SubscribeThat’s why when I come across a GM who excites his or her employees like the fellow at the big convention hotel, I’m excited, too. We’ve got a long-term winter—for the property, associates, guests, and company. I’m especially gratified if I discover that the GM grew up, so to speak, in the Marriott system. Someone who has learned to be a good hands-on manager while at Marriott is the best test of our company’s management philosophy. It tells me that after seventy years, our original corporate culture is still going strong.
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Those early experiences
Road-Tested Research- The Benefits Of Being A Hands-On Manager
“The true test of civilization,” declared American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1870, “is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops—no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”
I’d like to offer a contemporary twist on Emerson’s noble thought. That is, the true test of a company is the kind of manager it turns out. Naturally, I’d like to think that Marriott passes this test hands down.
I recently spent the better part of a day with a Marriott associate who fits my notion of the kind of manager our company should aspire to produce. He’s the general manager of one of our largest convention hotel properties. As GM, he’s essentially the captain of the ship. As we toured the property together, this fellow radiated energy and enthusiasm. He knew every inch of the hotel and grounds, and he never missed a beat answering my detailed questions.
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What goes around comes around.
Even while competitors are keeping you on your toes in the marketplace, keep in mind that your rivals are also your peers. The old saying rings true: “What goes around comes around.” If you hold yourself above your competition, you risk isolating yourself and losing out on sources of help when you need it most.
We work constantly with other hospitality companies to deal with local, state, and national issues that affect our industries. Team effort takes place under the umbrella of our various trade associations. Read the full article »
Why the second round of awards?
Why the second round of awards? The GM at the property knows that the folks on the front lines could not do their jobs and win guest plaudits and gold stars without the support of the people working behind the scenes. The second three awards make sure that heart of the house contributions don’t go unrecognized or unrewarded simply because they’re invisible to most guests.
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The Tiefel Award
One special event that takes place in conjunction with Associate Appreciation Day is the J. Willard Marriott Award of Excellence, named after my father and designed to honor our associates who go the extra mile on a regular basis. We’ve had associates from every walk of Marriott life win this honor: front desk clerks, van drivers, bakers, housekeepers, banquet assistants, and so on. This award is a true pleasure to bestow, because it recognizes people who epitomize the best aspects of Marriott’s culture. It’s a particularly important event, because the award recognizes our workers in operations, not our executives.
When faced with the problems of “thinking big”
When faced with the problems of “thinking big,” one of the most effective counterattacks, I believe, is to remind yourself constantly, vigilantly, and diligently that your success didn’t happen in a vacuum. We came very close to forgetting that truth during the late 1980s.
Any successful business needs—and will always need—a lot of people, both inside and outside, to make it a winner. We have literally millions of partners in success. First, we have our team of associates, our most valued players. Then we have our property owners, our stockholders, our bondholders, Wall Street, our peers and competitors, our franchises, and, of course, our customers. Everyone plays a role in making Marriott what it is. Read the full article »
Success Is A Team Sport
As of this printing, Marriott International employs 225,000 associates—and counting. We’re the thirteenth largest employer in the United States. We’re also the biggest hotel management company in the world. The company dishes up millions of breakfast, lunches, and dinners a year through our hotel restaurants and 3,500 food service units. Our distribution arm delivers 1.7 million cases of food-related products around the country each week. And more than 15,000 senior citizens reside in our retirement communities. As a whole, we purchase more groceries, make more beds, and serve more meals than any other enterprise, with the possible exception of the military.
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The third point of our corporate culture
The third point of our corporate culture—taking care of our associates—will also continue to be a top priority for us. Like hands-on management, it’s a key factor in maintaining the company’s family spirit. The programs and attitudes that I talked about earlier aren’t apt to change anytime soon. They more likely will grow over time. In fact, a large part of the order of Marriott is and will continue to be devoted specifically to counterbalancing negative change that we think would ruin the good think we’ve got going.
Underlying these challenges is something we should never lose sight of, no matter how large or prosperous the company becomes: our core values. One episode brought this point home to me in a way I’ll never forget.
Development and architectural and construction divisions
Like their reaction to the layoff of the development and architectural and construction divisions ,the attitude of associates toward our financial predicament was far more understanding than I think many companies would have enjoyed in the same situation. At headquarters and in the field, people signaled their belief that the decision to freeze salaries would not have been made if it had not been necessary. They also responded positively to the approach we used. The “weighting” of the freeze timetable put the biggest burden on those most able to bear it. Finally, there was general compassion for our problems and a recognition that we weren’t the only company having troubles. Corporate America as a whole was having to suck it up a bit after a decade of wild growth.
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Never Believe Your Own Hype Or What The Press Says About You
Overconfidence is such a destructive force for individuals and institutions that I think it’s worth devoting a short chapter to the topic. Companies big and small, new and old, can all fall victim to it; the more successful, the more likely one is to suffer from it. As Marriott leaned, there’s a price to be paid for thinking too well of yourself.
A pointed reminder of our overconfidence in the 1980s came up recently in a conversation I was having with a colleague at another major hotel company. This fellow told me about a conference he had attended in 1989 at which the hot topic was concern about potential overbuilding in the lodging industry. At one point in the session, a senior Marriott executive announced to a crowd of recession-spooked hotel industry leaders that Marriott was “so powerful, we can build through any cycle.”
The truth is, I’m still having fun after forty years.
The incubation of Courtyard by Marriott in the early 1980s is another good example of how keeping your eyes and ears open in the marketplace can make for good business. Until courtyard’s debut, Marriott had focused only on the full-service hotel business. Other segments were new territory for us. When we decided to go after the moderate-priced hotel segment, we pulled out all the stops. We wanted to know exactly what we were up against. Our small, fanatically dedicated Courtyard team scattered to the four winds, checking out the competition by literally checking in to their hotels for a firsthand look. Team members spent hundreds of nights sitting in competitors’ hotel rooms taking detailed notes about furnishings, room arrangements, and service. They also interviewed business travelers to learn what they wanted in a hotel room. The information gathered was critical to the fresh concept and design of Courtyard by Marriott.
As long as we were leasing and building small facilities like restaurants,
One of the biggest changes to have an impact on our growth both as an organization and as a business occurred in the late 1970s when we overhauled our corporate financing philosophy. This one modification alone has reverberated throughout the company for the last two decades.
For the first fifty years of our existence, we had what could be called a “bean-counter” mentality toward finance. Property leases and traditional mortgages were pretty much the extent of our financial universe.
Our experience with franchising wasn’t limited to the lodging side of the business
For a company that is as systems-oriented as we are, we really fell down on developing the systems we needed to make our initial foray into franchising work. First, we jumped in too fast and had to beat a hasty retreat when we found that we had far too many unqualified applicants trying to give us a check in exchange for a Marriott franchise.
No sooner did we get a handle on the application process and narrow the field than we inadvertently tripped ourselves up by deciding that the franchised Marriott hotels—to be called Marriott Inns—would be specially designed to distinguish them from the company’s own hotels. From today’s standpoint, the decision is a strange one; one of the strengths of franchising is to have all properties appear to be part of one seamless system. Our choice also flies in the face of one of our most cherished goals: consistency.
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Deciding to decide and then sticking to those decisions has another benefit
In our family’s case, togetherness extends to the workplace. My two oldest sons—Steve and John—and our son-in-law, Ron, have made the company a career. Our youngest son, David, plans to join the firm when he graduates from college. Working together is a pleasure, because we share a common vision and core personal values.
Deciding to decide and then sticking to those decisions has another benefit. Perhaps I wound old-fashioned, but I think there’s satisfaction to be had in standing firm against the onslaught of temptations that come with contemporary life. Saying no consistently can give a sense of real power in a world that often seems out of control.
What does “deciding to decide” mean?
The other personal lesson that I want to share briefly is one that came early in my adult life and fortunately didn’t require the drama of a heart attack to sink in. I learned the lesson growing up in my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. Former church president Spencer W. Kimball termed it “deciding to decide.”
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learned to keep our corporate ego in check
In the aftermath of the 1990 crash, we’ve taken off the party hats, put away the noisemakers, and now listen more closely than ever to colleagues, industry reports, and a host of other indications that together give us a realistic picture of what’s going on. We also have, I hope, learned to keep our corporate ego in check.
The idea was to eliminate the need for guests to stand in line at the front desk.
Some of our more recent innovations have focused on trying to help guests get in and out of our hotels faster and on the business or pleasure that brought them to us in the first place. One is the in-room video checkout service that we initiated in the early 1980s. By 1986, the service was in use in fifty of our hotels and spread from there. But before in-room video, we instituted Express Checkout that keeps our nighttime associates prowling the halls as they slip a bill under every departing guest’s door by 4:00 A.M. Today, customers shouldn’t have to go near the front desk on their way out the door.
Time for my church activities remains a high priority
In addition to cutting back on the quantity of work I personally handle, I’m also working harder at saying no to demands on my time. It’s not easy. I have a strong inclination for listening to a wide variety of viewpoints; it’s difficult to acknowledge that I simply can’t afford to make time for everyone who wants to discuss an issue with me. Naturally, my time with family and Marriott associates takes precedence. Time for my church activities remains a high priority, as do my duties on various boards of directors, but invitations to just about everything else are frequently politely turned down. Saying no is hard for me, but it has to be.
Danger signals weren’t just flashing for smaller companies
Danger signals weren’t just flashing for smaller companies, though. They were flashing for the big ones, too. The unveiling of our first Fairfield Inn syndication in November 1989 was greeted unenthusiastically by a Wall Street that had always eagerly gobbled up earlier Marriott offerings. We sold the syndication, but not as quickly as previous deals.
The most difficult change by far was attitudinal.
The most difficult change by far was attitudinal. Not only did I inherit my father’s workaholism and heart problems, I also picked up his habit of worrying.
While Dad was alive, he frequently handwrote long notes to me in the dead of night because he literally couldn’t rest until he’d gotten whatever was bothering him on paper. Night-shift associates at our properties would do a double-take when they spotted the chairman walking briskly thorough a hotel kitchen at 3:00 A.M. Dad paid for his perpetual restlessness with an ongoing series of illnesses that sometimes took him away from the office for months at a time. My mother spent a great portion of her time nursing him back to health, only to watch him lose it again to work and worry.
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Value The Organization More Than Individual Players
Much of what you’ve read so far in this book might lead you to assume that everyone at Marriott always works cheerfully and unfailingly for the good of the whole. In general, that’s remarkably true. Teamwork is a hallmark of our corporate culture. It’s one of the company’s many strengths that I’m most proud of.
At the same time, the fact that we’re able to get nearly 225,000 associates to march in the same general direction on any given day does not mean that we have miraculously escaped dealing with maverick human nature. We haven’t. Nor does it signify that the company is staffed by yes-men, robots, or mindless conformists. We’re not.
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The episode underscored a couple of fundamental truths.
The episode underscored a couple of fundamental truths. One, in a people-oriented business like Marriott’s, it’s critical to get the “people” part right. Both of the executives were bright, capable, hands-on managers, but instead of taking care of each other and those who worked for and with them—a key tenet of our teamwork-based culture—they let personal priorities get the upper hand. In the process, they destroyed a great deal of goodwill, wasted energy, and upset a lot of people.
Creating a teamwork-oriented culture is one thing
Creating a teamwork-oriented culture is one thing, maintaining it is another. One thing that I think contributes to keeping the teamwork concept strong at Marriott is the fact that we’ve not willing to dangle outrageous incentive packages in front of talented people to keep them on board as long as possible. We depend too much upon people working together toward a common goal to risk fracturing the team by setting up a reward structure that distinguishes a few disproportionately. Everyone who works for the company is making a contribution to our success. There would be not quicker way to jeopardize, if not destroy, the special “we’re-in-this-together” ambience of our workplace than by recognizing a few folks beyond their market value.
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Decide To Decide
A few minutes before ten on the morning of October 2, 1989, I hurried aboard an Amtrak train at Union Station in Washington, D.C., for a three-hour trip to New York City. The miserable rain outside mirrored my lousy mood. I had been awakened by chest pains in the middle of the night and had not been able to go back to sleep. Instead, I’d gotten up, popped a couple of aspirins, pedaled my stationary bike for a few minutes, and headed to the office before 6:00 A.M. As I settled into my seat for the long ride, I still wasn’t feeling up to snuff.
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Preserve Order Amid Change
Building a business can be boring.
Heresy? Ask anyone who had been at the top of a company for more than a few years. The daily grind of business consists largely of taking care of thousands of tiny, laborious details. Very little of what a company does ever sees the light of day, much less the camera lights of press conferences, photo shoots, or commercials.
Why begin a chapter about growth with an unappetizing image of hard work?
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When you cut to the chase of what growth in all its dimensions is all about
Twenty percent, in fact, became a magic number for us. We began using the shorthand 20/20 to sum up our annual growth goal: 20 percent growth in sales and 20 percent return on equity. Among other things, the catchy phrase gave our large, far-flung organization an easy-to-remember mission. One former Marriott executive—now at the helm of another major company—was always impressed that our frontline employees, located thousands of miles from corporate headquarters, could reply “20/20” when asked what their goal was for the year. He tells me that his new organization has no comparable battle cry.
Development, Deals, and Debt
Marriott’s order responded to the call for development capacity by setting up a huge construction pipeline. The company had long had an architecture and construction team, but the scale of building was going to be bigger than anything we’d ever done in the past. Feeding the pipeline would also require much more complex financing resources than Marriott had been accustomed to dealing with.
Creative financing ideas soon bounced around our boardroom helped along by major changes in the federal tax code in 1981 that fueled real estate development. To grow as planned, we had to transform ourselves into a deal-savvy organization. Once again, the order adapted. We found ourselves easing into the let’s-make-a-deal mind-set that characterized much of 1980s business. Our legal department quickly mastered the intricacies of syndications, limited partnerships, and other real estate investment vehicles.
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