LEADERSHIP
Pivot with Purpose Lessons on corporate resiliency By Lisa Earle McLeod
If your sole purpose in business is to make money, when an economic crisis hits, you’re going to flounder.
In a time of economic volatility, the firms who define themselves by their earnings alone will be hard pressed to rally their teams or innovate on behalf of their customers.
Contrast firms whose single North Star is money with organizations who have a customer-focused purpose bigger than money. A team aligned to improve life for customers has somewhere positive to look during a crisis. They’re less likely to panic because customers still need their help. Clarity of purpose improves resilience. For example, the hotel industry was amongst the hardest hit by the COVID crisis. The revenue impact was immediate, and likely long lasting. But one chain in particular found themselves turning to a noble purpose to weather the storm.
When Hilton Founder, Conrad Hilton said, “It has been, and continues to be, our responsibility to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality,” he had no way of knowing that 100 years later, the employees of Hilton worldwide would draw upon that single sentence to chart their course during a global pandemic of 2020. As many industries face devastating economic impacts and an uncertain future, Hilton’s response to the crisis provides some lessons for other firms that have been hard hit. Leaning on their sense of purpose – to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality – Hilton was able to rally their employees and start innovating for the future. When I recently spoke with Danny Hughes, Hilton’s President Americas about Hilton’s response, three key strategies emerged that can be used by other leaders facing similar challenges:
No. 1: Find a noble purpose you can rally around Before the crisis, did you have a higher purpose, if so what was it? Now is the time to double down on it. If you didn’t have an explicit purpose, what was your implicit purpose? How did you make a difference to customers? That should be your starting point going forward. When the crisis hit, Hughes says, the Hilton Executive team knew, “We lead with hospitality, we are ultimately in the business of serving people.” This gave them a framework for making fast decisions. Hilton decided to partner with American Express to give away a million free rooms to medical professionals. Hughes reflects on the Executive Team’s conversation, “Our President and CEO (Christopher Nassetta) knew immediately, there was going to be a need. We all looked at him and said go for it.” Free rooms came as welcome relief to frontline medical staff who needed a place to sleep, recharge or isolate, and who might have otherwise had to spend their own money. 32
April 2021
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