The Burble

Travellers tales – or nightmares on the road

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 27, 2014
2 Comments on Travellers tales – or nightmares on the road

Hotel California by the Eagles includes amongst its many lines ‘you can check out anytime you like but you may never leave’ which provides the perfect point from which to launch this weeks posting all about hotels and travel. I have been fortunate enough to stay in many hotels, in many countries and for many different reasons.

Some have been dire (you know who you are) and some have been great but what is it that makes the difference? Surely having high quality shower gel makes the difference? Well no. Maybe its the free newspaper that is hung on your door at night? Again no. So it must be the staff? Yes to a point. Good staff will make a poor hotel better and poor staff will ruin a good hotel but that’s only half the story.

And while on the subject of ‘poor staff’ let me digress for a moment. I doubt many hotel owners go out of their way to recruit ‘poor staff.’ I doubt you’ll see a job advert seeking ‘staff with no idea and no desire to help wanted as a hotel receptionist.’ Poor staff are inevitably the result of poor recruitment practices and even more importantly a lack of suitable training. Poor staff is an excuse and any business leader who’s staff are accused of being poor should hang their head in shame. No really, hang your head in shame if your staff have ever been called poor. Or change your HR people. Do both. Now.

So good staff help but at the end of the day I have summed up what makes a good hotel as ‘its one that just works’. Meaning what exactly? After giving it some thought there are three things a great hotel does well

they recognize that people want a simple check in process that moves you from street to room as soon as possible
there is an understanding that all the staff have a role to play in making the guest feel welcome even if only staying overnight. It is the cleaner who welcomes you to the hotel with a smile that makes as big an impact as the receptionist
a great hotel has all its facilities working and when there is a problem (as there inevitably will be) they try and sort the problem out. They let you know what they are going to do and then they do it; no fuss just competent problem solving.

Actually when you think about it these three could apply to any business. And yet so many places I stay can’t make these three simple things work.

I wonder why? What makes a good hotel experience for you? Or for that matter what makes any customer experience good?

Tags Business, Customers, Experience, Hong Kong, hotel, Travel

Risk

Getting out of this bathroom is risky

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 21, 2014
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I have long been interested in the upside and downside of risk and reward. This is nothing more than a long winded way of saying that you win some you lose some. Managing the chance of either of these outcomes is what being in business is all about. But we can often get carried away by only seeing the negative aspects of risk.

But risk can have upsides and worrying constantly about the downside means we lose sight of opportunities.

One of may favorite signs of an over zealous approach to managing risk – well making sure you can’t be sued and that is not the same thing as managing risk – can be found in the bathrooms in New York – ‘Warning – This Door May Open.’

When I first saw the notice I couldn’t help but smile, its a notice that states the obvious. It is after all a door and it is therefore likely that it might open at some point in time. In fact as I was standing in the bathroom hoping to get back to work I was relying on the door to open. The word ‘May’ was a bit of a challenge implying as it did that the Door ‘May Not’ open and of course I had no way of knowing what would persuade it to open. However taking courage from having been present for many door openings and remembering that it never seemed that difficult I reached out, grabbed the handle and pulled. Door open, I walked through and the rest as they say, is history.

After a bit of reflection I realized that this warning in some ways reflected the best and worst of how we think about risk today. By its very nature there is a chance that the risk may happen (or in this case the door may or may not open). Risk is all around so reminding ourselves that risks do actually occur should help us think about how we assess , understand, and consider risk. The fact that a risk can occur and that this can turn into a loss of some kind should be a sobering reminder that we have our own responsibilities to understand and assess what we do on a day to day basis. It should also prompt us all to think about the positive aspects of risk – the door may in fact open.

But the fact that a risk may occur should not in any way stop us from going about our business. So as a reminder that risks can actually turn into something bad and that we have some element of control over how we treat these risks the warning on the door is a good thing.

The downside of a warning like that is when it is used as a way of apportioning blame when something happens. “I told you the door might open”.

If businesses continually feel that the role of government or society in general is to tell them off for something they did then we continue to encourage a risk adverse attitude. And a risk adverse attitude eventually leads us to take as little risk as possible. Business comes to a halt and a slow (and sometimes rapid) decline sets in.

And for a society all of a sudden we reach a conclusion, collectively, that taking a risk might be a bad thing.

But risk is what we do. If we don’t take risk we cannot find any positive potential nor, and this is the most important point, can we learn from mistakes. Learning from what went wrong as well as what went well is what underpins a great business.

So the door may open and that might be a good thing.

Do you ever think about taking a risk?

Tags Business, downside, Risk, United States, upside

Uncategorized

An Asian Future – walking pace anyway

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 20, 2014
No Comments on An Asian Future – walking pace anyway

The BBC recently published an article describing how the Japanese are now taking to smart phones with a passion. Its always interesting to me how a country like Japan, viewed as technologically advanced by many, is actually a very slow adopter of the technology they develop.

Appearances can therefore be deceptive.

But I have to say that while the article is a good piece the author really needs to come to Hong Kong. If you want to see a society that is now attached, literally, to their mobile that somehow manages to get around without too many crashes then Hong Kong is the place for you.

I have no idea how it works but it just does.

Tags Hong Kong, Mobile Phones

Uncategorized

The Vagaries of Being Overseas

Post author By The Burble....
Post date July 20, 2014
No Comments on The Vagaries of Being Overseas

There is nothing I like better than a slow Sunday morning at home. Relaxed after a good nights sleep, according to my Fitbit anyway, with the smells of fresh bread baking in the oven this really is a good time of the week.

A time to reflect on the week just gone and begin to look ahead to the week ahead. A time to catch up on emails, make some of those changes to the on line accounts that you’ve been meaning to do for a while (and will be thinking about again next week) and to have a look around the internet for something interesting.

And nothing shatters that peace more quickly than the howls of anguish from your wife as she tries to make some US websites work in Hong Kong. For reasons that have been long documented and lamented some US enterprises still don’t understand that there users, while speaking English, may actually live overseas. So when you finally get around to changing your address on the system to Hong Kong the helpfully designed system automatically redirects you to the local Chinese site. In Mandarin which is of course not the local language in Hong Kong as most native speakers use Cantonese.

And to be very helpful the site itself doesn’t have a translate facility into English. And once your browser thinks your in Hong Kong it doesn’t really matter what you do the helpful system will redirect you back to the Hong Kong site, in Mandarin.

There really is no excuse for this – working overseas should not stop your ability to work. And the US companies who insist on making this difficult need to get a globe. On it they will find Asia Pacific and right in the center they will find China. The future. Lets hope the Chinese are a little more flexible on languages otherwise the whole world is about to come to a rapid stop.

Tags Business, Cantonese, Hong Kong, Language, Mandarin, United States

Background

Let’s get started

This is the start of something special. I hope it will be.

I have decided to create something that other people will use, a source of insight and information about the events going on in the world and how they shape the impacts on businesses small and large. I will attempt to look into the future and provide some thoughts on what might happen, what might not and in each case what can be done about it. In essence this is about risk, seeing it, understanding it, making the most of it or minimizing the impact of it.

Risk is what we deal with everyday but often with little attempt to do more than identify the issue. I will try and do the identification and then offer some thoughts on what can be done about it.

At the same time I will offer some insights on business and the challenges faced based on my own 30 years of experience.

And I’ll try and keep things simple.

A lot to cover and a lot to do. Wish me well and please join me in this adventure.