Every good company with a winning culture has a mission statement. In my case the hotel company has a mission statement, each brand has one, and even each individual property. Why are mission statements so important? Well, they set guidelines for you and your employees and guarantee that everyone is aligned and looking in the same direction.
The simplest example of a mission statement is ‘do what’s right’, and yet it’s so powerful as it touches every decision you make and every course of action that you take.
Like a mission statement, it is important that we have guidelines and principles that we can adhere to and base our decisions on. I wanted to share my own guidelines with you, my 101 of operations:
1. Inspect what you expect
It’s clearly not enough just to talk about what needs to be done and how it should be done. Everyone can do this! The difference between an effective leader and a manager who just covers a twelve hours shift is that a leader will be up on the floor and inspect what she expects and provide feedback.
2. Figure it out
Big problems require big solutions, and as valuable leader you need to be resourceful and find solutions to your problems. Don’t come to your superiors with problems on a silver tray asking for solutions, but rather provide solutions and then take ownership in executing them. Great leaders ask questions and are therefore aware of most problems and need people to take ownership of solutions and help implementing them, and not more fingers pointing at each other to shift blame or point out problems.
2. Take ownership and be accountable
I can work with things going wrong and my managers telling me that they’ll follow up on it and how, what I cannot accept is my managers telling me that they’ve informed the respective employee who made the mistake what to do before. Saying I told them before or they should know better, is the equivalent of saying ‘I am not accepting any responsibility’. I’ll never understand why managers are afraid to take ownership for the actions of their teams, if you are the captain and your ship goes down anyway, why wouldn’t you at least accept responsibility for it and stand straight with your team.
3. Do what’s right
As a leader it’s your job to make tough decisions and help executing them with the team. If your credo is to do what’s right, tough decisions will still be tough, but you’ll follow a straight line and lead with integrity.
4.Taking the basketball and putting it through the hoop
is an equivalent of getting things done, making stuff happen, and taking action. Working in a hotel like in any other people’s business you can rest assured that many things are not going the right way and that people make mistakes every day. Amazingly, however, most are eager to tell you what’s wrong, how it is affecting your business, and seem to know exactly what you should be doing about it to correct it, rather than helping to get it right themselves.
4. Training is a never ending process!
If you believe in the learning pyramid you’ll know that by just standing in front of your employees talking about processes and standards and showing pictures, you’ll only reach about 20 % of your team, no matter how good of a trainer or facilitator you are.
If you’re fed up with wasting yours and everyone else’s time and money, and want to start training your employees effectively, then you need to follow the edoc principle:
Explain (prepare the employees, give an overview, break the whole into parts, step by step, easier parts first)
Demonstrate (in clear view, do it for them, show & tell, re-cap key points)
Observe (let them do the whole job, provide assistance, let them make mistakes, have them teach you)
Coach (tell them how they did, give effective feedback, let them practice)
Always remember that training is an ongoing process and never ever ends! The moment you completed one training, you should probably start another one or all over again.
5. Never turn a blind eye
You can only accomplish harmony by not trying to, by not avoiding conflict and by never turning a blind eye on addressing poor performance. If you don’t give honest constructive feedback, set clear expectations, and hold people accountable to their responsibilities, people will always try to take advantage of each other, take short cuts or argue for their personal favor and see themselves as the victim at the end of the day. Only when you understand that it is your responsibility as a leader to maintain that harmony by drawing a line consistently, facing uncomfortable conflict, you’ll be able to work towards a consistent and ‘fair’ work environment that treats everyone equally.
6. Support is everything
You can set the highest expectations, hold your people accountable to it and drive outstanding results, as long as you provide the tools and resources necessary and support your team in executing your expectations. Nothing is more disappointing than a leader without integrity who doesn’t walk the talk. I have seen strong talent fail because they did not have the necessary support.
7. As middle managers we are great at filtering reality
Most managers are too concerned about looking good in front of their bosses and would not share any challenges with them. In the eyes of their bosses operations are doing well and everything seems to be running as smooth as it possibly could thanks to the silent manager. But unfortunately most of us are filtering reality avoiding for problems to solved.
Your bosses don’t always know of the challenges in the field because they are not as connected as you are, and without you telling them objectively what’s going on, they will never be able to have a clear and fair assessment of what the issues are. Nor will they be able to make informed decisions that would help your business. With that being said, this is only true when working for leaders who want to know the problems and do care about fixing them, and unfortunately not all do.
8. Stay sharp!
Did you ever ask yourself why we make the most mistakes when the occupancy is low and operations are quiet, or why our service scores are falling down during the slow weeks of the year? When we are busy, we are in the zone, bring our A game, and are sharp. It’s when we are slow that we start making mistakes. This phenomenon is most visible during the holidays when most of our guests are not on business, but are traveling with their families at their own expenses (not their companies) and have high expectations. Our guests are in the holiday mood, and unfortunately so are we, we are tempted to take it easy and lose focus.
9. Take care of the big rocks first
Taking care of the big rocks first is about focusing on the 20% that make 80% impact. In operations this is about being up on the floor with your team inspecting what you expect and coaching your talent to get better every day. With so much noise around us and so many things going on daily it is easy to get distracted and overwhelmed by the small rocks, the things that are not as important or don’t make much of a difference for the next day, but what they do is, they are taking the time away from you to do what really matters.
10. The power of thank you
A sincere thank you from your supervisor can go a long way. We know that we should recognize the good performance of our talent and that saying ‘thank you’ is important… and yet we fail to do it consistently. It’s a moment of appreciation that can make up for weeks of hard work and suffering.
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