Change yourself before you change your customer.
Several years ago, I had the chance to do some work with Marriott hotels. I was walking down the hall with my client team and we ran into the CEO. We exchanged pleasantries (ones that were actually pleasant), and ended up walking to the other side of the building with him. In the midst of our walk, and at this point deep in the midst of a conversation, the man stopped, paused for a second, and turned around. We all watched closely, figuring our highly enthralling chitchat might not have been quite so enthralling after all. He walked back down the hall about 20 feet and bent over to pick something up — a candy wrapper. The unbranded, clear cinnamon candy type your grandma would give you. He tossed it in the garbage can, walked back up to us, and picked up the conversation as if nothing had ever happened.
In the world of hospitality — restaurants, hotels, travel — there is a long held notion that when you treat your employees well, they will treat your customers well. It is the only way to scale leadership in a way that trickles into every minutia of a guest’s experience with you. Surely it would be impossible for a single general manager to place every piece of pillow chocolate, deliver each unexpected morning paper, or remember each guest’s name as they entered or exited the building.
Most often when leaders find themselves in these situations, we quickly turn to training — if they learn it, they will do it. But when this hospitality philosophy is working at its best, the primary indicator of change is what is being observed in the leader themselves — if they see it, they will do it. The change is being installed at a cultural level, not a tactical level.
As a leader your responsibility is to rally a group of people around shared objectives effectively. Too often we focus so much on the ‘shared objectives’ (i.e. the KPI’s, the OKR’s, the LOL’s and the IDUNNO’s) and the ‘effectively’ (i.e. the agile, lean, six sigma, design thinking, sprints, and all other buzzwords) that we lose sight of the ‘rallying a group of people’ — the human side of the equation, and by far the most important component for driving change. And before you can create change in your others, you must realize that change in yourself.
Create change in yourself before you create change in your team. Create change in your team before you create change in your customers and communities.
Andy Hagerman is the Co-Founder and CEO at The Design Gym, a consultancy that empowers people inside of organizations to make things, break things, and create dramatically better ways to work. Through deep culture design consulting, interactive workshops, and our community of creative rebels, we help organizations put their people at the center of the innovation equation. Join us in bringing a sense of humanity back to the workplace at thedesigngym.com or @thedesigngym. He can be reached directly at andy@thedesigngym.com
