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Another essential step is to make a careful assessment of roles and responsibilities. Upper-level managers often confuse being responsible for the performance of a division with being the only individual whose role it is to help improve performance in the division. They must realize that all their colleagues are resources and have a role to play in creating improvements.
Establishing a culture of quality begins when upper management makes its commitment to QM absolutely clear to the organization. The result will be apparent at the line level and throughout the property, with upper management being ultimately responsible for the organization's culture.
Develop a Team Orientation
Organizations need to involve everyone in running the business and working toward common goals. Each department needs to understand the essential role that other departments play in organizational success. Department members need to understand the degree to which they are dependent on the timely delivery of information and resources from other departments.
The interdepartmental squabbles that are often considered inevitable must be resolved. Front-office and housekeeping personnel can't argue over who's responsible for a guest's being checked in to a dirty room. Catering and the kitchen have to stop arguing over menus that may be difficult to produce. The list of friction points is universally long for two reasons. First, industry employees are overly specialized and compartmentalized. Second, there's often more interest in assigning blame than in finding ways to work together. The specialization evolved as the industry matured. Marketing, sales, operations, finance, and human-resource management have become distinct disciplines, each with its own knowledge base and requisite skills. This has led to an environment in which few managers are well educated in each of the various disciplines, despite the fact that almost all managers have responsibilities in each of the areas. One of the solutions is to educate managers in how each discipline is essential to the success of the organization and what steps must be taken so that all can work together more effectively.
The desire to assign blame is, admittedly, a more complex problem. In an industry where turnover is high at all levels, where one rarely meets a manager who's been at a property for more than one or two years, it's virtually inevitable that managers believe that one of the best ways to protect their jobs and earn advancement is to make every effort to blame any failure on circumstances outside of their control. Managers often fear dismissal and many are not at a property long enough to become a comfortable, contributing member of a management team. The high turnover of managers also contributes to problems in training and employee empowerment. Insecure managers fear that employees who "know too much," or have "too much authority" will no longer need them.
Developing teamwork requires stability and continuity. People need to learn each other's strengths and weaknesses, and learn how to work together. This cannot happen when management teams are constantly changing and reforming. Teamwork can be developed through
the use of structured meetings (team-building sessions) that address management behavior and ensure agreement on basic goals and objectives.
Just as important, members of organizations must realize that effective teams require more than individuals with compatible personalities or work habits.
Teams begin to break down when conflict occurs. Conflict cannot be eliminated solely through the use of a management retreat or set of team-building exercises. We must realize that people generally enter into conflict for specific reasons. Thus, teamwork can be improved by analyzing and correcting those components of the information and service-delivery systems that contribute to ineffectiveness and lead to conflict.
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We have recommended that properties take steps to improve the level of teamwork by focusing their energies on the situations that most often produce conflict. An essential method is to change the way service breakdowns are viewed.
For example, virtually all properties have a specific plan for dealing with "turn aways" (guests who cannot be accommodated because of full occupancy) that eliminates the potential for most conflict. At the same time, however, it is common to sit in on staff meetings at many of these same properties and listen to managers point out that next week there will be a large number of check-ins and check-outs on a given day, or that a large group will be free for lunch, or that a tight turn will be required in a banquet room—yet no specific plan for avoiding conflict is ever developed. Each time one of these situations arises, the responsible manager is, at best, asked to put a plan together for dealing with the specific situation or, at worst, simply exhorted to do the best job possible. This approach sometimes results in service breakdowns—which, in turn, result in conflict.
In organizations where teamwork exists, plans are developed incorporating all available resources to serve the guest effectively. Consider the situation mentioned above with a large number of check-ins and check-outs on the same day. The problem is not simply that a lot of rooms have to be cleaned rapidly. The problem is also that many guests may be inconvenienced by having to wait at the registration desk. Once the problem is considered from this perspective, it becomes clear that the food and beverage department can help by setting up a coffee break in the lobby, or by offering a free breakfast to those who check out early. The front-desk staff can help by inviting guests to take an early check-out, soliciting express check-out, or offering some other appropriate inducement. The point is, if viewed territorially, each breakdown ultimately belongs to a single department. But when viewed from the perspective of the overall operation, teamwork-style, the management staff as a whole is collectively responsible for satisfying the guest.
Even on a departmental level, focusing on the system is essential to eliminate conflict. For example, one hotel with which I'm familiar typically put a breakfast buffet in the restaurant when forecasted covers exceeded 200. In general, this approach helped. Unfortunately, cover counts of 150 or more also created a high degree of stress due to lines at the door and the difficulty in turning tables rapidly. As a result, the restaurant manager and food and beverage director argued over the situation, exchanging the usual accusations about the servers not being trained, the kitchen not being fast enough, and so forth. After some time, a plan was put in place that involved different responses at different volume levels. When the cover count exceeded 100, a coffee station was set up in the lobby so that guests who had to wait didn't have to wait in a line. At 150 covers, a server station was set aside for continental-breakfast service only. This allowed the hostess to direct guests who were either in a hurry or wanted a light breakfast to seats where they could be assured of the service they desired. And at cover counts over 200, the buffet was set up as before. By changing the system, the source of conflict was eliminated and the operation's teamwork improved.
When managers work to develop plans to deal with such difficult but not unusual circumstances they learn to work together and to focus on guest satisfaction while simultaneously eliminating sources of conflict. Committees can be set up that include managers (and even line employees) from different departments who are charged with solving particular problems.
Certainly, quality circles have been successful in many organizations. Others use problem-solving teams that include staff from different departments who are brought together to improve service by solving problems.
Ultimately, as W. Edwards Deming points out, barriers must be broken down. Where teamwork is effective, shared responsibility and synergy between team members is apparent.1
1W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), p. 24.
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