THE Management continuity solution!

If the average life span of an expatriate (General) manager is between 2½ -3 years;
why not re-think your HR-setup? 

Welcome back to the Right-Hospitalitynewsletter. In this issue I will share with you another remark I hear a lot from MD’s, shareholders and resort owners:

‘I cannot get my General Manager to stay over 2 years!’

Wow, and you are still surprised? How about this cliché; ‘wake up and smell the coffee!’ Expatriate managers nowadays are free agents like I mentioned in a previous article. You will therewith have to re-think your strategic approach beyond the qualities of a General Manager to ensure your product growth and positioning.

Huh? ‘Are you telling me that a General Manager is becoming less important?’ Yes and no really. General Managers have an incredible impact on your product, your employees and your guests; true. We will have to answer the question what you need to change to work around the imperative that your GM will probably not stay longer than 2-3 years?

In our experience managing resorts and Islands, we have seen the best of the best crumble in the most gorgeous and stunning locations like for example the Seychelles, Asia and the Caribbean. Whereas the selected GM’s always showed the excellent and proven track records their bosses are so fond of; none of them showed long life spans where it came to ‘sticking around’.

A damaging factor in our industry is that it is more or less accepted! This acceptance is in fact a bit ridiculous. Imagine every 2 years you again will have to start up the selection process. Besides the fact it is a costly process taking up the necessary energy, you also don’t want your company branded as a ‘revolving door’. Furthermore the new GM needs to be inducted, guided and assisted in order to shorten his learning curve.

If you want to avoid losing speed, momentum and ‘face’; prepare to change your approach! We have lifted out 2 possible success scenarios.

In the first scenario you can opt to initiate and implement this change yourself. Here we go; you will have to form a hands-on umbrella, let’s call it a committee, overseeing the GM as your first strategy. For this committee to function efficient and effective however, it should at least be consisting of a financial expert, naturally the owner or shareholder representative and the intermediary or linking pin, usually called owner’s representative, who is the dedicated contact person for the resort or Island operation.

Your committee will have to determine the strategic plan and coordinate its assembly, safeguarding and translation into an operational plan following the vision of both the owner and moreover the market, or guests. In turn there should be detailed policies and guidelines that need to be filtered in a GM-brief and ideally into some form of employee handbook. This gives the GM her or his band-with of duties and responsibilities and the employees the set standards of expectation to follow.

This is in a nutshell what the owner’s representative of the in house workforce has to do. This person therefore needs to do a lot of detailed research in the hospitality industry, its administration, marketing & sales and daily operation to stay on top of things. In addition this is a hand on position; on a daily base this person has to devote time, attention and energy to handle administration, finances, guest and even so vital employee satisfaction.

‘Why?’ you may ask; well… remember your approach to delegate this to the GM will cause you to loose momentum and speed when he decides to leave after 2 years! Your newly formed committee will have to take over the most important decisions on capital investments, marketing and sales strategies. In short you can no longer avoid the responsibility of being involved.

This first scenario is a very time consuming solution. To ensure quality reports and financial transparency, the owner’s representative will have to sacrifice a great deal of time to perform these duties. Additionally these positions are more than once handled in combination with other ‘hats’ or positions within the company of the resort or Island owner and it is not a full time job by itself; tricky!

The second scenario is using an outside company that could take the above mentioned workload off your shoulders and therewith support your envisioned product growth beyond the dependence of a General Manager.

The advantage in this case is the specialism and full dedication such a company brings in through their expertise. The representative of the company can take ‘seat’ in the committee; as such fulfilling the need of involvement, eliminating the necessity of sacrificing time and energy of your in-house workforce. You can use your own experts without distraction.

And even though the charged fee will reflect in the P&L sheet of your resort or Island, it will prove its worth supporting your bottom line and guarantee continuity in growing your gem the right way. The expertise of the representative will assist you in making better decisions and shorten your learning curve and the learning curves of the GM’s to come.

Every GM will in essence be provided a ‘mentor’ keeping him or her and the product growth as well as the vision execution on track by having the owners representative involved in a hands on situation of the daily operation. This is naturally valid for all sales and marketing as well, but that is a different topic we will come back to in a later article.

There you have it; is shifting funds from your workforce P&L within your cumulative P&L to the resort or Island P&L a wise move? You bet!

        -         It will free up your own inner circle workforce without the distraction.
-         It will give you a chance to contract hospitality experts who will ensure your vision and product growth, 
          without having to worry about management changes every 2-3 years.
-         It will also pay for itself because you will skip the learning curves from your inner circle workforce
          and your GM’s.
-        And last but not least it will free up your time by not having to worry about the hassle of every day operation;
          it’s worth it!

Think about it and will realize you will benefit massively from this new setup. You will find these and other tips, tricks and scribbles on our website www.Right-Hospitality.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter. 

Until then, be authentic and do the right thing the RIGHT way.

With sunny regards & see you soon... Jenny & Frits Hannenberg