Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

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Corporate University for smaller chains…

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In creating its corporate university in 1985, Accor was the first service company in Europe to set up an integrated training center.
Twenty-five years later, Accor Academy locally trains 135,000 students a year through a catalogue of 120 different courses delivered in 16 Academies around the world.

However – you don’t need to be a giant like Accor to have your own corporate University!

If you belong to a smaller chain or association of independent hotels you can partner with us. We deliver custom made service management training at university level. This is what the association of Danish Conference Centers has done with result of now having educated more than 150 managers since 2004

Courses can be designed according to student levels on bachelor or masters level and with or without official accreditation. Also students can get certificates at both levels or go for full degrees. Programmes are accredited by the University of Chester(UK).

All GROW programmes are based on action learning. This means that students stay on their job while studying and have as their main focus to add value to their organisation and work towards solutions to real worklife challenges.

For more information drop me a note.

It’s all about doing stuff

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Here is a great clip from Robin Sharma – he is not saying something new in fact he is quoting the ol’ master Peter Drucker him self. But this is still an all important message in a world that is shifting at high speed.

Well now its official…

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Strong workplace climate leads to strong customer service

Based on a survey of 525 food and beverage managers in 40 Asian hotels, the study found that the key factor driving guest service was workplace climate, which involves employees’ understanding of the hotel’s expectations for customer service and how the hotel will reward and support the employees. The study found that a strong workplace climate meant strong customer service. As for employee satisfaction, that too is partly driven by the clear expectations of a favorable workplace climate.

We have been trying to drive home that point for the past 10 years – that basic philosophy is at the heart of our Service Management training based on the principles outlined in the Service Profit Chain.
Only thing I would like to add is that the middle management team is at the core of this. How well they understand and execute will determine if you achieve that kind of culture. So focus on building a strong Management team that is the key – then they will build strong front line teams

Read the full article here Study of Excellence in Customer Service Named 2010 Best Article in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

The value of consistency

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Consistency (or lack of ) is one of my pet rants.

Ask any newly hired hospitality employee what the name of the game is and they will tell you that happy customers is all about exceeding expectations. And it is.

But that also means that if I had this fantastic experience last week in your restaurant (or your: insert your business here ) and I tell my friends at the office about it and we all decide to go for a friday after work dinner – then that experience MUST at least match then one i had on my first visit – if not it is a huge flop and you have lost me for ever.

If I take a client out or book them a hotel or what ever I need to know that this will be not just OK but excellent – And I will pay more to be sure

Seth Godin in his blog asks:

“…how much extra would you pay for a plane that was guaranteed to be always on time, or a surgery that was always guaranteed to work? …. That’s because we’re often willing to pay a significant premium to avoid risk”

And he has a point.

In David Rock’s latest book your Brain at Work ( which i highly recommend ) Rock writes :

.. The one thing that is certain is that people will always pay lots of money to feel less uncertain. That is because uncertainty feels to the brain like a threat to your life..”

Excellent, is useless if is not consistent.

There is a fortune to be made in consistency.

Travel Avoidance

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I learned a new word the other day – a word that sent shivers down my spine. Not that i have not suspected that this development was inevitable but still, seeing it in print was a jolt. The word is ” Travel Avoidance”. A conscious policy by large companies to reduced travel and f2f meeting wherever they can.

In a report published by the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University with the title ‘Hospitality Business Models confront the future of meetings‘ Cisco outline how they have chalked up $400 million in direct savings and $150 million in productivity gains by switching as much of their travel/meeting actives as possible to ‘TelePresence’.

The report also mentions research by Gartner Inc. that video conferencing will replace 2,1 Million airline seats by 2012 representing a revenue decline of $3,5 Billion for the travel and Hospitality industries.

And Meeting review wrote this :

2010 has been the year that everyone suddenly started to take virtual meetings and events seriously, indeed the mainstream industry is even starting to see them no longer as a threat but instead as a way of extending the reach, the audience and, importantly, the revenues for their events.

See the full article here

So what to do?

The article suggest that Hotels should invest in video conference equipment so that they can offer this service to clients. I am not so sure that is the way to go. If we look back some years ago LCD projectors where very expensive and as a consequence only the largest companies had them – in the beginning.
Smaller companies would go to hotels and rent one. But soon the price of LCD’s came tumbling down and suddenly they where not so special anymore. Today we all have our own. And the fact that a hotel can provide one does not exactly constitute a competitive advantage

My prediction is that the same will happen with video conferencing – companies will get their own kits and virtual conference room in hotels will become obsolete.

A better plan might be to leap frog past that and take a look at the structure of the meeting market as it is emerging.

One way to do that could be to map it on a 2×2 matrix with number of participants on the one axis and the degree of interaction from monologue to deep dialog on the other axis .

That could roughly look something like this:

In the bottom half of this matrix there is mainly emphasis on one way info transmission, possibly with a few questions from the floor. This type of meeting is handled brilliantly by various tech solutions and there will be no stopping that trend developing even further. In that sense this type of meeting will slowly disappear from the traditional venues and move to virtual (also because participants are thoroughly tired of attending this type of meeting or conference).

But on the top half of the matrix where the focus is on interaction /participation and deep dialog, high tech solutions do not do the job very well. As Marchall McLuhan said the more complex the message the more complex a medium do you need, and the most complex we have is f2f.

Now if you are providing meeting facilities – go have a look at your breakout room, your standard meeting room set up etc. Are the facilities that you provide conducive to dialog or to monologue?

To me the gray cloud on the drawing represents yesterdays meetings, they will be taken over by high tech solutions and will not require f2f and the yellow cloud represents tomorrows meetings space where we solve the complex and tricky stuff through collaboration and involvement.

The reason i have the number of participant in the matrix is that i see a sweet spot in the 10 to 75 segment ( upper right corner of the matrix) because when you move to very large groups ( upper left of the matrix), and think dialog then tech shows its face aging ( Twiter, FB Etc)

When i presented this to one of my hotelier friends his response was, “but 80% of our meeting business today is Cinema- or U-table set up.” Yes I know i have seen that as well. But if you plot types of meeting on a bell curve then, at the top of the curve (mainstream) you will find the cinema set up and the U-table – fast forward a year or two and where is what was at the top of the top of the bell curve now?
Going down, fast.
At the beginning of the bell curve we now find Dialog, participatory meeting Art of Hosting etc. Where will that be in 2 years time? On its way up, heading for main stream status.

In summary it is going to be increasingly difficult for meeting facility providers to justify that they are providing value when it comes to ‘monologue’ meetings. It can be done better and cheaper with technology – and that type of meeting is a god case for Travel Avoidance”

Where they can make a huge difference and add value is by learning how to provide space and surroundings that are conducive to deep dialog in the broadest sense – and believe me that is not a banqueting room set up cinema style

Loyalty Works

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As I stated in my previous post you need to create word of mouth – that is the single most consistent source of new business in an overcrowded market place. What we know from research is that loyal customers tend to spread more positive word of mouth that just ordinary satisfied customers so it pays off to think about what you can do to build that important loyalty.

“In today’s crowded marketplace, creating loyal, engaged customers is more important—and more challenging—than ever,” says Marc Johnson CEO of Cincinnati-based Loyalty 360.

Here are the top 5 loyalty trends from Loyalty 360.

1. Marketers will increasingly understand that loyalty is not a program – it is a journey and a strategic business goal
2. Loyalty will focus more on emotions rather than on rational, incentive-based initiatives.
3. Companies will increasingly look at how customer engagement and employee engagement work together to drive bottom-line
4. The voice of customer programs is an important strategy for brands, and we expect to see greater focus on it in 2011results.
5. Relevancy will be a key driving force of customer loyalty and engagement

Read all 11 trends and more detail here

ALIA’s Little Book of Practice

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This is a wonderful little book that I can only recommend to all of you that are interested in working with groups and teams.

The Little Book of Practice for Authentic Leadership in Action chronicles the principles, people and practices that have come together to create ALIA’s unique and powerful approach to actualising authentic leadership and transformational change.

Go to the site and pick your copy here

Are you the Lido or Lidl

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To me it is quite clear. If you are in a market that is oversupplied. ( Offerings exceed demand) which is what virtually every business I can think of is experiencing at the moment, then you are not going to get much traction by trying to blast your way through the noise with advertising, because that is what everyone else is trying to do and it is clearly not working. ( People much more clever that I have written about this for ages – my favorite guru on this subject is Seth Godin – check him out).

The primary reason it is not working is that we are all subjected to so much noise that we are going crazy. On top of that we also desperately trying to cram more and more stuff into the same twenty-four hours. That leaves us with less and less time to filter all that noise and workout what is for real and what is just another attempt to trick us to part with our hard earned money.
(A person living in an urban environment will be subjected on an average to 3000 messages a day from companies trying peddle something to them).

So in order to cope we all resort to the same life line – ask a friend.

Word of mouth has become the single most important source of influence in virtually all purchasing decision. Whether you are planing your next vacation, searching for a new fridge or wonder what skies to get for the kids – chances are you will ask a friend for advise in order to get some clarity in all that clutter and noise.

So how can we generate word of mouth?

In my opinion there are to basic ways.
Either you are exceptionally good at what you do – so good that people are inspired to talk about what ever it is you do to their friends..
Or you deliver something at such a ridiculously low price that, that in it self creates word of mouth. Ryan Air is a good example of this. How often have you heard a friend say: ‘i just got these two ticket to Barcelona at this incredible price’ ( less often, if ever, do you hear a friend say ‘let me tell you about a marvelous flight i had with Ryan Air’)

Very few companies manage to be both fantastic and cheap – IKEA & South-West Airlines are two examples – both are exceptional in their categories.

But for most it is a choice about being Lido og Lidl. Delivering a fantastic experience or executing at a rock bottom bargain price.

What you do not what to happen is that you are caught in between, in the no-mans land of delivering an average product at an average price.

If you are not the best nor the cheapest… what are you then actually?