Crisis Management Training - A Solid ROI

I’ve recently been involved in furthering my education, something that I try to do at one level or another continuously.

Specifically, I am just winding up my participation in a Business Ethics class, which was finished with a round table discussion that we hosted, for industry professionals, on the recent announcement of the changes to our Provinces’ Motor Vehicle Act, to introduce tougher penalties to drinking drivers.

As I was participating in last nights’ discussion event, I found myself judging various comments based on training that I took over 15 years ago, on crisis management, with an emphasis on how to deal effectively with the media, which is what motivated me to write today.

I was fortunate enough to participate in this training as a member of the Executive Committee of what was then a Canadian Pacific Hotel, (now Fairmont Hotels), and even then I considered myself very fortunate to have been chosen for this training.

The crux of my training was this. After polite introductions, we were advised that we would be participating in a crisis event, at a fictitious Hotel. The crisis would unfold throughout the day, and we would be interviewed at various stages of the crisis, by real investigative journalists, brought in for the day, and then our interviews would be reviewed by the attendees, and critiqued for our benefit.

We were also warned that there were no “do overs”, which is to say, you could not be in the middle of an interview and advise that you would like to start again. This experience was to be as real as possible, and you had better get on your game face.

I should also mention that the other phase of the day’s training was focused on what you actually did to manage the crisis as it unfolded. What steps did you take to help guests, employees, and to protect the company, etc..

As promised, we were then advised that we were the General Manager of a 600 room Hotel, in a major downtown city, and the Hotel was on fire. The fire department and emergency services were on scene, as were members of the press. The Hotel was in the process of being evacuated, including the conference floor where a major political party convention was in full swing. Many people were unaccounted for, the scene looked quite chaotic as present, and the media wanted some answers.

As the day unfolded, the situation became much worse, employees talking to the media about shoddy fire drill practices, when they happened at all, a stairwell had been blocked and people had died trying to evacuate, a guest floor under renovation with the fire sprinklers turned off, and so on.

By the end of the day, which finished with a mock press conference at the conclusion of our fictitious crisis, we were all exhausted, and we honestly felt like we had just gone through this actual event, but we were unanimous in our evaluation of the day as being one of the most important days of our careers, and we were grateful for having been chosen to participate in this training exercise.

I can tell you, even today, that was still some of the most valuable training I ever took, and every Hotel company should invest in crisis management training. It is invaluable, and when priced against the potential of a mishandled crisis, or a botched interview, and the potentially negative ramifications of either, it is a bargain.

The foundation of what I learned that day has stayed with me, and been of assistance to me in my dealing with the media, on multiple occasions, in good times, and in the more challenging times, and whether provided for by your company, or not, I would encourage all senior leaders to seek out an opportunity to participate in a program as I did, or at least, to find some effective media training. When the time comes, and it will, you’ll be glad that you did.

Your Reputation - Always Important to Keep in Mind

I came across a great article that supported my earlier post on the value of personal branding, so I have provided it below as a reminder of the importance of keeping track of our personal brand.

The article also provides an interesting link to the past, reinforcing that this is certainly not a new idea. Enjoy...

"Building your personal brand" might strike you as a funny way of thinking about your career, but the idea has been around for centuries.

The ancient Greeks called it areté, and it meant being the best you can be. During the time of knights and castles, it was called "honor", and you were expected to defend it to the death. George Washington and men of his era were extremely concerned about maintaining and protecting their reputation. And in the 20th century, it might have been referred to as your standing in your community or your industry.

So "personal brand" is simply a new phrase for an old concept — how you present yourself to others.

You see, you know all the wonderful experiences you've had, and you're intimately familiar with all the capabilities you've developed as you've made your way through your career. That's always been an integral part of personal success.

Throughout history, it's also been important for men and women to understand how others perceive them, to manage that perception, and to guide it so that all of their other goals can be achieved.

It's the recognition that living in society with people, your success is as dependent on what others think about what you can do as it is on what you can actually do.

The big change in modern times is scale.

The Greeks had only to be concerned with people living in their city, knights with their honor within the kingdom, Washington with his reputation within the colonies, and in the 20th century your standing was dependent on your community and your industry.

What's changed is the modern economy. Companies can vaporize overnight. Whole industries can be upended by a change in technology, regulation, or globalization.

So what's important now is that your brand be known and available not only to the people of your city, state, country or industry, but to any professional at any time. You never know when you'll be tossed into a new industry, a new city, or a new company, so it's important for you to consider how you'll be perceived and how your background and skills will be interpreted by others.

Adding to the tumultuousness of the modern economy, modern technology has bestowed upon us Google, social networks, blogs, and a host of other means for others to learn about your "areté," your honor, your reputation, your standing, in ways other than speaking directly with you.

In that sense, then, building your personal brand is about understanding how you want your professional life to be seen by others, and then managing your presence in both the offline and online worlds towards that end.

So while it's a new phrase, it's an old concept.

Hotel Restaurants. Put a Fork in Them, 'Cause They're Done

I recently read an article posted by Bill Marriott of Marriott Hotels and Resorts fame, entitled; “The Dish on Hotel Dining Trends,” where he spoke to some degree about the bygone era when Hotel Restaurants were a popular dining choice. Remember that?

I think we can all recall, as Bill does in his article, when we used to get all dressed up for that special brunch, or lunch or dinner at the grand Hotel in our respective city. It was a big deal.

Bill would have us believe that Hotel restaurants are making a comeback and that is where I have to take exception to his comments.

I would agree, that there are some exceptions to the rule here, there are some exceptional restaurants in certain Hotels, in certain cities, where the restaurant has achieved its own stand-alone reputation as a great place to eat, regardless of the fact that it is in a Hotel, and I take my hat off to those restaurant and Hotel operators.

But please Bill, Hotel restaurants still have MILES to go before they will enjoy the success of the entrepreneurial independent restaurants that can be found in the major destination cities, where there is considerable competition for the local (and Hotel guest) diner.

There are a number of reasons why I disagree with Bill on this:

1. Hotel companies, the big chains, are still trying unsuccessfully to either take a cookie cutter approach to dining in all of their Hotels, or, they are trying to align themselves with celebrity chefs to lure diners in. As a result, Hotel restaurant menus are boring, and, the celebrity chefs don’t stick around.
2. Hotels get caught into believing that they must be all things to all people when it comes to food and beverage service in their Hotels, and as a result, they are all too often guilty of having large, bland menus that don’t specialize or excite people.
3. Hotel people think like Hotel people, not like independent, entrepreneurial restaurant operators, and, if and when they go outside their comfort zone and actually hire an entrepreneurial restaurant operator, their first mission is to “Hotelize” them, which effectively serves to crush their independence, and they quickly realize that there exists a huge gap between what they were told that they were hired for, and what they are REALLY supposed to do, now that they have the job.

So what do they do? Conform, so they can keep their job. And what do we get? More of the same. Surprise !!!

4. Hotel companies need to get serious about food & beverage in their Hotels, and this won’t happen overnight. It took decades for Hotels to realize that they should make money in food & beverage, that it wasn’t enough to make all your money in rooms division, and subsidize losing food & beverage operations.

Hotels need to completely revisit food & beverage operations in their Hotels. They need to make some difficult decisions and they need to let go of the past.

None of us can exist as “special occasion” restaurants where we go for our Grandfather’s birthday, or to celebrate our wedding anniversary or some other special occasion.

Want to know what works? Actually, you already know, you just need to commit to doing something about it. You all know of at least one, if not more, restaurants in your city that have a line up almost every night, if not every night. What are they doing that you’re not? What are they offering that you’re not?

Put your ego in check and give the people what they want, and you just might make a profit in food & beverage along the way as well.

All the World's a Stage . . .

That Shakepeare was a smart man, and I am fond of many quotations that he is responsible for, but when it comes to Leadership, I have always drawn a direct connection to the following quotation:

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

Frankly, I don’t really get too caught up in anything after; “all the world’s a stage”, which is where I draw my comparison.

It is important to remember that, as leaders, we are ALWAYS on stage. Our audience may change throughout the day, week, or month, but we are on stage nonetheless, and it is probably never more important than when we are in front of our employees.

It’s also why I have always believed in “leadership by (positive) example” and I choose to insert the word positive quite intentionally as I also believe that the opportunity exists to provide negative examples, and I’m sorry to say that we have at one time or another, all worked for someone who provided us with a negative example of something that we will NEVER do.

I know, for me, I learned as much from the negative examples that I witnessed as I did from the positive examples, but regardless, it all drove home the same point; employees are ALWAYS watching to see what we will do, especially when the pressure is on, and especially when they need our support.

The other point I would like to drive home is that you never know how seemingly insignificant an item is, until it is too late, and I learned that the hard way, as we often do.

In the midst of an insanely busy day one day, I had an employee pop their head into my office and tell me that there was someone there to see me, and at the time, thinking nothing of it, I said; “please tell them you couldn’t find me, and I’ll follow up with them later.”

I could give you a thousand reasons why I asked the employee to provide the “excuse” that I did, but none of it matters, especially, when I tell you that this was a fairly new employee, one who I had not gotten to know as personally yet, as I would come to, which is why I did not know at the time that she was deeply religious, and to her, I had just asked her to lie for me.

Now, I’ll tell you that I did rectify the situation with the employee, and I did most sincerely and genuinely apologize for what I had asked her to do, and she was gracious and understanding, but it serves as an excellent example of how something that we may see as an innocent “white lie” can be viewed entirely different from others.

A stark reminder of why we must never forget that we are always on stage, and every interaction is another opportunity for us to make a choice, a choice of what kind of example we will provide, and ultimately, how we will be remembered.

G8 Summit - Costs Too High

When I started this Blog, one of the things that I thought about, was whether or not I would find myself commenting on “industry issues” and I assumed that I would, from time to time.

What I had not planned on, was making any commentary necessarily specific about Government policy and the like, but with the newspapers reporting every day this week on the security costs of the upcoming G8 Summit meeting in Deerhurst, I could not stay silent.

I have some experience in this matter, as those of you who know me well, will know. I was the General Manager of the Host Property for the first G8 Summit meeting that followed the horrific events of 9/11. The Summit was held in the pristine Kananaskis Valley, in Alberta.

As I was knee deep in everything “Summit” for approximately 1 year preceding the Summit, I was privy to a great deal of sensitive information, which even now I will not reference directly, instead focusing on the articles of late that peg the security costs at approximately $900 Million.

Assume for a moment that figure only represents the security costs. Needless to say, the G8 delegates still need to be transported, fed and housed, at a minimum, and you can see how the estimated cost of the G8 Summit meeting exceeds $1 Billion.

What most people won’t know, which adds to the absurdity of this figure, is that the Summit meetings, or at least when we hosted them, started out being scheduled as a 3 day and night event. As the days grew closer, the agenda shrank to the point where the actual Summit was reduced down to 1 ½ days.

Let me repeat that. $1 Billion for a 1 ½ day meeting of the G8 leaders.

Now, that said, here is what got me writing about this today in the first place.

As I write this, sitting in my lovely home in North Vancouver, the news is everywhere that we in British Columbia are close to having enough signatures on a petition to form a proper opposition to the implementation of the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) in our Province.

That is a worthy cause, none of us want to be taxed any more, and this tax could very well hamper business at various levels. Fair enough.

But why, why are people not screaming at the top of their lungs about the absurd costs of being a hosting country for the G8 Summit meetings?

It doesn’t matter what your political views are, but consider for a moment what we could do, in our own Country, for our own citizens, with $1 Billion. It’s staggering.

Could we eliminate homelessness in our Country? Could we make sure that the children of our Country have enough to eat, a roof over their heads, and access to a proper education?

The list is endless, but it is also pointless speculation unless this issue is somehow given a stage from which something can be done to put a stop to this senseless spending of our money.

I made the suggestion, almost 10 years ago, after our G8 Summit meeting, that if the G8 leaders feel the need for this annual meeting, they should simply fly everyone out to an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean at an undisclosed location, have their meetings, and everyone flies home. You could probably do the whole deal for under $1 Million. Then we would have an additional $999 Million to spend on the things, in our Country, that could make the difference for millions of people.

Wouldn’t that be a better use of our money?

Warm Bodies Need Not Apply

I recently read a great article about positive hiring practices and some of the do’s and don’t’s of hiring.

What it reiterated for me, is the value of multiple interviews, and, reference checks, and I suppose, above all, establishing a procedure for hiring and accepting nothing less, ever, no matter what the circumstances are.

I can’t tell you how many times I have found myself in the scenario where a Manager needs a new employee and rather than do what’s right, and, arguably harder, they want to do what’s easier, which is all too often to hire the guy whose resume happen to come across their desk a couple of days ago.

Now, he’s been called in for a hastily organized interview, and based on that 10 minute meeting, the Manager wants to hire him.

When I ask; “who else has met him?” And the answer I get is; “no one else, but..” I know, here it comes…. I’m too busy, we need someone now, no one else was available, and lots and lots of other justification for why there simply isn’t time to do it right.

It’s ironic to me that even now, there are so many Managers out there who do not see this trap for what it is, and more so, they don’t see how much MORE time it takes to go through all these steps to hire a substandard employee, and then spend hours and days managing their poor performance, which in the meantime may have cost you other employees, and, guests.

It also baffles me how these same Managers don’t see what impact these kind of decisions have on their good employees, the ones who really want to do well, and along the way, support their Manager, but now they see him in a different light, and, they see that mediocre performance is acceptable. NOT a good message to send.

A good hiring platform should always include;

- A full and complete job description for the position you want to fill, which includes your

- Minimum qualifications.

- An established screening process to prioritize resumes submitted for the vacant position.

- A set interview process, involving the hiring Manager, HRD, and in my opinion, the GM.

- A list of questions that are asked of each candidate who you interview.

- At least two reference checks from previous employers.

Lastly, I would emphasize the need for proper follow up with EVERY applicant. There’s nothing that says that the follow up can’t vary depending on your level of interest in the candidate, or not, but respond in some way nonetheless.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a proper courtesy, and, and extension of your business, and your business ethics. Candidates are always so appreciative when I follow up with them, regardless of the news. They appreciate that someone took the time to get in touch with them and let them know where they stand.

At the end of the day, isn’t it the way you would want to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot?