Living our values

                        By Jim Evans

          When Si and I decided to start our own hotel management company, there was one clear goal we both immediately agreed upon; we wanted to work with people who had a similar passion and commitment about our business as we do.  We both love to work with team members who get excited every day about this business of ours no matter what their position. 

          It makes no difference if you’re a General Manager or a member in housekeeping or at the front desk; it’s more rewarding for all involved to be with people who use their personalities and skills to make our guests feel welcomed and happy about our service and attention to detail.

          Over the years it’s been easy to see why some hotels excel in their overall performance while others struggle.  My experience has been that in high performance hotels, the team almost always has a clear focus of their goals and each team member understands their responsibilities well. There are guidelines they understand and use as the framework for making decisions; decisions oftentimes that make or break a guest experience.  These guidelines are the “values” they believe in and use to create their service culture. 

          Also, I’ve witnessed that leaders (the best ones) always begin their focus by making sure they have the right people in the right positions throughout their operation.   By building a team of people who share our vision and values, team leaders improve their odds of achieving better than average performance.

          A recent survey by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Aspen Institute found that 89% of companies have created operational values for their company.  That’s impressive but only if those company’s live their values.  The CEO of Xerox, Anne Mulcahy says that corporate values “helped save Xerox during the worst crisis in the company’s history”.  Martin Carver, CEO of Bandag, Inc., a retread tire company based in Iowa says that “values are the key to making money, but only if a company truly takes its values seriously”.

          In other words, when every team member uses company values as guidelines for the decisions they make; that’s when great performance occurs.  Think back only a few years ago to companies like Enron, WorldCom and Tyco.  I’m sure these companies had their values plastered all over their walls, Enron even created a video of how important their values were to the company’s success.  Can you imagine?  By ignoring their values, they failed their employees, their shareholders and their customers.

          At Ardent, we live our values; starting with Si and me.  We are totally committed to FAMILY, INTEGRITY, EXTRAORDINARY SERVICE, DIVERSITY AND OPEN COMMUNICATIONS.  We believe from the bottom of our hearts we can live by these values and create one of the highest performing management companies in the business.  Ultimately our actions (every team member in the company) will dictate how well we perform. 

          Let’s make our values the cornerstone of our all of our efforts and let’s recognize our top team members through our “Values Recognition Awards”(information about these awards will be coming out soon ).  Let’s make sure our team members hear us discuss our values daily and know that living these values is the way to create memorable guest stays thereby differentiating ourselves from the competition.

           If our actions each day are wise and sincere, we’ll see each of our hotels rising to the top of each brand.  If our actions are foolish and inconsistent what will our guest think of us…they won’t know what to think and will simply move on to another hotel. 

          Our opportunity is clear, let’s embrace our values, be passionate about serving our guests and fellow team members.  Let’s work together to create a company others talk about and try to emulate.