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Everyone is talking about the tough economy lately, and for good reason. It reminds me of 2001 and my thoughts and arguments back then when times were lean. Not much has changed, philosophically speaking. Yet everything seems so different to a lot of operators.
It makes me wonder: If we believe the gurus of this industry, and we really believe it is all about training and developing our staff, then why don't we ever train or develop ourselves?
I don't think there are any truer words than those of Jim Sullivan, as he described the employee training process: "You need to train, re-train, and when you're done, train again, because as humans we have a tendency to underlearn and overforget."
This philosophy applies to owners and operators as well. Owners and operators have forgotten what they were supposed to learn in the early 2000s.
How many times and in how many ways are we going to hear: "Only the strong survive. It's a sluggish economy. Time for cutbacks. Get back to basics. Mean and lean. We need to rebudget. Reposition. Reforecast. Appease the investors. Be prepared. Have a contingency plan." The list goes on.
Enough is enough. You have to stop looking at the "big picture" as a concept that is all about cutting labor in a down economy. There is only one reason why labor is cut at the rate it has been in the past six months. It is the only place the bean counters can find a large enough bottom-line reduction in costs to offset a downward economy.
It wasn't that long ago when we in the hospitality industry were fat and happy. It was easy. Money flowed. Profits mounted. Investors rejoiced and poured it back in. Re-positioning meant opening another property. New budgeting was figuring out what to do with all the...