Build on brainpower
You can keep your expense structure lean and construct a strategy for the future, but your best laid plans won’t ever become reality without the involvement of your people. Your managers and employees need to get on board with your plans if your business is ever going to fully recover from the recession.
Early on, Solomon acknowledged the importance of strong binding ties, both vertically between layers of management and horizontally between departments. He needed his people not just talking with each other but thinking with each other. Solomon knew innovation would become a key component to fighting the recession, and he wanted an environment where creative ideas could develop.
First, he needed a method for getting his people together and interacting.
“One of the most important things is to inspire an atmosphere where people talk in plain English and are not hesitant to speak up,” Solomon says. “You don’t want people getting defensive if somebody gives advice or comments about something they have observed in a department. Don’t be defensive if someone handles a situation on the floor that might not be in their department but needed to be handled right then. More than anything, it’s constantly keeping your folks together in a free-form environment where everyone can speak and there is no downside to being honest.”
In a large, layered organization like MotorCity, Solomon wants all of his decision-makers in the same room periodically. With scores of managers and scores of different jobs in different areas of the casino complex, management-level interaction can’t be left to chance meetings on the casino floor.
“We need to have a quarterly meeting with our entire management team,” Solomon says. “We refer to it as our ‘Sound Board Session,’ — Sound Board being the name of our theater. We present to our management team a whole list of results, issues, opportunities, and we have three meetings to cover all of our shifts. That type of forum has been a great way to communicate the overall vision and strategy, the things that have happened in the past quarter and where we are going in the next quarter. Marketing, strategies, all of those things are presented in those meetings.”
Laterally, Solomon helps tear down would-be silos by taking away financial incentives for departments and managers to hoard ideas. No person or department at the casino is going to get ahead or make more money by trampling on their colleagues.
“A lot of companies inadvertently create scenarios by way of compensation or otherwise, and it actually encourages negative behavior for the property as a whole, thinking they will inspire more aggressive management techniques at the department level,” Solomon says. “But generally, it ends up becoming ‘Well, who cares about the other guy?’ We don’t do that. People know they’ll be rewarded for being a team player.
“It all goes back to communicating with the entire staff. When they are better informed about how they relate to the overall picture, it becomes an issue of you knowing the complete scenario, and if you choose to go against what is in the best interest of the overall operation, that would not be a good statement about your management style. If you give your people enough information about how they relate to the whole, they should be able to make the right decisions voluntarily. If they don’t make the right decisions, then you have a question to answer about whether they’re the right kind of manager.”
Keeping your staff engaged and informed is the first step. From there, you need to continue reinforcing the need for new ideas and creative thinking. If you want your people trying new things, you need to live with the trial-and-error process that accompanies innovation. You have to be willing to acknowledge that failure is a possible outcome of trying something new, and if your team isn’t failing at times, the mental gears of your business probably aren’t spinning fast enough.
“The most significant thing you can do is not punish people for failure,” Solomon says. “We are very dedicated to the proposition that if you’re not trying things and making some mistakes, you’re not trying enough new things. You have to foster an environment where it is OK to fail, and we want you to recognize failure quickly and remediate it or move on. But if you’re not failing on some things, you’re not trying enough new innovative ways of doing things.”
In Solomon’s experience, taking chances and embracing new ideas offers far more of a competitive advantage than holding back and taking a more conservative approach. You can’t simply bet the farm on one idea, but a willingness to stick your neck out on a new idea could aid your company’s recovery from the recession.
“When you look at the home runs we’ve had versus the impact of some project’s failure, there is overwhelming evidence that the green-light thinking, things nobody else is doing, we’ve gotten a lot more in terms of competitive advantage than if we had simply stuck with all the safe things you can do as a business,” Solomon says. “If you are allowing your people to try new things, you simply have to stick with the fact that they’re going to fail on occasion. Then recognize it quickly, move on and don’t dwell on what didn’t work. Just be mindful of not repeating them.”
How to reach: MotorCity Casino Hotel, (866) 752-9622 or www.motorcitycasino.com
