aage Jeet Hai”

Hospitality Paradigm just concluded a two-day program with The Leela, Goa on “Managerial Effectiveness” and I could not but reminisce during the final presentation by the participants, on Tagore’s poem learnt during my schooldays.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high… Where knowledge is free… Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls… Where words come out from the depth of truth… Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection… Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit… Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action… Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake… Rabindranath Tagore (1900 A.D.)

Amongst the participants, all of whom were at various managerial levels, Ajith Kumar – Horticulture Executive stood out with a different profile, perhaps one that spoke of his hard work and dedication to The Leela, Goa rather than his educational qualifications. During the presentation at the end of the two day program in front of their departmental heads and General Manager, many of the participants spoke on specific learnings over the past two days and how they planned to implement the same in their daily work. Ajith Kumar came up at the end and spoke purely from the heart…

Describing his humble background and his growth from being the Chairman’s butler to Horticulture Executive, Ajith confessed that he was extremely anxious when he was nominated for this program by his manager. He tried to squirm out of it, saying that he would not fit in, that training was not for a hands-on person like him and that he would rather be working on his 75 acres of landscaped gardens at The Leela Goa than sitting in a classroom for two days. His manager would hear none of this and insisted that he attend this program. When he sat in on the first day, he hoped that he would be ignored, but to his dismay he realized that he would have to participate in the interactive program and group exercises. Ajith said that he gradually began to feel comfortable thanks to our coaxing and encouragement and he soon began sharing experiences at his workplace, spoke words of respect about a recently deceased colleague and even participated in an exercise on talent management, identifying his subordinate as the high performer for this assessment exercise.

Thanking us – the trainers for helping him get over his fears, as well as his manager for nominating him for this program, Ajith said proudly that he now felt he was no less than anyone else and that he would be most glad and willing to attend similar trainings in the future.

We recieved  many positive compliments from the participants during this session. See http://www.hospitalityparadigm.com/company/media/Leela_Goa_Jul12.php. However the greatest compliment was from Ajith Kumar and a trainer can experience no better joy than to know that he has contributed in making a participant believe in the importance of training!

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Motel with a Patel

Here’s an interesting insight by Bob Lonsberry into how one of our hard working communities converted the US citizens’ failures into their strength.

Gujarat is a state in the west of India, home to the Gujarati people, some 60 million of them, who speak their own language and have their own history. Mahatma Gandhi was born there… and so was the guy who runs most motels in the U.S. of A. In the United States, some 40 percent of all the hotels and motels are owned by Indians – almost all of them from Gujarat. Among American economy motels, more than half the owners are Gujarati. The Asian-American Hotel Owners Association is a powerful professional group with more than 10,000 members. Some 90 percent of those members have the same last name – Patel – a name dominant in Gujarat.

How did Indians, particularly from one relatively small region of India, come to dominate the American lodging industry? The answer is in short ‘hard work’.

Over 30 years ago, Gujaratis began immigrating to the United States. They typically brought with them the clothes on their back and an ancestral work ethic. They also carried the desire to be the boss, to be business owners, to not be another man’s employee. Like generations of previous immigrants, they carried an American dream of their own creation and distinctive bent. Coincidentally, about 30 years ago, there was a downturn in the American motel industry. Low-end motels were hard work and offered limited return, and owners were eager to get out of them. A handful of Gujarati stumbled across this opportunity. The motels could be had for almost nothing up front, and they came with housing for the immigrant family. And that immigrant family provided a round-the-clock workforce. It was incredibly hard and endless work, but the efforts of the immigrants were up to the task, and these first few families found first a living, and then success. And they told their friends. And they expanded, by buying more motels, and by moving up the economic ladder to larger and nicer motels and hotels. Back home, as others sought to emigrate to the United States, word of success in the lodging industry spread, and newcomers replicated that success, finding for themselves motel opportunities. Interestingly, these people came with almost no money. And they came with no background whatsoever in the lodging or hospitality industries. All they brought was a willingness to embrace any opportunity and to work hard to make it a success.

And they have done that. In something between 20 and 30 years, Indians – who are about 1 percent of the American population – have come to dominate this industry. They have built solid lives for themselves and their employees, and their children have gone on to be educated and move into the professions. It is a stunning success story and is a reminder of the potential prosperity of immigrants who go to work instead of to the welfare office. It is proof of the continued vigor and opportunity of the American economy and the free-enterprise system. It is the American way proven again by newcomers’ hands. But it is more than that. It is also something of an indictment of native-born Americans who have lingered in poverty and government dependence. Part of the horrific welfare plague is the curse of idleness it imposes on recipients. The slavery of dependence takes initiative from people, and strips them of the instinct of self-reliance. They become good at nothing, and particularly good at doing nothing. And with the cloak of entitlement drawn over their eyes, they fail to see liberating opportunity, they become unwilling to do the backbreaking work necessary to lift themselves out of their circumstances.

When the first few dozen essentially penniless Gujarati discovered the opportunity of the then-dying motel business, there were tens of millions of native-born Americans, food stamps in hand, who were blind to the opportunity around them. While the newly arrived Indians worked day and night, the entitled Americans kept drawing a check, and now that the Gujarati children are successful business people and college graduates, the dependent Americans wallow in the mire of another generation of welfare shame.

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Tourism vs Recession

Heartening News
The G20 world leaders have for the first time, recognised the importance of travel & tourism as a key contributor for creation of jobs, support growth and economic recovery. The Leaders’ Declaration from the annual meeting of the G20 world leaders held in Los Cabos, Mexico, on June 18-19, 2012, stated, “We recognise the role of travel and tourism as a vehicle for job creation, economic growth and development, and, while recognising the sovereign right of states to control the entry of foreign nationals, we will work towards developing travel facilitation initiatives in support of job creation, quality work, poverty reduction and global growth.
According to WTTC, The travel & tourism industry will directly contribute USD two trillion to the GDP and 100 million jobs to the global economy in 2012. When the wider economic impacts of the industry are taken into account, travel & tourism is forecast to contribute some USD 6.5 trillion to the global economy and generate 260 million jobs – or 1 in 12 of all jobs on the planet.
This is indeed commendable and a significant success for the hospitality industry!

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Hospitality Paradigm meets Karnataka Governor

The founders of Hospitality Paradigm, Ramiah Daniels & Rajan Parulekar recently met with The Governor of Karnataka at the Rajbhavan, Bangalore to seek his good wishes. H.E. Shri Hans Raj Bhardwaj expressed his interest in Hospitality Paradigm’s vision and asserted that such ventures are the dire need of the burgeoning Hotel Industry.

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Ruin Sorbees

Tendjewberrymuds
This is an intentionally composed humorous fiction and is entirely the creation of Shelley Berman, written as a chapter in his book, published as A HOTEL IS A PLACE, A HOTEL IS A FUNNY PLACE, and A HOTEL IS A VERY FUNNY PLACE, by Price/Stern/Sloan Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 1972, 1985.

Room Service (RS): “Morny. Ruin sorbees”
Guest (G): “Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service.”
RS: “Rye..Ruin sorbees..morny! Djewish to odor sunteen??”
G: “Uh..yes..I’d like some bacon and eggs”
RS: “Ow July den?”
G: “What??”
RS: “Ow July den?…pry, boy, pooch?”
G : “Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please.”
RS: “Ow July dee bayhcem…crease?”
G: “Crisp will be fine.”
RS : “Hokay. An San tos?”
G: “What?”
RS:”San tos. July San tos?”
G: “I don’t think so.”
RS: “No? Judo one toes??”
G: “I feel really bad about this, but I don’t know what ‘judo one toes’ means.”
RS: “Toes! toes!…why djew Don Juan toes? Ow bow inglish mopping we bother?”
G: “English muffin!! I’ve got it! You were saying ‘Toast.’ Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine.
RS: “We bother?”
G: “No…just put the bother on the side.”
RS: “Wad?”
G: “I mean butter…just put it on the side.”
RS: “Copy?”
G: “Sorry?”
RS: “Copy…tea…mill?”
G: “Yes. Coffee please, and that’s all.”
RS: “One Minnie. Ass ruin torino fee, strangle ache, crease baychem, tossy singlish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy….rye??”
G: “Whatever you say”
RS: “Tendjewberrymuds!”
G: “You’re welcome.”

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Play to win but play fair

Play to win but win with fairness

Life is competitive and of course, you play to win. But think about the balance. Will you do anything, to win? Perhaps not. Think deeply about how and where you draw the line. Each person draws it differently, and in doing so, it helps to think about values. Winning without values provides dubious fulfillment. The leaders who have contributed the most are the ones with a set of universal values, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King for example. Napoleon inspired a ragged, mutinous and half-starved army to fight and seize power. This brought him name and fame for twenty years. But all the while, he was driven forward by a selfish and evil ambition, and not in pursuit of a great ideal. He finally fell because of his selfish ambition. The Pierre de Coubertin Fair Play Trophy was instituted in 1964 by the founder of the modern Olympic Games and here are two examples of its winners… A Hungarian tennis player who pleaded with the umpire to give his opponent some more time to recover from a cramp… A British kayak team trailing the Danish kayak team who stopped to help the Danish team whose boat was stuck. The Danes went on to beat the British by one second in a three hour event!

I always say that at the end of the day, if I can look myself in the mirror and be proud of who and what I see in the mirror, then I have won the game for the day. Play to Win, but with Fairness.

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Hotel Flash Sales Sites

The jury is still out on Hotel Flash Sales Sites…

In my post dtd 01 Feb 2012 – A Revenue Manager’s ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for 2012, I had mentioned that OTAs may be used for need periods: weekends, group cancellations, low season, etc., and not as a replacement for or alternative to the direct online channel. Also mentioned was the danger of flash sales sites which cause your hotel to rebuke the principles of rate parity leading to “The Law of Unintended Channel Share Loss”

Despite the immense popularity and relative newness of flash sale websites such as Groupon, BloomSpot, JetSetter and Living Social, hoteliers are still wary of the effectiveness and real value of these sites for a hotel’s marketing plan, according to a recent survey from TravelClick.

Forty percent of the approximately 900 global hoteliers surveyed have used a flash sale website. Of the 40% who have tried these sites, 38% have found it less successful than they had hoped and do not plan to use again. Hoteliers believed that the sales gave up too much revenue to the site operator (25%), did not attract the right caliber of customer reflective of the brand (21.7%) and did not see enough return business from the promotion (21.7%).

Nearly 40% of those surveyed have not tried a flash sale promotion and have no interest in executing one in 2012, while 23% say that they will try a flash sale site for the first time this year. When asked which flash sale website hotels chose to use, 53.3% of hoteliers polled had partnered with Groupon.

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