Nassetta shared some lessons from turning things around:
Go top down and bottom up: “The top down is about making everybody in an organization feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, like what they do matters. They’re seen. Bottom up is about the pay and benefits and programs like learning and development. We didn’t have a team member travel program and now we do. That’s a huge benefit.”
Tell stories: “We were telling the stories of all the things they were doing to help people understand why they matter and how that work aggregates up into something that’s really powerful. If you look at brands like Spark and Waldorf Astoria, the product and service levels are wildly different. What’s common: things like the technology and delivering a reliable, consistent experience in a friendly way.”
Stay the course: “It’s going to be really hard work. You need to be agile, but at the same time, you can’t jerk the wheel all around. This takes years. You can’t be chasing every little shiny object. I’ve been here 18 years. My number one initiative was to rebuild the culture and everything else would flow. And I started day one, grinding. I said things so many times I thought I would puke, but the people who were hearing it had never heard it before. We had to figure out the mistakes and adjust. Test ideas. Use real data. Do team member engagement surveys. Listen to what your people are saying.
