Develop Leadership Skills
The skills of the managers must contribute to the organization's goals and support the desired culture. Managers must learn to solve problems, and not just react to crises. They need those skills which ensure growth, stability, and continuity, rather than the skills to react to problems on the spur of the moment.
Many general managers speak in glowing terms of department managers who spend 14 hours a day on the property and fix all the foul-ups. These GMs may worry about the department manager who works an eight- or ten-hour day and doesn't seem to be overwhelmed. But they are wrong to be concerned, and wrong to venerate the overworked managers. Companies must stop applauding the "fire fighters" and start developing managers who lead successful departments.
There's nothing admirable about lurching from crisis to crisis in a state of near exhaustion. Such fire fighting does nothing, really, to develop people's talents. While such managers are managing crises, they aren't training, they aren't providing permanent solutions, and they aren't letting their employees demonstrate
that they can do the job. In the hotel industry, great fire fighters are usually also arsonists—that is, managers who look good only when they are putting out the fires, often caused by their own incompetence.
In an article from Organizational Dynamics (Winter 1990), Bernard Bass distinguished between 'Transformational Leaders" and Transactional Leaders" as follows:
Transformational leaders: Transformational leaders gain respect. They communicate high expectations and promote intelligence, rationality, and careful problem solving. Finally, they treat employees as individuals and give personal attention.
Transactional leaders: Transactional leaders watch and search for deviations from standards (foul-ups) and take corrective actions. They intervene when standards are not met, rather than taking steps to ensure that the standards are met.
Unfortunately, the hospitality industry has heretofore romanticized the transactional leader who steps in and saves the day, and virtually ignored the transformational leader, except in the few instances where a transformational leader is highly charismatic.
Transformational leaders are not policemen looking for violations. Their goal is to help all the members of the organization perform to the best of their abilities. Thus, quality management requires transformational leadership, leadership that develops strong teams and provides a framework for organizational stability and growth.
Education is essential to this step. Managers spend a considerable amount of time solving problems, analyzing information, planning, and forecasting. They learn how to accomplish these tasks through experience, and the advice of their peers and superiors. Managers can be taught such basic problem-solving techniques as reverse thinking, brainstorming, and nominal-group techniques. They can be taught how to analyze a profit-and-loss statement to determine departmental productivity. They can be taught how to develop schedules using staffing parameters that account for guest volumes and demand patterns, thus enabling them to plan and schedule more effectively, minimizing a variety of crises. All these are skills that can and must be taught to inexperienced managers in formal workshops and followed up on in informal sessions.
I have found that there is often a significant gap between managers' responsibilities (what they're supposed to do) and managers' function (what they actually do). Managers invariably concur that they should plan, train, and develop employees; evaluate performance; and work at long-range solutions—yet they invariably spend the great majority of their time in the day-to-day directing of their operation. While they certainly need to be involved in overseeing the operation, it is the lack of training, planning, and problem-solving skills that make them policemen and limit their opportunities for improvement.
The hospitality industry is rightfully proud of its tendency to promote from within. But, as the tasks confronting managers become increasingly complex, we can no longer afford to do so without preparing managers for the challenges they will face. When quality is the driving force, employees are empowered to serve the customer, and management's role changes from that of boss and policeman to that of leader, coach, and counselor.
Develop Customer-Driven Policies, Procedures
An organization's functioning must support its vision and culture. Written policies and procedures provide guidelines to ensure that service levels are maintained and to help smooth the transition of new managers.
Unfortunately, procedures are too often the result of management decisions about what service the guest should want, and not based on the results of careful research about what the targeted markets really want and for what the customer is willing to pay. In the February 5,1990, edition of Hotel and Motel Management, contributing editor Anthony Marshall reported the results of a conversation with a frequent business traveler who pointed out that a variety of services and facilities of which hotels are generally proud are undesirable. He also pointed out some of the services he would like to see.
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For example, he wants to see a check-in process that doesn't require that he re-register from scratch at hotels at which he has previously stayed. The article clearly calls into question a number of procedures and services that are common and makes it clear that organizations need to reconsider much of what they do in the way of special services.
For example, some organizations stress the importance of having the desk clerk "up-sell" when a customer arrives to check in. One wonders whether the average guest wants yet another sales pitch when trying to get a room. Some organizations are proud of the exquisite care they take in preparing and serving elegant room-service meals, even when all the guest wants is a simple meal served rapidly. And there are many other procedures and services that are designed with the organization's needs in mind, not the customer's.
Other policies are developed to protect the organization from poorly trained employees or the occasional unscrupulous customer. Such policies as requiring a desk clerk to get a manager's approval before making an adjustment or a server to get a manager's approval to offer a free dessert are designed to protect the organization from its own potential mistakes.
Customer-driven policies and procedures must be developed with input from customers and from front-line employees who have daily encounters with the customer. This can be done in several ways. Managers can meet with customers informally in the lobby during check-in or check-out, in an executive lounge, or while they are dining in the restaurant. More-formal input can be generated through exit interviews with group and meeting planners after conferences, or by focus groups with key accounts. Employee input is also essential to the process because the employees invariably have a great deal to contribute based on their contacts and conversations with guests.
As a simple example, the restaurant staff of a four-star hotel was passing on to management a fair number of complaints about coffee service at breakfast.
Management wanted to avoid the appearance of a "coffee shop" environment, so servers were required to pour all coffee refills.
This was a policy, but that policy existed to satisfy management's sense of what the customer should want. What the customer really wanted was immediate access to another cup of coffee in the morning. Not surprisingly, after the restaurant purchased attractive thermal carafes, not a single customer complained that service was poorer or "less elegant." Quite a few reported being pleased that they could drink coffee at their own pace, and not at the pace at which a server could deliver it.
Once policies have been examined from the customer's point of view, the process of implementing new procedures can be expedited by using "draft" procedures as a starting point. While some organizations are willing to spend months working on this step of experimenting with and rewriting the draft, I have found that most staff members will seize upon a well-developed draft, make the necessary changes and adjustments to suit their market, and ask to put the procedures into use through the training process. Properly developed and effective policies and procedures establish a common language and system for guiding operational
performance. They cover all aspects of the operation, from how to conduct a check-in to how to clean a tilt skillet. They must be developed for the benefit of the customer, not the benefit of the organization's system.
Set Standards
Just as any well-produced product meets specifications, hospitality organizations need service standards.
There is, however, a fundamental lack of understanding as to what constitutes a service standard. For the sake of customer satisfaction, service standards must address two components: completeness and timeliness. The former is reasonably well understood, the latter largely ignored. "Completeness" requires providing service that includes all the components a guest considers essential and eliminates those that are superfluous. This includes both the "mechanical" and "interpersonal" aspects of the service. The mechanical aspects of service deal with bringing the correct order to a customer in the restaurant, checking a guest into a clean and vacant room, making a drink correctly, and providing an accurate bill. In other words, the mechanical components of a service standard are those steps that involve using a system (e.g., property-management system) or skill (e.g., carrying and balancing a tray) to provide service.
Interpersonal aspects address the attitudes individuals communicate through their behavior while providing service. A smile, an offer to provide any further service, and a S;hank you" are all appropriate indicators of an attitude that defines positive service.
Timeliness addresses the time spent by the customer in getting the service. If customers have to wait too long for their meals to arrive, for check-ins to be completed, or for questions to be answered, they will feel inconvenienced. Thus, the appropriate time established as a standard depends on what the customer considers reasonable.
The issue is perhaps best explained using the example of a check-in. If a clerk is friendly and cheerful and the check-in is expeditious, but the guest is given a key to the wrong room (mechanical failure), the guest may be dissatisfied with the service. If the guest gets the right key and the check-in
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