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Rude Awakening
By Michael Alan Hamlin
May 26, 2003
There's probably nothing more tragic
than seeing an individual or an organization inflected with what's
been called natural born athlete disease. The term is used to describe
an individual or an organization that has everything going for it
- opportunity, talent, good looks - but instead of leveraging those
assets, assumes that they will produce success and profitability
without meeting even minimum standards of endeavor.
In an athlete's case, you can see
the disease, for example, in a long-distance runner who shows great
promise, begins to believe everything positive those around him
say, and begins to slack off. He doesn't run as regularly or as
far as he should. He doesn't work out. He doesn't sleep enough.
As a result, despite all his talent, his advantage erodes and he
never lives up to his potential.
Anyone can catch natural born athlete
disease, a lawyer, a fast-tracked middle manager or CEO, a scientist,
a teacher, or a writer. It is particularly tragic because so much
potential goes wasted, and it's not just the individual that suffers,
but those around him - his family, friends, supporters, employees,
and admirers - all who put something of themselves into their devotion
and confidence in the future of the natural born athlete.
Organizations get this insidious
disease, or a variant often called big company disease, too. Like
the natural born athlete disease, big company disease is manifest
in an overt assumption that past success will invariably lead to
future success. That market leadership is naturally enduring. And
that customers remain devoted for life without being properly nurtured.
In other words, companies with big company disease forget what brought
them success in the first place - relentless pursuit of goals, hard
work, and a business model aligned with the market and customer
expectations and needs.
Last week, in fact as I wrote this
column, I observed a colossal, classic case of big company disease.
But I had been forewarned. Several months ago a friend invited my
wife and I to join him for a weekend in Cebu at the fabled Shangri-La
Mactan Island Resort. It was a tempting invitation. Aside from the
reputation of the resort, we were ready for a break, and wanted
someplace new to go. And the prospect of enjoying the weekend with
friends was an attractive proposition.
Unfortunately, the usual demands
of work and family prevented us from accepting the invitation. We
were disappointed, but when my friend returned, it seemed that we
had been saved from a weekend of shattered expectations. When he
returned, my profoundly dismayed friend complained that the rooms
were musty, beat up, and poorly appointed, especially for the price
he had paid.
Worse, the promised sea view room
barely provided a glimpse of the ocean. When he was granted a request
for a different room, he found that the view was even worse! Perhaps
as a result of that very poor initial impression, my friend found
virtually nothing positive about the hotel during his three-day
weekend, and upon his return to Manila he wrote the hotel to complain
bitterly.
In response, he received a letter
from the general manager, claiming that service had slumped a bit
that particular weekend, because he was out of town. As any half-way
decent manager knows, if things suffer when you're not around, you're
not really a very good manager, you're a worker and task master.
But that was the excuse, and to make up, my friend was offered several
nights' free stay on his next visit, to which my friend responded,
"Why would I subject myself to such punishment again?"
Despite his experience, when a client
required our presence in Cebu last week for a four-day event at
the Mactan Island Resort, I was looking forward to the experience,
hoping that my friend's ruined weekend was an isolated incident.
After all, no one is perfect. Unfortunately, I quickly found that
the resort still isn't living up to its reputation. Instead, it's
living down to my friend's disappointing evaluation.
First off, the older rooms are downright
crummy, and a disgrace considering Shangri-La's reputation for elegance.
The new rooms are not much better. A colleague stayed in a room
that I could not even enter, the mustiness was so overpowering.
Despite repeated sprayings with air freshener, the mustiness stubbornly
persisted. I did have the apparent good fortune of a room with both
a pleasing view of the sea, and a bearable atmosphere. There wasn't
much else that was very impressive - a rusting tub, deteriorating
floors, lousy communications.
Clearly, the resort is living off
its reputation, although there is some renovation and construction
going on. But unless management improves the condition of the guest
rooms, that reputation is going to quickly become downscale, if
it hasn't already. There were other drawbacks: a dinner on the beach
featured a nearly inedible assembly of strange-looking food. An
ethnic dance turned out to be a hard-to-recognize collection of
Hawaiian dances, making me wonder what the hotel really thinks of
its guests!
Given the hard-earned and deserved
success of the Shangri-La chain overall, the disappointment I experienced
in Cebu was profound. And it just shows that big company disease
lurks everywhere. The question is, will the Mactan Island Resort
recover?
Or will other hotels in the chain
be dragged down with it?
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian Professionals
into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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