Overcoming Difficulties
Hospitality Financial Leadership – The First Fifty
As I write this piece, I am proud to say I am 58 years young. So far, my life has been great. Many challenges to overcome like anyone and many bumps in the road for sure.
Hospitality Financial Leadership – The Job That Wasn’t
A recruiter — a real, named CEO of a real recruiting firm — was reaching out personally. She'd done her "market mapping," and my name had come up. The role? Chief Financial Officer for a high-performing company in the hospitality investment…
Hospitality Financial Leadership – CSMD Disease
CSMD – “Conference Services Managers’ Disease” and Its Devastating Effects on Your Hotel’s Bottom Line
I first diagnosed CSMD at Hotel Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada where I held the position of hotel manager in the early 2000’s. I call it “conference services managers’ disease” because this position seems to develop this disease more often than other leadership…
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Applying Constraints to Your Work Life – The Secret Sauce
“The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bets him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children’s…
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Why Technology Has the Hotel Business Bootstrapped
Bootstrapping is a statistical metric that uses random sample replacements. That’s not for me, so bootstrapping also has a broader slang meaning that most people get. It means you are stuck or at least unable to take big strides to alleviate or remove the problem that is literally at your feet. In the hotel world it’s the operational technology…
Hospitality Financial Leadership – A Titanic Obsession
As I write this, the submarine with five souls on board is missing and time is running out. They have barely a few hours of oxygen left. There has been no communication with the ship since the first two hours after it was launched on Sunday June 18th, 2023. This piece is about that faithful ship and my obsession…