Motivating and empowering
Grosse was 19 when his father passed away, and he says that is one of the biggest challenges he’s ever faced. But he didn’t overcome it alone.
“Overcoming that was looking at the positives of what I had with a wonderful person and having an amazing family and set of friends to get me over the hard parts. In a situation like that, when you have big challenges, it’s really hard to be an island. You’ve got to have people that can help and be there for you.”
Getting through any crisis, whether it’s personal or business, means reaching out for support. When Hotwire was facing dark times, Grosse had to be there for his people.
“Keeping the team focused and motivated during a very dark time tested the management team in a way we hadn’t been tested before,” Grosse says.
“This is one trait that’s underrated in business: You have to have a lot of energy around what you’re doing — when I say a lot of energy, a lot of energy as a leader and also a lot of energy as an organization.”
To tap into those energy pockets, Grosse had to find the most exciting points for people.
“Business is about people. … It’s getting people to do more things than they thought they could do on their own,” he says. “It’s a very personal thing. … Whether you’re selling travel or selling your millionth widget, there’s a lot of satisfaction about selling that millionth widget. You’re getting people excited about goals, and the people they’re doing it with is something that’s very powerful.”
Grosse says to rally people around goals because clarity and strategy create excitement. He also says that once you give people goals, you have to be hands-off about how they get there. Giving them the authority to make their own decisions makes them feel empowered and gets them excited. It’s also critical to help them make the best decisions possible.
“One thing that makes people comfortable and confident making decisions is doing it when they have a lot of relevant information available,” he says.
Grosse gave his people the data they need to be their own worst critic. When they can see the numbers for themselves, they can be proactive.
“That’s an important distinction to not just having a decentralized approach toward risk-taking and decisions but also to give those teams the data they need to make sure they’re going to be right most of the time,” Grosse says. “When they’re not right, they can correct it and course-correct themselves versus having to nag them about it.”
Sometimes people will still make the wrong decisions and not correct them in time, and Grosse says that failure is OK, as well.
“We’re not expecting everybody to hit the ball out of the park every time they step up to the plate,” Grosse says. “If there’s that type of ethic across the company, nobody’s going to try to do anything. At the same time, you want to make sure it’s OK to fail — as long as you learn from it and as long as that becomes part of that insight and memory bank, and you listen to your failure, and you become that much better of a hitter the next time you come up to the plate.”
Grosse and his people are indeed becoming better. While forging through the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks wasn’t easy, a lot of what he loves most about Hotwire came from the strategy resulting from that day.
“If we didn’t change, we wouldn’t be nearly as successful as we are today,” he says. “If we stuck to the guns of what started this business, we’d be in big trouble. I have every confidence that we’d still be around, but we wouldn’t be as relevant as we are today without embracing change.”
While Hotwire doesn’t disclose revenue numbers, Grosse says Hotwire today makes up a “significant portion” of Expedia’s $1.3 billion in other bookings, and the hotel and car bookings it focused on during the initial change are now two of its most profitable businesses instead of simply nice add-on products.
“At the end of the day, you can kind of boil it down to three things,” Grosse says. “First, have absolute crystal clarity into your market and what you can do that’s different in the market. Then second, have a real North Star, so how can you identify and communicate your strategy in an exceptionally simple way so it is just as easy to understand your strategy as it is to look up in the sky and see the star. Then lastly, is the whole idea of having an environment of energy and empowerment and direction to get that in place so as a team you can’t be stopped.”
HOW TO REACH: Hotwire Inc., (415) 343-8400 or www.hotwire.com
