In this seminar I have two purposes: (1) to share with you a new vision in hotel strategy and to help you understand why the hotel business -in Spain- is different, than for example, in other places in Europe or Asia Why hotel management is more complex since profitability gets harder to obtain. (Paradoxically, hotel properties are often more modern, trendy, and comfortable…than in other countries in Europe. Spanish hotel products are very competitive since hotel development skyrocketed in recent years, as we will see.) (2) My second purpose is to open expand your view on hospitality management explaining this new model of management in which the part of leading becomes much more relevant. We could say: a more innovative model of management. I'll show you how innovation could also happen through-and-within- hotel management.

Slide 5
. One thing we have to realise is that the Hotel Business -and Hotel Management- is not as predictable as before. We may do the right things, as we usually did, but they are no longer enough. The present situation has turned out to be more uncertain and the right things- are not longer clear. Hotel management is more complex these days because profitability is getting harder to obtain.

Slide 7
. First of all, what we have now in Spain is that, there is situation of oversupply in many secondary cities, even in major cities and tourist areas. During the economic boom, Spain developed, as we all know, a real estate bubble. From 1998 to 2007 hotel development skyrocketed. As a result of that, Hotel properties in Spain are often more modern, trendy, and comfortable…than in other countries in Europe. Spanish hotel products are very competitive. Everyone wanted to become an hotelier. It was also a very easy business to enter into and very profitable. Especially since capital gains were ensured just with the real state investment .

Slide 8
. We should take certain facts into consideration in order to explain why the hotel business is more complex than not long ago. These facts complicate more things. Some of these facts are uniquely happening in Spain, but others also happen everywhere in our hospitality industry. As Albert Einstein said: "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them". New problems, like the ones we will see, need different reasoning to solve them.

Slide 9
. The first fact to be aware of is that, in Spain, oversupply does not come alone. We have on the one-hand lots of hotels, but on the other, a decreasing demand. This basic equation, along with the modernity of the properties, makes for a hyper-competitive environment. In a hyper-competitive market it is very difficult to compete. It is very hard to sustain a differentiation strategy.

Slide 10. Things are getting even worse, as every one knows we are already in our 5th year of crisis, and still counting. This crisis affects two important segments of guests:

  • Businesses have less income and hotels sell fewer meetings facilities, fewer business meals and thus less income in hotel food and beverage departments, fewer congresses and conventions, then fewer rooms and overall business to hotels.
  • National tourism has fallen dramatically, basically sustained from international tourism, yet indeed grew.

Slide 11. This part may be very controversial to many hoteliers and affects hotels overall –sure with exceptions as consequences of good strategies- But basically hotels are considered to be in a Commodity Market. What is a commodity market? The term Commodity was first created to describe raw materials, such as Oil, cereals or even gold. But then the concept was exported to other businesses, such as computers, airlines…and hotels!!!

Commoditization occurs when there is not a significant value differentiation among the supply base. This means that between brands, products or services, in the eyes of the customers, there is not a significant difference. And what is important in making the purchase decision is mainly the price. In Spain there is not much difference between brands such NH, AC, … or an independent hotel. Of course there are exceptions like, for example, the chain of Paradores, as well as other specific hotels.

In a Commodity market it is very hard to sustain a differentiation strategy. Customers are not willing to accept paying more or recognize differentiation.

Slide 12. The problem is, that not only do prices go down, but that

Operational costs increase. . -For example, we have an ADR in a city like in Coruña or Santiago -in the north of Spain- of 80€ for 5 stars hotels, or 69€ for 4 stars hotels…even lower…

Many Hotels have had to lay off employees with this crisis, but there is still a minimum structure needed to operate, to provide expected service. Labour costs are indeed increasing annually, because of the unions and working agreements. Utilities such as electricity and gas have also gone up, –courtesy or our government.

Slide 13. There is another important fact to consider, common to our hospitality market, as a consequence of a technology evolution: the internet, and especially the Social Media have totally opened up real hotel value to the consumer.

Not long ago, it was very easy to camouflage any hotel shortcomings by having a good department of marketing or public relations. It was very easy to sell a maybe old-fashioned and decadent hotel, as an elegant, comfortable and beautiful property. At present it is impossible: guest comments and pictures are very clear.

Price is also very clear. So price versus quality, -real quality not the quality the hotel says it is giving- is. The relationship becomes crystal clear.

Slide 14. Do you know what bargaining power is? It´s a concept coined by Michael Porter, a very important HBS teacher, in the 80`s -It means the ability of distributors or customers to put the firm –the business- under pressure to reduce prices. Bargaining power was always on the side of distribution channel: TTOO. Now we have the online distribution channels. And customers.

Slide 15. Guests have evolved. As an important French sociologist -called Gilles Lipovetsky, said: "Guests, at the present, are more unpredictable, variable, and, of course, have less loyalty to brands". We will be listening to or reading about the simple cause and effect that, by providing good service and a good product we should be maintain our guests' loyalty. But this is no longer a fact!!

Slide 16
. How are hotels reacting? Doing the common things is no longer a solution, since hyper-competition is a new problem that has dramatically affected profitability.

Slide 17. The immediate reaction to a situation of business losses is commonly shared: to reduce costs.

But how? By reducing, first of all, labour; which may certainty be an obvious action to take if the business had an excess in labour. The problem is that normally, the action of reducing labour affects hotel quality by depreciating services in a way or another.

Slide 18
. If the hotel business used to centralize knowledge and decisions, now it is even more centralized than ever. A rigid bureaucracy or machine organization although evolved, still maintains, in essence, Taylor´s concept management premises. The mechanistic way of thinking that separated planning from doing was pioneered by Frederick Taylor in 1916. Machine organizations are basically characterized by more centralized operations and management decision-making. The objective of the machine organization is to design and establish a working system or rigid operational standard.

Slide 19. Why is this obsolescence trap happening? It happens because the common reaction to obsolescence –the tayloristic view and mechanistic organization- drives the hotel business to more obsolescence. They get trapped in a kind of obsolescence vicious circle, because their reaction to escape from that trap, paradoxically, depreciates more business value and knowledge.

This common management practice of cutting costs by centralizing decisions and management, and mechanizing operations, leads down to a vicious circle impoverishing business strengths, by placing service and operational employees at the bottom of their priorities list. Yet hotels, still "produce" service as a core business product. Hotel Management, by acting in this way, thus commoditized more hotel services and operational knowledge. By limiting operational knowledge, management is also limiting the role of innovation as a possible solution to the lack of differentiation.

Slide 20. Why innovation? What is innovation? Innovation is not only something referring to technology, and something that happens in other industries. Innovation first of all, is a process. Indeed, it is a social process that happens in personal interactions: in-group workers working about an idea. Innovation could also happen in hotel operations. So, how could we make innovative solutions in our operations happen?

The purpose in this section is to explain how this process happens. I´ll show you a practice method of innovation that I have developed.

But the essence of all this talk is one: We can make innovation happen by unleashing human potential, that is by empowering workers, together with managers.

Slide 21
. We should go back to the origins of management and rescue the essence of management. As Peter Drucker pointed out a long time ago :a manager's first resource is people. And the human being is a unique resource requiring peculiar qualities in whoever –manager- attempts to work with it. Working with the "human being" always means him or her to develop professionally. Indeed, the main objective of a manager is to lead, to enhance workers' strengths and make e their weaknesses irrelevant. Every manager, no matter in what position, should be experienced enough to accomplish this purpose -among other managerial objectives.

Management is, above, all a practice, it is neither a science nor a profession. Leadership and management should be totally blended in this practice. We can divide it conceptually but in the practice both purposes should come together. Not to do so would be mismanaging.

Slide 22. Innovation happens also as Result of constant job improvement. In hotel operations it should also happen the same way. A hotel business that limits innovation to the top level of management or does not consider work improvement to be a responsibility also assumed by service workers is certainly limiting its organizational learning and knowledge base and therefore, is getting closer to business obsolescence.

Slide 23
. So, how is this process of job improvement happening? Continuous work improvement leads to incremental innovation. And this is done through a repeating process called PDCA –Plan-do-check-act, first developed by Edwards Deming and very successfully implemented in the Toyota Production System. This PDCA process should also be a Mantra in our hospitality working system. Service workers must be trained and must get used to question every working process, and must be capable of identifying problems; they should be able to carefully define them. Every service worker, together with his or her manager, has to search for the root cause of a problem. He or she has to be able to develop countermeasures or a provisional plan, test it (experiment it) and closely monitor and analyse results and make adjustments if necessary. For example: we may have a problem in our food & beverage department. After an inventory analysis we found a deviation: costs increased in the replacement –purchasing- of broken glassware. We then analysed the root cause of the problem: by asking "why" several times; why is this happening? We came up to the root of the problem: some waiters, especially temporary agency waiters, in hotel banqueting services, are not following the correct procedure. So we would plan a countermeasure and implement it, in order to correct the problem. However, just by planning and putting the plan in to action is not enough, we will have to closely monitor it. OK. This is a basic example of job improvement. But imagine that someone from your team, maybe a very capable worker, brings a brilliant idea. He says: "OK. Why don't we re-think the whole process, and make the waiters not to walk that much, when bringing all the material to washing. We may create back-office service stations on their way and make them place glasses into their specific box, this time not in the kitchen but somewhere else in between. We implement it, and then we again closely monitor it. We may discover after six months that we have saved, maybe, 5.000€ in glass damage and its replacement.

Slide 24. All workers and managers should have these two financial purposes in mind when improving jobs, or contributing ideas:

  1. To increase revenues by providing new services, better services or more value to guests.
  2. To reduce costs, or optimize expenses.

Slide 25
. But before innovation happens management must boost organizational learning. The problem now is that organizational learning is not boosted within the traditional hotel management model. We may have important hotel operators with a very competitive know-how, good organizational values and great commitment to offer the best services to customers. We may have detailed working standards in all departments but usually they are improved on in the corporate office by top management. You cannot boost learning in that way. Because organizational learning happens when most workers have more responsibility in their jobs, and they are encouraged to challenge the working standard.

Slide 26
. So, by improving our jobs all the time, by thinking about the job. By testing and monitoring, we do certainly develop a very powerful knowledge-set which is based on know-how. Today you are here developing a necessary knowledge too which is based on know-what. Both types of knowledge, together, are very important. However, know-how can only be obtained at work, basically. If we are able to work without the barriers I´ve been talking about: the tayloristic barriers.

Slide 27
. Collective Management (C-M) is a vision, a philosophy, a theory and practice method of working in hospitality management. Its main purpose is to develop a hospitality organization that constantly learns and advances through all working processes. C-M breaks with the tayloristic view in hospitality management. It focuses its priorities on service workers–and back office workers- on improving capabilities; not only with the purpose of providing good service and better execution of Hotel Standard Operating Procedures, but also to contribute to constantly improving standards by analysing the job together with his or her managers.

Slide 28
. The theory and practise of management is divided in 3 parts, which we are going to go through. Part 1: vision-leadership needed, the right employee or service worker and the team- it is what I called structural, since in this first part we find the bases or foundations of the whole theory and method. Without this part of management, we wouldn't be able to advance. We could also say it is the toughest part. Part 2. It is a working method. When we have said that the purpose is to improve jobs, in this part I do propose a way of working that I have been putting into practice. Part 3. The last part or that I call it strategic, because as a consequence of the rest, we may have merging strategies (And I will explain what a merging strategy is). Also, we could go further and have an organization, which shares knowledge, projects and information, among hotels, in order to share best practices. Also merge strategies.

Slide 29. Peter Senge an MIT professor was the first to develop the concept of "shared vision". He said that a shared vision is not another management concept but a powerful force if it touches the hart of the people. It generates a sense of connectedness and a shared passion by all business-working activities. There is a greater sense of community and teamwork in a business in which a shared-vision is happening. Workers´ motivation is more powerful, not being only intrinsic but also a kind of transcendence motivation, seldom experienced in many businesses.

Slide 30. So, what is the vision to be shared in our model of Collective Management: it is to create a hotel organization that seeks innovation by providing more value to guests and that constantly learns through its operations, managers and service workers.Note that the core purpose is to provide more value to our guests, and not profitability. Profitability is important to shareholders, and certainly a very important business objective, but making money is a purpose that won't inspire many workers. So together with guest and listening carefully to them, we should improve and perform better. Also by being very concerned about customer value and committed to providing it, we may obtain better business opportunities such as discovering consumers' new trends; understanding better their purchasing behaviour; and how customers are evolving, since there are social, demographic, financial or technological evolutions happening all the time.

Slide 31. Collective Hospitality Management is boosted by the appropriated Leadership. The Hotel General Manager is our key person to make Collective Management happen. He or she will enhance learning; encourage job improvement and challenge people to get innovative solutions to problems. Not all styles of management are capable of doing so. Indeed, management must come on board with an appropriate leadership style. Our Hotel General Manager must be able to escape from his/her Ego, since their final purpose is to make innovation happen as a social process, in-group, and as a democratized responsibility among workers. They support-not just drive, teams and individuals, together with middle management, in their daily work. They should be a mirror to everyone. Equally, they will be considered as the main source of energy that ultimately will unleash workers´ potential. In this way, we should place our GM at the centre of everything, not on top of a hierarchy.

Slide 32. Contrary to this style of management and leadership, that constantly boosts company knowledge, we have the manager who is not secure enough in his or her strengths. His insecure attitude is normally hidden behind an autocratic and authoritarian personality that does not accept critics, or divergent approaches, nor recognizes personal mistakes. Such a manager normally feels more confortable within a command and control style in working. We may have also the Super Ego person, or narcissist director, with much selfishness incapable of empowering workers, honestly listening, and of course, not willing to "share" leadership. Also, there are simply many managers that only understand the concept of management from top-down, because they grew up that way; they have deep-rooted beliefs

Slide 33. In Hospitality Collective Management, service employees and back office employees are seen as knowledge workers. What is meant by a knowledge service worker is, an operative worker –bottom line, an expert in his job. Service workers such a receptionists, bar attendants, housekeeping maids, and service waitresses…could all be potential candidates for knowledge service workers, if getting closer to the proper attitudes and aptitudes, although in his or her limited sphere of responsibility.

Slide 34
. These are the necessary skills and attitudes for knowledge workers: An attitude to learn constantly: It is the base of a Socratic thinking; to be aware that you won't be able to know everything, but you should always seek for knowledge through constant learning. Learning happens all of the times when you are working with the proper attitude. Apprenticeship happens when we are able to question our mind-sets and used theories. It requires enough humility to learn although we may be experts in what we are doing. To be a reflective person when working: More than 2000 years ago the great Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, teacher and political assessor enhanced work, and made us aware that working without reflecting was a waste of energy and would not contribute to knowledge. The Japanese call it Hansei and implemented it as a job responsibility to assembly workers. It means that, when working, we should be trained and have the proper attitude to get to the root in job problems, and constantly question how are we doing things working. To be flexible: Like bamboo, it means being able to bend but not to break. To be flexible doesn't suppose renouncing self-principles, but to accept other points of view, and self-adapt to new situations. A flexible employee or manager normally sees things with wider perspective, as a consequence of having more information from the Top. If our vision is to provide constant value to guest, an attitude of flexibility is really necessary, since guest and context changes all of the time. To have humility: It was attributed to King Solomon the saying that, there where arrogance and haughtiness appeared, much ignorance happened. To be humble means to be able to listen carefully, to respect another's opinions even if those differ from ours. As we have said before, there is not deep learning without humility. It was the great psychoanalyst and philosopher, Erich Fromm who said in his book The Art of loving that being objective meant to use self-reasoning, and that would only be possible with the proper humble attitude. Ability to work as a part of a team: It means that such person commits with the value of solidarity and what means truly teamwork. He or she will prioritize in work purposes and objectives. To fit in a team means to be able to support others, not to think in the self but also toward the team. Not everyone is capable of working in a team, since proper attitudes are needed such as humility, sense of community, sincerity, and willingness to accept other opinions or mind sets even if those differ from ours. Contrary to these values, selfishness, narcissism, or the Ego person, wont fit in our vision of what a team should be. To have self-confidence: Up to a point of professional expertise, self-confidence arrives naturally. It is very important since being humble it not enough if self-confidence does not fulfill the other part of the balance. We will search for people with good expertise, capable of analysing the job and contributing to its improvement. Though self-confidence in professional capacities makes a good base to start for being a knowledge service worker. Paradoxically, only the person with enough self-confidence is more apt to develop its opposite: humility. A person with self-confidence and humility has the ability to work without professional biases, certainties and prejudices. To be committed: To be committed to the company mission, vision, values, culture, and business objectives… Such a person gets his commitment from within. Motivation is a final stage that someone might or might not have. There are many forms of motivation or different ways to be motivated, but what matters here is a more powerful motivation which comes from inside every worker, since the atmosphere that management has produced should produce this fact. To be sincere: First, be honest with yourself. And this is the hardest part, since such discipline implies self-knowledge. If this discipline is not possible for all of us, at least -as Erich Fromm reminded us, being able to reflect on how we do things and how our behaviour is doing. How authentic can we be? Of course, to be honest with your team colleagues, with your manager, with company values…

Slide 35. What is good for the individual is good for the team. It´s a team because we share either way success or failures. We do all win, as a team, or we do all fail, as a team. We all win when each one of us succeeds, but at the same time, we all loose if any one of us looses individually.

In our practice of Collective Management in hospitality, there is a big difference between what we meant as a team to what others may think. Trust when working, within team colleagues and managers is the base of any good team. A good team also has the opportunity to grow together, reinforcing its confidence and reliability among team members. If such trust does not appear we don't have a team. Instead, we have a group of individuals –or separate hotel departments, working together. A good team also must share values in the job, conforming to proper hotel culture. Values such as solidarity to the team, confidence, humility, unselfishness, respect for all members, and of course, sincerity.

Slide 36
. Good teams need their time to grow; day-by-day, issue-by-issue… There is a famous sequence of the movie "Any given Sunday" in which Toni D´Amato, a football coach played by Al Pacino, is giving a brilliant speech to all team members in the final game. Day-by-day, in the small daily work issues we may encounter a comparative situation to that speech; as a football team they talk about inches, but in essence they are talking about the same: solidarity, confidence, respect, sacrifice to the team, and success, or defeat, which finally affects the whole team (Video Play)

Slide 37. Every service worker must be in charge of asking customers "how is the service". By asking at the time of service, employees should also be able to provide an effective solution when critical problems occur–at least provide a provisional solution to any problem with the service or with customer disappointment. The main purpose of guest feedback at the time of service, is then twofold: (1) to make hotel staff more responsible for their job analysis through guests opinions, and (2) to show guests that hotel staff is very concerned in providing good service.

Guest´s feedback at the time of service works in this way: (1st step) Getting information in action: a receptionist, housekeeping maid, or a restaurant waiter will ask how the service is going when providing his or her service (2nd step) Recording guest´s information: if guest´s response is positive, then it should be recorded –memorized or immediately recorded, if employees are busy attending guests, data should be recorded as soon as possible to do not forget it -in its appropriate Excel sheet, block notes, piece of paper… (3rd Step) first solution if there are problems: only if guests manifest disappointments; every worker has to apply a solution to that specific problem -and depending on its nature, asking for help to a manager or Director. (4th Step) Feedback analysis in-group: every week there should be an interdepartmental meeting between mangers and the hotel Director, analysing weekly performance, service issues, incidents and employee's first intervention, and customer´s suggestions. However, before this meeting, department staff, together with mangers, should have held a previous meeting and should have made their first conclusions. This is a pre-reunion between operational staff and managers, and it could also be interdepartmental (e.g. kitchen and service staff together with managers). What do we analyse? We´d like to receive and review compliments, but the truth is that improvement only happens through deviations, that is why we will focus especially on problems, incidents, and guest suggestions. Therefore, the unique path to excellence is the one that constantly improves hotel operations within a PDCA working system and this is done with a sense of urgency.

Slide 38. David Bohm introduced the concept stating that any dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication. Dialogues have the following goals: exploring with other participants better solutions to problems, open mind-sets and learning; learning from dialogues, colleagues and managers. We wont try to impose our ideas, pretending we may be competing in a sort of opinion battle; that´s why dialogues differ from discussions. Through working dialogues, we will also come up to better courses of action.

There are certain rules in order to make dialogues productive: (1) we must all carefully listen to others, and respect others' opinions. (2) Often, There is not a unique -or clear- solution to certain work or business issues. Many problems are unstructured, that is, these problems may have worthwhile solutions. Which one is then the best solution? Through dialogues we will explore unexpected and unknown scenarios better. (3) In dialogues there are no hierarchies; every worker, together with managers, has his or her opportunity to be listened to. There is no place for authoritarian people or bosses in dialogues, nor for workers without enough self-confidence and humility in balance. (4) There must be a moderator, with the skills –authority- conducting dialogues. Normally, managers or Directors will participate and moderate. (5) We may not always obtain conclusions from a dialogues; this is very important to understand because most of the people think that without a conclusion or final action to all this talking, dialogues could be a waste of time. Work issues don´t always need immediate courses of action and often dialogues don't end up with conclusions the first time. Although we may not be conscious of it, there is a learning happening just because of the dialogue.

Slide 39
. If we accept that we might make mistakes when working, by recognizing this fallibility principle, we may start developing a working place that really learns and advances through errors. Of course, a negligent attitude toward mistakes has no place within such culture. Admitting worker´s mistakes when working is not an "open-bar" of permissiveness. We commit errors naturally, but we then carefully analyse in-group, trying to learn from every mistake; we will share them with everyone –if we may consider that certain mistakes could happen elsewhere.

Admitting errors is necessary to improve jobs. Equally, there is no innovation process happening without admitting errors, because innovation occurs basically through a trial-and-error method.

Slide 40. In-action means doing, analysing and constantly learning. It is Richard Branson's life and working philosophy: "Just do it! ".

In-action means that we put ideas and conclusions into testing, but above all we closely monitor and analyse results. We may ask ourselves: Is this course of action improvement working?Or, Is this new service offering value to guests and revenues to the company? Is it also profitable? Do we have to make further adjustments? Or, do we better give up that course of action? Could we save costs by re-thinking this procedure and how could it affect guests?

Slide 41. Open-Book-Management (OPM) is an idea developed by John Case (1993) and further developed by Jack Stack (1997) that shares and makes available financial information throughout the business and beyond managers, to bottom line employees. By giving financial data, and detailed accounting information, we should expect more commitment to improving financial results and better employee contribution.

Slide 42
. Collective Hospitality Management sees cost saving as everyone's duty. The responsibility for saving costs or making costs more efficient lies with all workers. Of course, within its sphere of action, it´s obvious that managers must have more accountability than bottom-line employees In addition, General Managers, must have the primary responsibility. Therefore, we could develop an organization committed to analysing costs and making them more effective, when such a task becomes part of the responsibility and the accountability of every job description . The method has the following parts: (1) financial knowledge and commitment, (2) control and monitoring –Cost savings Balance Score Card- and (3) initiative: art of the responsibility and the accountability of every job description.

We may have the following example: (1) Sales & Marketing department: advertising costs, salaries, office expenses, agencies commissions, agencies fixed costs, agencies rappels telephone, …(2) Restaurant, banqueting and bars: cost of beverages, salaries, staffing agencies salaries –reinforced service waiters, advertising (cost-shared), telephone, uniforms, utilities (cost-shared), table linen, service-ware such as glassware…(3) Kitchen: food cost, salaries, staffing agencies salaries, utilities (cost-shared), uniforms, kitchen-ware, telephone…(4) Reception: salaries, uniforms, telephone, office expenses, utilities (common-shared)…(5) Housekeeping: bed-linen, mini-bar expenses, salaries, staffing agencies salaries, telephone, utilities (common-shared), uniforms, flowers, room stationery…(6) Maintenance: utilities overall, salaries, external maintenance services, maintenance reposition materials, (7) Administration: salaries, outsourcing services, utilities (common-shared), telephone…(*) In this context administration co-lead with Hotel GM the system being with an overall responsibility in Cost Saving with a controller function…(8)…(9)…

Slide 43. Against the common, wise and traditional, mind-set of management, strategy is not something that happens only at the Corporate Offices, between top managers a group of directors reasoning and planning the best strategy, with tons of strategic data. We all have in mind that picture of a strategy planning process in which the strategist is thinking, evaluating figures, weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, competition, threats, reports and different strategic scenarios. But strategies can also occur from small and unexpected events, and when that happens, if that opportunity is properly exploited, it becomes a global strategy finally adopted by the whole company. Henry Mintzberg was the first to demystify much of the strategy planning process.

Throughout this entire innovative management thesis in hospitality I have explained how we can unleash employee potential. It is not an easy path, because everything must start with a deep change in managers´ mind set. But it could definitely be a path towards escaping from business obsolescence. Therefore, the purpose of this model in management is to boost Merge strategies. One merge strategy could start within the marketing and sales department, in certain hotels; together with reception they have discovered this business opportunity by listening to guest feedback and analysed sing guest information.

Or maybe a simple job process improvement in housekeeping has been successfully tested, in a hotel in Asia, saving important costs to the department, then implemented everywhere as the best practice or new standard to follow. Which has started out as an initiative in job improvement saving 4.000€ yearly to that particular hotel, could ended up saving 300.000€ to 75 hotels together. Another idea could also have been developed and implemented within the food & beverage department from a hotel in Madrid. Having been shown to be very profitable, it becomes a global strategy, because this new innovative service could be also very profitable to the rest of company. We do think locally but we act globally within our strategy process. What usually happens is that service employees often have more accurate information about hotel guests because they are dealing with them every day. Mintzberg pointed out that often operational employees often are really the ones who are handling strategic information directly from guests. It is all about establishing the proper communication channels and methods to make that information arrive to the Corporate Offices. How are managers analysing this? How are getting out from much information the strategic data?

Slide 44. Within this Intranet Community there are no hierarchies when workers participation is happening. The organization Intranet follows Internet and open collaboration principles bybeing an organization Community who believes that openness, transparency, organizational learning, job improvements and shearing, are key. All these principles and efforts should also bring us to innovation results; as well as better company financial performance.

I see the Intranet Community Manager (I-CM) a very important and strategic position within the company in Collective Management. After all he or she, will be the gatekeeper and "gate-master" of all company knowledge. Participation within the Intranet, to be productive, must follow certain rules, so he is the key person to put order. The whole system wouldn´t work either way, if top management is not there encouraging; could we evaluate the quality of Intranet participation within the job evaluation performance? The I-Community Manager must also have a high managerial position if the purpose is boosting and sharing Company knowledge; when the organization gathers "tons" of information from service knowledge workers and hotels.

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