You see, when a guest shows up to a property and stays there without incident, that’s the easiest thing in the world to deal with. Protocols are easy to follow. Their questions are easy to answer. Our software automations fire correctly, door codes go out on time, cleaners are notified of the departure clean imminent. This is 90%+ of all reservations. But when something goes wrong, that’s where performance is key. And 10% problems being managed 100% wrong is all it takes to kill a business.
1-3-1 Protocol
One big issue I saw a lot of was that when someone ran into any kind of problem – and you’d be surprised how many problems can arise in a single day or even one hour when you have 60 properties in over a dozen cities, with 12 reservations checking out *today* and 10 of them require a same-day turnover for incoming reservations – our VA army had this horrible habit of passing the buck. Every problem was a hot potato. It seemed as if their number one priority was figuring out who they could tag and therefore offload the issue to. More often than not, their number one choice was our managers (before that it was my wife, and admittedly it was a culture that we – top leadership – helped cultivate because we wanted her to be involved in every little thing guest related) – so now my managers were running around like chickens with their heads cutoff, trying to solve the litany of issues that our front line workforce didn’t want to deal with. So, I implemented the 1-3-1 protocol (which I totally stole from “buying back your time” – great book, must read). Here’s how it works:
Before you bring a problem to someone else, especially a manager, you must provide these things
- Clearly define the issue. This should only take a sentence or two.
- Provide 3 practical solutions that will solve the problem.
- Provide 1 recommendation.
1 issue – 3 options to solve the problem – 1 recommendation
– In other words, use your brain! – It did not take long after we started doing this to realize that every member of our team is capable of thinking, they were just never given permission to do so. Or at least it was not encouraged, and if they made a bad decision there was retribution of some kind to worry about. When I rolled this out I expressly encouraged failure. I made it a mantra: “I’d rather you make a bad decision than no decision at all.” – I would literally pop into daily huddle meetings with the front line team just to say that, to let them know that I’m ok with them failing. We need more brains solving the problems before us, acting without fear of failure. This was huge, and this cultural change continues to make a huge difference in our ability to manage the volume of properties and guests we’re dealing with. In fact, it’s rare that anyone on our front line even brings an issue to management at this point. They just freakin handle it, and it’s freaking awesome. At first we had to kick issues back to them when we first rolled this out – because the issue wasn’t clearly defined, you gave no solutions or recommendations – and now most issues don’t even make it to my middle managers, let alone to me. I can’t express how wonderful it is to have everyone using their brain to solve problems. It’s such a relief, and I can’t imagine going back to the previous hell. I won’t. Not happening.
At this point – March or April this year – I’m feeling well enough about the progress being made in my own house to start looking at others: Our cleaning crews. We don’t hire cleaners, we contract them. We hire outside companies, sometimes just an individual and at other times fully staffed companies that can handle several properties. Creating consistently applied best practices across other people’s businesses in different cities across the country, that was the next challenge.
PS – Here’s how we make sure a guest never walks into a dirty house.
Want proof that our properties consistently double their income after we get our hands on them? Check out our case studies.
