Everyone agrees on how important learning is in the workplace. However, when we refer to organizational learning the concept is not very well understood, or if it is, people are sceptical about it. The same is true for the concept of innovation, which is normally applied to technology but seldom focused on hotel operations.

Innovation in hospitality is usually seen as unachievable, because it is commonly understood as dealing only with high-tech or having to do with creativity genius, thus not being applicable to our or capabilities. This is a misleading impression; innovation does not only occur in high-tech hotel designs, technology tools or R&D departments.

In addition to these, there is also another type of innovation, which refers to daily working activities. It may be referred to as incremental innovation through operations improvements, or continual innovation in job improvement. Whatever the name, the main issue remains that learning here is the key point. This sort of innovation focuses on how we deliver our service, striving to provide more value to our guests, i.e. how we apply better knowledge to our hotel operations in order to make them more efficient. This kind of incremental innovation takes place when we improve every day working activities, with individuals and teams collaborating with each other. This way of working boosts individual and hotel know-how learning, and works in conjunction with -yet is different to know-what learning.

As individuals and workers, we can go to hotel schools, professional business programs or specific seminars to learn a trade. We learn about techniques, technological breakthroughs, methods, management facts, and sometimes-fashionable business concepts. This is certainly an important part of learning. It is a way for know-what learning; if we do not have this kind of training, we can hire the proper person or we can get ourselves the proper training program to make up for our lack of knowledge. This should be enough in certain businesses, in a stable situation of solid profitability, and certainly still a working solution in many different contexts, but it is not longer a solution in a hyper-competitive business market. In this environment, as we have said before, doing the right things, or using common sense, is no longer a good-enough solution. In-work learning becomes a key point, to better respond to a more uncertain market.

Know-how learning is more powerful, and makes the difference in competitiveness between businesses. This type of learning is not possible to copy, and it takes its time to flourish. It requires proper management, leadership, and organizational culture to make it succeed.

Know-how learning can only be boosted if workers are empowered.

In-work learning, or know-know learning is not only an individual process, but also a social interaction. It implies many changes in current hospitality mind-sets because it requires a different type of leadership, ready to work within a more decentralized system and being confident enough to empower workers.

The same holds true for company training and in-house coaching programs. Hotel companies are very proud of their standard of operation procedures, making them the cornerstone of their business. These training and coaching programs are very positive and necessary to learning, yet this is not the type of learning we are referring to in this article. Know-how learning and empowerment are both related to front-line employees who are "Masters" at what they do. My approach raises two fundamental questions: (1) do we seek to adjust our working procedures to guests" feedback or the new reality, since guests and markets are constantly evolving? And (2) do we encourage front-line workers to analyse their work and improve hotel´s procedures, thus improving the value to guests or making hotel operations more efficient?

We all know that, in order to provide a top service, it is essential to empower workers, because there is no way to accomplish excellence just by asking workers to follow instructions or steps as if they were robots.

Top service performance companies such as Joie de Vivre hotels, Ritz Carton, Four Seasons, Nordstrom, Whole Foods or Southwest Airlines always believed in empowering their front-line employees expecting them to better solve guests" problems and deliver an extraordinary service. Chip Conley, founder and owner of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, may be a role model in this respect. His boutique hotel company is well known for his higher service performance and his employees" better commitment and motivation to provide an outstanding service. Chip speaks about "moments of truth", empowering workers and creating a passionate culture toward guests. He is also a prolific business author and great entrepreneur thinker. Chip says that It"s basically about service, focusing on uncovered niches of the market, and refreshing customers" identities by providing the specific product and service, which, ultimately, will generate greater experiences and more loyal guests.

Our opinion–and we are sure it would also be Chip´s opinion- is that in spite of this being a competitive strategy, it may not be enough. Providing outstanding services or refreshing customer identities (psychographics) is certainly a very important path, but it is no longer a differentiator nor a sustainable competitive advantage if it does not come together with knowledge and organizational learning.

Organizational learning must be established, as a core value within a business -if the purpose is to make innovation happening through our operations. It should be a stated objective, first of all from Top Management.

As Chris Argyris –a Harvard Business professor- pointed out in his article Teaching smart people how to learn (1991), to be able to learn, is not that easy when we become specialists at what we are doing. The term itself means that as "Masters" we do not have much room left to improve, let alone to accept our failures or to question our used theories. He says: "Solving problems is important to learning, but if learning is to persist in our mind-sets, employees and managers won"t advance past a certain point. They must also look inward. They need to reflect critically on their own behaviour, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization"s problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right." So in order to learn how to learn, we should be able to eliminate many of our professional biases that we have all developed in our careers.

Individual learning is certainly very important but, beyond a certain point, it is irrelevant if not shared with the group and constantly enhanced. What matters most is how companies are capable to boost organizational knowledge and synergies as a whole, instead of just individual units or department silos. We refer here to sharing best practises and collaborating, contrary to what happens in most companies that are full of isolated "islands of Knowledge". Today´s technology can help us enhance organizational learning once we have set the basis for it. Technology can help us enhance our organizational learning in social companies intranets. Collaboration, communications, relevant information and best practises can be shared in a social businesses platform such as the company intranet. Providers of business solutions such as Jive´s or many others may have interesting intranet platforms for this purpose.

Common wise or hospitality current practices see things in a different manner

Why is this so? Because hospitality management and organizational structures are settled basically to command and control, while service workers are there just to provide good service by following orders. That´s all, and learning may be reserved to a few people. In a command-and-control style of management, the message to most team members is: "We don´t basically pay you to re-think what we have already thought off in our corporate offices; we just pay you to follow our standard procedures and provide a good service by being very attentive, friendly, and emphatic to our guests". In such scenario, the company depends on a few geniuses -in the best case. Knowledge and decisions are centralized and there is very limited organizational learning happening.

Do we really think that this way of working - and understanding management- is more efficient and competitive? It may work in stable environments, but it won"t be the case nowadays, in many hospitality situations where commoditization is the norm.

High performance companies show competitive advantages because they are more innovative, being also more creative as a result of having more workers contributing to that purpose. These companies have the ability to out-innovate their competitors in ways that enhance efficiency or create greater value to customers. Learning in these companies is a natural process, happening bottom-up –not only top-down. This is good management and we can see examples of it in different industries. Few would think of the supermarket industry as a place to look for new ideas about management and working, continuous innovations and empowering workers. Supermarkets have normally been seen as business to apply brawn not brains, they were considered as businesses where every penny made a difference and double coupons qualified as a profound strategic innovation. However, Whole Foods has proved that it is all about right and good management; empowering workers, decentralizing operations, creating a higher purpose an innovating. As a result, they are making higher and sustainable profits. As John Mackey states in his book Conscious Capitalism: "Imagine the impact if every single person working for a company were able to be a creator and an innovator. Team members should be enabled, empowered, and challenged to unleash their entrepreneurial energy and their creativity to help improve their team, store, and company". And he walks the talk.

Learning and innovation is also a bottom-up process

What does a bottom-up learning process mean? It means that, front line employees are key not just to provide and sustain a top service, but also to become brainworkers. That is, knowledge-service employees. After all, if we get the essence of what management is, and then knowledge is the most important of all resources. What is management? Professor Fredmund Malik, probably one of the current best management thinkers defines management, essentially, as the transformation of resources into value. He writes: "In developed economies, the most important resource today –if not the only one- is knowledge. It exists mainly outside of the company: it arrives in people´s heads in the morning and leaves the company in the evening to go back to people´s homes […] We might say that management is the transformation of knowledge into value. […] And there is only one kind of value which everything comes down to: it is customer value –not shareholder value, not stakeholder value".

Professor Malik is telling us that knowledge comes from outside the company, since it is in its employees" heads. Therefore, each-worker-knowledge must be put into the common organizational knowledge. And this will only happen when the objective of learning is recognized as a top priority at all company levels.

How can we apply better knowledge and job improvement, together with incremental innovation in our hotel operations: PDCA working system

Applying a PDCA (plan-do-act and check) learning process happens continually when not only managers, but also front-line employees, are encouraged to analyse their work.

Learning in jobs happens constantly when service workers are responsible to improve hotel operations. Learning then happens every time a worker is analysing how to improve a process, or when trying to solve a problem by going to its roots. Problems may have arisen to the surface when analysing some guest"s feedback or just by recognizing our mistakes. We can never forget that, after all, innovation is a trial-and-error process. This process of learning happens first individually, that is, it starts with the employee"s reflection about how he can contribute to improve a working procedure. The idea comes first, but it must be then developed and put into practice.

The idea may have to do with a new service – or experience- intending to provide more value to our guests, and consequently more revenue for the company. This idea, from the moment it is been conceived until the moment it is put into practice, is basically a learning process. Indeed, organizational learning happens mostly in-group; with a group of workers and their managers, thinking about any idea or how to solve a specific problem, seeking for the best solution, and debating-planning. Thus,developing a countermeasure –or a provisional plan- doing. Then, putting this plan into action –acting, and monitoring, in order to make further adjustments if necessary-checking.

Becoming a learning organization means being more flexible and adaptive to all sorts of business problems, such as customer new desires, current competition or new competitive situations, technology evolutions, etc. Thus, our learning processes should focus on two main objectives: (1) providing more value to guests; and (2) making internal operations more efficient; trying to reduce costs by rethinking all working processes.

Front-line service workers should participate in these two major objectives and strategic issues.

Arturo Cuenllas
arturocuenllas.com