Theme: Cultivating Collaboration
ABOUT THIS SERIES
In this series, “Enjoy Your Stay”, I interview various former Starwood Hotel employees to try to understand the magic behind the company’s culture (for more on the “why” behind this project, read this). At the end of each interview, I highlight one key driver of Starwood’s unique culture.
This week’s theme is “Cultivating Collaboration”. My interviews highlighted how a culture of collaboration contributed to a culture of excellence and employee loyalty at Starwood.
KEY THEMES
Across most of my interviews, the concept of collaboration came up as a unique part of Starwood’s culture. There were three contributing factors in particular that helped Starwood develop a strong culture of collaboration.
Ubiquity of “hub-and-spoke” jobs
Clear aligned goals
A simple smile
Ubiquity of “Hub-and-Spoke” Jobs
The hospitality industry naturally lends itself to a culture of collaboration (at least when it's a well-functioning hotel). The nature of running a hotel requires collaboration across multiple departments who all have to work together to deliver a great guest experience. For example, for you to check-in on-time, it requires the Front Desk to coordinate with Housekeeping to know which rooms are clean and available. If something breaks, you likely call the Front Desk who then has to coordinate with the Maintenance department to get it fixed. There are no silos in running a hotel. And more crucially, as Dani, a former Starwood employee who worked across multiple teams in her time there, added, “No one department is more important than another.”
At Starwood’s corporate headquarters, that same mindset permeated the work that was done. Debby, another former Starwood employee of 15 years, in particular had a role that she described as “hub-and-spoke”. Her role required her to work and collaborate with people across different departments in the company. She noted she would never have succeeded in her role if she was unable or unwilling to collaborate. It simply wouldn’t have been possible.
The same was true for Dani’s role when working in the marketing organization where she collaborated with the Revenue Management team extensively. This isn’t always the norm.
As Dani told me, “I've been in other organizations where it feels like different departments aren't talking.”
However, this wasn’t the experience at Starwood. It was almost impossible for individual departments to work in a silo without having to get information from another team or rely on another team to actually implement the work. This may be similar to other companies where implementation is dependent on the actual store locations, rather than the individuals in corporate who develop the idea. At Starwood, their ability to understand, recognize, and work with that concept led to a much smoother internal collaboration across corporate teams and with the actual on-property hotel teams.
The Importance of Goal Alignment
One key ingredient that motivated everyone to collaborate effectively was clarity around goals. When I say goals, I don’t mean OKRs. I mean more like the overall mission and purpose behind the work that was being done. Everyone was clear that the ultimate goal was to deliver a positive and memorable guest experience. Everyone was connected to the same goal across the company.
As Debby articulated it, “That energy and commitment to the goal and to each other is just something I have not found elsewhere".
This is in fact quite unique for a company. In other companies, there may be multiple products that are offered and thus people may actually be working towards different goals that don’t really require collaboration to be successful. Or worse, they may be competing for resources.
The times when there was friction in the Starwood organization was in fact when there was a lack of alignment between goals. In one of my roles at Starwood I was brought in to essentially mediate between the Global Brand teams and the Operations & Franchise teams. There was a process that was causing pain for everyone involved. When I started to interview all the key stakeholders and research the process, I discovered that the biggest source of tension stemmed from a lack of alignment on goals. The Global Brand teams valued a consistent guest experience and so they voted to “deflag” properties that were not meeting brand standards. However, the Operations & Franchise teams valued developer relationships and were afraid that deflagging properties would hurt their ability to develop future projects. It highlighted that Starwood was at its best when teams were aligned, incentivized and working towards the same goals.
A Smile Goes a Long Way
Another trait that the corporate Starwood teams owed to their hospitality background was friendliness. At Starwood, one of the core hotel rules that were taught to all on-property team members was that when you were within 10 feet of a guest you needed to smile at them. When you were within 5 feet of a guest you needed to say “Hello”. Since there were so many corporate Starwood team members who grew up in hospitality, they brought those same principles over to the corporate culture. Walking around the office, people would smile at one another and say hello to each other.
That may sound simple or unremarkable, but these small acts made a big difference. It led to a mostly positive and upbeat atmosphere amongst colleagues. As Debby recalled, “I only encountered maybe 2 or 3 grumpy people in my time there”. It also encouraged you to greet people who weren’t on your team simply because you ran into them in the cafeteria, the pantry, or even in the parking lot. In organizations where there are silos, people tend to keep to themselves or their teams. At Starwood, the general friendliness made it difficult to not meet people. It also fostered more collaboration.
Debby noted, “I don't remember hearing anyone say I can't help you with that.”
The smiling led to friendliness which led to true collaboration. Can you say the same for your organization?
FOLLOW ALONG
Want to follow along with me on this adventure as I continue to speak with former Starwood employees to unlock the secrets behind its extraordinary culture? Follow along here.
Want to share your perspective with me about what made Starwood’s culture unique? Fill out this form here and I’ll reach out to you to schedule time to connect.
