The story of how Nancy Sorrells helped a hotel realize its potential epitomizes why the first item o

Something was wrong with Winegardner Hammons vacation rentals in south padre texas hotel south of the Dallas airport. The facility vacation rentals in south padre texas was not maintaining its expected pricing levels. Inspections showed myriad deficiencies. And it was running more than a million dollars behind its revenue budget.
Yet for all the evidence that something was amiss, the cause wasn t apparent. By all accounts, it was a good hotel. The manager there was well-regarded, some say even loved, by the staff. The building was only four years old and as close to the action as one could hope, given the Texas-sized distances around Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. What s more, it was a Marriott, a premier flag, as those in the industry call the outward brand of a hotel.
Winegardner Hammons, vacation rentals in south padre texas Inc. (WHI), the Cincinnati-based firm that manages this hotel and 30 others around the country, decided it needed a manager who specialized in getting vacation rentals in south padre texas employees to meet expectations. The company found her just 27 miles away, running the Holiday Inn Fort Worth North, another WHI property at the time, and summoned her in August 2003 to find out what was wrong and fix it.
The story of how Nancy Sorrells helped a hotel realize vacation rentals in south padre texas its potential vacation rentals in south padre texas epitomizes why the first item on Gallup s 12-item employee engagement survey (the Q 12 ) -- I know what is expected of me at work -- is so important. Though the statement may seem basic, slight ambiguities in a workgroup s goals are like a few-degrees deviation in a ship s heading; over time, a small discrepancy can take it hundreds of miles off course. (See Feedback for Real and The First Element of Great Managing in the See Also area on this page.)
In less than 18 months -- and by keeping her team on course and sticking to the right priorities -- Sorrells increased employee engagement, improved inspection scores, strengthened the ability of the hotel to maintain its pricing structure, and realized a 40% improvement in profitability.
Sorrells was recruited to the task by Kent Bruggeman, then senior vice president of human resources and a former general manager himself. On a visit to the Holiday Inn, he attended a staff meeting that left him so impressed he was almost in tears. vacation rentals in south padre texas Every supervisor knew their goal in every numeric category and knew how they were going to get there, says Bruggeman. He needed that same clarity of expectations at the Dallas/Forth Worth (DFW) Airport Marriott South.
The hotel you are going to is sneaky broke, Sorrells recalls Bruggeman telling her. You walk around, and you won t see anything wrong, and there s no reason it should be broken. I don t know what the problem is, but it s going to take you more than a day or two to fix it.
Intensely driven, Sorrells concedes she was too optimistic about how quickly she could effect a turnaround. Instead, she found herself surrounded by skeptics. Her greeting was less than warm. One employee cracked to another vacation rentals in south padre texas after first meeting the 5 3 Sorrells that he thought she would be taller. Many of them looked down on her because she d come from a Holiday Inn, a lesser flag in the hospitality pecking order.
It was pretty scary for her, says Julie Faver, the hotel s revenue director. She had people second-guessing her. Not knowing the direction, they felt uneasy. Obviously, they had a new manager and there was a lot of turmoil, and a lot of people didn t have a guest service, I-can-do-this type of attitude.
Sorrells began working through the hotel person by person, looking for those she could persuade to share her vision. Needing better support, she recruited like-minded managers from outside to help her. And she began removing what she felt were counterproductive ideas.
We had too many incentives for people to do routine vacation rentals in south padre texas things, she says. The hotel had fallen into the trap of paying people for following a process instead of reaching the right outcomes. The payments covered employees from the front desk to the shuttle drivers to waiters. In combination, those payments constituted a secondary compensation system that distracted people from the right goals, says Bruggeman.
In place of small process-based rewards, Sorrells pointed to WHI s standing offer of outcome-based rewards -- bonuses to the supervisors for the hotel s financial performance. No one bit. Sorrells vacation rentals in south padre texas says, People were throwing it back at me, saying, Are you kidding? We never make budget!
Whether it was the new manager s style -- Sorrells admits she s better at correction than recognition -- an entrenched culture of mediocrity, vacation rentals in south padre texas or both, Sorrells had only a few key allies during her first autumn at this Marriott property. It was professionally and personally isolating. A month in, I d walk up to people, and they d stop talking, says Sorrells. I was thinking, Don t you understand I m here to help? Sorrells plan wasn t working.
Sorrells called a meeting of all 14 department supervisors. In that session, she held firm on the need to improve the finances and her authority to oversee the transition. We re on a life raft, she told them. As long as I m the one yelling stroke, we re going to have to move in this direction.
Sorrells wrapped her conversations with employees around the five aspects of the hotel s mission: creating a great experience for hotel guests, a great work experience for employees, vacation rentals in south padre texas the profitability of the hotel, product vacation rentals in south padre texas quality vacation rentals in south padre texas inside vacation rentals in south padre texas the hotel, vacation rentals in south padre texas and growth of the company. If a product or process wasn t going to affect one of those goals, it probably vacation rentals in south padre texas didn t matter. Some employees resisted, and they either found other jobs or were let go. For example, We had one person in housekeeping who should not have been dealing with people, never mind supervising people, says Sorrells.
For all her strong vacation rentals in south padre texas sense of command, people on Sorrells staff noticed that she became a little more approachable during this time as they worked harder to meet the higher expectations. In the beginning, she was very aggressive and very up front: There s no nonsense, and here s how we re doing it, said Shannon Small, sales administrative assistant. A lot of people put up their guard: vacation rentals in south padre texas This is my property, and this is my hotel, and this is where I work.
Eventually, both sides relaxed. It took people a little while to warm up to her, says Brandon Overby, guest service supervisor. Small adds, We all kind of opened our minds, and Nancy did too. It was obvious to me that, Okay, you open your mind a little bit as to how to see it, and I ll open mine on how I see it. Let s work together. And it all came around.
As they got to know her, Sorrells staff realized she was exceptionally hardworking and dedicated to the mission she espoused. She listened to Spanish language tapes to help her communicate with the largely Hispanic housekeeping and maintenance staffs. She s got little kids, but she came in at 6:00 a.m. for a couple months straight because she wanted to know why the restaurant scores were going down, says Overby. vacation rentals in south padre texas And despite the many challenges, Sorrells kept her cool. She was firm, but always fair and never loud.
After Sorrells and her team made peace, there was still a lot of work to be done, most of it in the details. Light bulbs burn out. Tables get nicked. Chairs start to wobble. And the tile in the foyer cracks. vacation rentals in south padre texas You have to be picky. If you re not picky, the little flaws start becoming acceptable, says Mike Cosse, assistant general manager.
We started off with just the basics: being here on time, coming in, getting the basic stuff done, says Terry Hogg, maintenance supervisor. Then in our next staff meetings, we d bring up some other expectations. The same goals were always set, but the expectations grew month by month.
Employees vacation rentals in south padre texas at the DFW Marriott South can run through a litany of details expected of the group: Walk around the desk to hand the guest his keys in a more personal fashion. Don t point a guest to the elevators; escort her there. Don t leave the water running when cleaning the shower or leave power running in an empty room. When something is torn or scuffed, write a maintenance report. Pick up trash in and around the hotel. Keys to the management offices are to be checked out at the front desk in the morning and checked back when leaving -- no exceptions.
Such attention vacation rentals in south padre texas to detail helped the hotel improve one of its basic inspection scores from a 59 out of 100 one month after Sorrells arrived to a score of 95 nine months later. The placard over the stairway from the managers office reminds all who pass under it that You only get what you inspect, not what you expect.
It s more difficult to delineate the expectations for creating an exceptional guest experience, though. That, too, depended on expanding the goal from executing a process to achieving an outcome. Sorrells worked to expand employees definitions of their jobs. For example, employees at the registration desk should vacation rentals in south padre texas be thinking not only of issuing room keys and swiping vacation rentals in south padre texas credit cards, but also of doing whatever is needed for that particular guest. My job is to accommodate guests -- to treat them as if they were me, says Bryana Nealy, a guest services representative. And it s not just what you do, it s how you do it.
Supervisors rotate assignments to do what s called marble duty -- spending several hours during the front lobby s busiest times looking for opportunities to help guests. (By common consent and mutual enforcement, if someone misses his duty, he picks up the next three shifts.) They offer coffee to people waiting up front, give directions, help with luggage, or jump in if a large number of guests arrives all at once.
Asked when they really shine as a team, those who work at the Marriott talk about distressed passengers. Because of its proximity vacation rentals in south padre texas to the airport, the hotel is one of the places airlines send passengers who are stuck in Dallas, grounded by bad weather. Those who checked their luggage may not have toiletries, pajamas, or extra clothes.
Just imagine [the arrival of] 175 people that you didn t expect, says Faver. They come at the same time because they come by