Abstract
Operations lead from an idea to a satisfied customer. They are company strategy translated into reality. This chapter shows how the four leading players in this book have translated their strategies into operational priorities. The first step of this journey is Promise, essence and flame red.
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Notes
- 1.
Using the dictionary definition: “Direction taken or plotted on the horizontal plane, and mainly any point on the compass card.”
- 2.
It sounds much nicer in Italian. But ever onward, never turning back.
- 3.
Stemming from the central offices’ role and how that was redefined in giving service to those who were really the mainstay: each hotel’s managers.
- 4.
Each team in each hotel translated the essence in its own way. That prompted behavior that we might call “surprising”.
- 5.
The Family was given ten points, and each member evaluated each dimension. Next, the average was found and consensus was reached with everybody over that score.
- 6.
The Family played the leading role in this job. The CEO wanted them to fully engage with the prioritizing process.
- 7.
Some of them had already internalized that essence in their almost daily dealings with the Family. The challenge was in materializing all this informal knowledge in such a way that it could be transmitted to new hires. Keeping it inside a few heads that refused to materialize it was a big risk.
- 8.
Readers should not confuse a hotel chain with a company owning a small number of hotels. Nonetheless, in both cases the service watchdog must be the manager. I have stayed in a great many hotels in my professional life. In almost none have I had personalized treatment when revisiting. At one stage in my life I used to carry a little card with my room requirements printed on it, and would hand it in at reception, saying: “You’d better come up with this otherwise you’ll have me here demanding it until I get it.” And as some people know, perseverance is one of my traits. Result: I got check-in staff to remember me when I revisited because of that particular trait. Good service? No, awful and frankly very boring to waste time over.
- 9.
In later chapters in this book, we shall run through the actions that were designed.
- 10.
Tattoos, for example. It is very hard to find young people without some tattoo or other. This did not go down well because it did not transmit the required tone. Therefore, ways were found to cover them up by not allowing short sleeves, so as to hide them. Obviously, there was no room for body piercing in this backdrop. One team member told me that he thought that was old-fashioned so I told him one of my favorite personal anecdotes. When I began to work in the USA an age ago, my company CEO called me into his office and said: “You European ladies insist in going around in summer without stockings on. Here in Texas, everybody wears stockings to work, it is impolite not to do so.” Point taken, those were company rules and I had to follow them. Exactly the same applies in those hotels.
- 11.
Remember that in the catering sector there is a lot of turnover and the so-called fixed discontinuous hiring. That makes it very important to be able to transmit essence industrially for new hires to “breathe” the DNA from day one.
- 12.
And with the best will in the world that decision may be wrong. At times, they are taken from a micro viewpoint when they have macro implications.
- 13.
Extended Enterprise (Moss Kanter 1999). A totally integrated concept in SPDM. It takes into account the ecosystem of companies making up the service.
- 14.
One or multiple companies may provide the service. When part of the service is handed to third parties, we call it an extended enterprise and talk of the ecosystem that comprises that swarm of companies. The AVE (Spanish high-speed train) is a good example of this, because whereas Ferroser provides the on-board service and handles passengers, clients think it is an AVE service. And so it is, albeit provided by a third party.
- 15.
SLA, Service Level Agreement. Service indicators agreed between companies by contract.
- 16.
Member of the extended enterprise ecosystem. We use that term to transfer the link when delivering the service.
- 17.
Don’t ask me why, but I have been a great fan of amoebas since an early age. Maybe because the amoeba’s main feature is that it has no cell wall, so its shape varies, and that adaptability, together with osmosis, has fascinated me.
- 18.
I introduced this concept years ago when I saw the situations I came across. True operational monsters. I see that the term has taken off in the press lately, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the nomenclature I have coined (very much a Muñoz-Seca trait; my grandfather was an eminent playwright who loved to invent new uses for words).
- 19.
A colloquial term we used to define analyzing jobs and processes, where all the dirt present surfaces and is eradicated. More sophisticated names are lean or agile.
- 20.
A node with number of links.
- 21.
There is nothing I like more than a Monet painting. And they must be seen at a distance, from close up you see nothing. The same goes for Operations; the daily grind gets in the way of seeing the big picture.
- 22.
Pegasus is an unadulterated brainpower company. Making things happen means working hard to convince people that actions are wholly sound. And sound means different things to different people.
- 23.
I beg readers’ indulgence for this emotional tone.
- 24.
Remember: reliability is one thing, time taken, another. I may be reliable with a response time of one year. I may be very quick and not at all reliable due to vagaries in my service.
- 25.
An endemic affliction in many companies.
- 26.
Definition of “problem”, according to the SPDM dictionary (Muñoz-Seca 2017): Situation that somebody finds unpleasant.
- 27.
Another sector where this goes on is medicine. Again, smart people facing empirical evidence (facts) are capable of solving problems that have arisen from antagonistic situations on a personal level. Another mantra of mine: let us work with facts, not opinions and much less with feelings.
- 28.
The reference work is my previous book How to Make Things Happen (Muñoz-Seca 2017).
Bibliography
Muñoz-Seca, B. (2017). How to make things happen. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Moss Kanter, R. (1999). Change is everyone’s job: Managing the extended enterprise in a globally connected world. Organizational Dynamics, 28(1), 7–23.
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Chapter 1: Conceptual Appendix
Chapter 1: Conceptual Appendix
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I.
The Promise
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II.
Criteria for the Promise’s dimensions
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III.
Prioritizing criteria
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IV.
The essence
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V.
Flame red
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VI.
Service dream
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Muñoz-Seca, B. (2019). The Operations Puzzle. In: How to Get Things Right. IESE Business Collection. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14088-5_1
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