Tag Archive for: Performance Management

Trust is the Final KPI

Trust is the Final KPI

For many years, I believed that successful projects could be recognised quite easily.

Revenue increased. Profit improved. Market share grew. Guest satisfaction rose. Budgets were achieved. Property value improved. Debt service secured. Investment plan on schedule.

The numbers told the story. At least that is what I thought.

Then I started noticing something.

When I looked back on the projects that remained most meaningful in my memory, I rarely remembered the final spreadsheet.
I remembered the people.

A conversation years later. An unexpected phone call. A recommendation. A friendship.
A door that remained open long after the assignment itself had ended.
Or occasionally, a door that closed forever.

That observation forced me to reconsider what success actually meant.

One organisation in particular taught me this lesson.
The engagement lasted several years. The discussions were often challenging. The expectations were not always aligned.
At times I pushed harder than the organisation wished to move.
At other times the organisation moved more slowly than I wished to accept.

There were disagreements.
There were difficult conversations.
There were moments when it would have been easier for both sides simply to stop talking.

Yet something survived.
Trust.

Years after the project ended, the relationships remained. The conversations remained. The respect remained.
Even some of the disagreements remained.
What disappeared was the need to be right.
What remained was confidence in each other’s intentions.
That fascinated me.

The project itself had eventually stopped.
The relationship had not.

And that forced me to ask a question. What exactly had been created?
Certainly not a report. Certainly not a spreadsheet. Certainly not a KPI.
The answer, I believe, was trust.
Not blind trust. Not emotional trust. Professional trust.

The confidence that somebody will tell you the truth even when it is uncomfortable.
Also when it’s myself on the receiving end.
The confidence that disagreement does not imply disloyalty.
The confidence that criticism serves improvement rather than politics.
The confidence that intentions remain aligned even when opinions differ.

Looking back, I increasingly believe trust is one of the most misunderstood assets in business.
Everyone talks about it.
Few measure it.
Yet organisations built upon trust can survive extraordinary pressure.
Organisations without trust often struggle even under favourable conditions.

The same applies to partnerships. Teams. Families. Perhaps even countries.
Trust rarely appears on a balance sheet.
Yet its absence eventually appears everywhere else.

Reflection

This article is about trust.

Not the trust that exists when everything goes well, but the trust that survives disagreement.
The more mature I become, the more suspicious I become of success that destroys trust.
The immediate outcome may appear attractive, but the long-term cost is often invisible until it arrives.

Agreement proves little. Trust reveals itself when people remain connected despite conflict.

For many years I searched for better metrics. Today I sometimes wonder whether trust was the metric all along.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction

The CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction

The organisation had asked for performance management. At least that is what everyone believed.
The mandate sounded straightforward.
Improve performance. Increase profitability. Strengthen accountability. Introduce structure. Measure outcomes.
The objectives were sensible. The implementation began.

Managers learned. Reports improved. Discussions became more disciplined.
Departments became increasingly aligned. People started asking better questions.
At first, the questions were operational. Then commercial. Then strategic.

Then something unexpected happened. The questions started travelling upwards.
Department Heads wanted clarity. The General Managers wanted clarity. The senior leadership team wanted clarity. Eventually, the same questions began appearing repeatedly.
What are our objectives? What assumptions are they based upon? What are we trying to become? What are we optimising for?

The questions were not rebellious. They were logical. The organisation was learning.
And learning organisations tend to become curious.

When budgeting time arrived, the CEO was asking the organisation to improve profitability.
A reasonable request in any organisation.

The response from the management team was equally reasonable:

  • What is our Highest and Best Use?
  • What market positioning are we pursuing?
  • Which customer are we targeting?
  • What brand strategy supports that choice?
  • How much capital are we prepared to invest?
  • When will that investment occur?
  • What return are we expecting?
  • What organisational structure is required to deliver it?

The fascinating part was that nobody had instructed the organisation to ask these questions. The organisation had taught itself.
Performance management had created curiosity.
And curiosity has a remarkable quality. Once it takes hold, it becomes difficult to reverse.

There was no hostility in these questions. No resistance. No politics.
Simply a request for clarity in order to plan and execute effectively.

What followed was a growing realisation that important assumptions about who the organisation was, where it wanted to go, and what it ultimately wanted to become had never been fully articulated.
Eventually, the discussion returned to management itself: Tell us what you believe we can achieve. Tell us what you need to achieve it.
What had started as a project about measurement gradually became a conversation about direction.

Looking back, I believe this was the real success of the project.
Not the reports. Not the systems. Not the numbers.
The organisation had learned how to think and had begun discovering what it was and what it wanted to achieve.

Reflection

This article is about how curiosity transforms performance management into organisational learning.

This is the twelfth of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

Many people believe performance management is about measurement.
I have gradually come to a different conclusion.
Performance management is fundamentally about setting expectations.
Measurement simply reveals whether those expectations have been achieved.

The difficult part is rarely the measurement.
The difficult part is defining the expectations first.
Governance begins with that clarity, because expectations define decision rights, accountability, information flows, and ultimately the basis upon which performance can be assessed.
And not merely the financial expectations.

Once people understand how a business works, they naturally begin asking why it works the way it does.
What started as a discussion about performance eventually became a discussion about purpose, positioning, capital, structure, and strategy.

Looking back, that was the real achievement.
The organisation had not merely learned how to measure performance.
It had learned how to think.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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The HR Director Who Learned to Love Numbers

The HR Director Who Learned to Love Numbers

If somebody had told me at the beginning of the project that the strongest advocate for performance management would eventually emerge from Human Resources, I would have been sceptical. Very sceptical.

At the time, the HR Director represented something important within the organisation: culture, care, wellbeing, development, and respect.
The company genuinely cared about its people. And she was one of the principal custodians of that culture.

Performance management worried her.
Not because she opposed improvement. Because she feared what numbers might do.
Like many people, she saw a potential conflict. People on one side. Performance on the other. Compassion versus accountability. Culture versus profitability.
The concern was understandable. Many organisations manage to create exactly that conflict.

Yet something unexpected happened.
She became curious. She asked questions. She challenged assumptions.
And, at times, she gave me a hard time.
She wanted to understand. Not the spreadsheets. The thinking behind them.
Slowly, patiently, and somewhat reluctantly at first, she began exploring concepts she had previously avoided.
Performance. Productivity. Profitability. Measurement. Expectations.

The more she learned, the more her perspective changed.
Not because she cared less about people. Quite the opposite.
She gradually realised that satisfied employees do not emerge from good intentions alone.
They emerge from functioning organisations.
Sales must perform. Operations must perform. Finance must perform. Engineering must perform. Managers must perform. Expectations must be clear.
Responsibilities must be understood. Resources must be available.
Only then can an organisation create the conditions that allow people to thrive.
That realisation changed her perspective.

She eventually understood something important.
People are not separate from capital.
They are one of the most significant investments any hotel makes.
Most organisations treat people and capital as different conversations.
One belongs to Human Resources. The other belongs to Finance.
Yet sustainable organisations depend on both working together.

She came to recognise that salaries, training, development, engagement, and leadership are not merely costs.
They are investments expected to generate outcomes, just as any other investment within the business.
Equally, she understood that capital without capable and motivated people rarely delivers its intended return.
People and performance are not competing priorities.
Nor are people and capital. In healthy organisations, people, performance, capital and purpose are interconnected.

Strong performance creates opportunity, stability, investment, development, and career growth.
Strong people create the performance that makes those things possible.
The relationship is not adversarial. It is symbiotic.

Over time, she became one of the strongest advocates for performance management within the organisation.
Not despite her commitment to people. Because of it.
She recognised that performance management, applied within a healthy and humane culture, protects both people and capital.
Most importantly, she reached that conclusion herself.

Years later she joined the Board.
The promotion was deserved.
Not because she had mastered numbers.
Because she had learned to integrate two worlds that many people mistakenly separate: people and capital. Humanity and performance.
She understood that neither can succeed sustainably without the other.

Reflection

This article is about how curiosity taught me that people and performance succeed together or fail together.

This is the eleventh of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

One of the most persistent misconceptions in business is that people and performance are in competition with each other.
My experience suggests the opposite. Poorly managed organisations damage both.
Well-managed organisations support both. The challenge is not choosing between people and performance.
The challenge is understanding that sustainable performance creates the conditions in which people can succeed.

The HR Director taught me that lesson. And she taught it far more convincingly than any consultant ever could.

Looking back, one outcome gives me particular satisfaction.
The organisation no longer required external advocates for performance management.
One of its strongest advocates had emerged from within: The HR Director herself.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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Numbers in the Ballroom

Numbers in the Ballroom

Growing up, my biggest anxiety was around numbers.
I still remember receiving a Chinese abacus during “Sinterklaas”, a Dutch festivity before Christmas during which children receive presents.
As the photograph shows, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Looking back, perhaps that was the beginning of a much longer story.
Years later, working night audit in hotels, I had to face that same anxiety.
Excel. Daily reconciliations. Accounting. Basic spreadsheets. Basic financial reporting.

The problem was simple.
I was unable to see the forest for the trees.
I could not connect the dots.
I made many mistakes and gave both the accounting and IT departments a headache.
Back then, I was certainly not on the shortlist for Employee of the Month. Quite the opposite.

One night, after once again frustrating accounting and IT by breaking reports and spreadsheets, I decided to do something different.
I printed everything. Every tab. Every page. Hundreds of pages.
I covered the floor of an unused ballroom with all these hundreds of sheets, blocked its availability for a week, and spent several nights walking through the process.
Page by page. Report by report. Formula by formula.
Slowly the connections became visible. Not because somebody explained them.
Because I followed the chain.

That lesson stayed with me.
Whenever I struggle to understand something, I still look for the chain. The outcome rarely explains itself. The path that created it usually does.

Today, numbers are part of my daily bread and butter.
I overcame my anxiety by facing it.
More importantly, I learned that weaknesses are often invitations to learn rather than reasons to stop.
My colleagues and managers recognised the effort and supported me. I owe them my respect and gratitude forever.

Looking back, I do not think the lesson was really about numbers.
It was about humility. Acknowledging what you do not understand.
Being curious enough to keep asking questions. And being persistently stubborn enough not to give up until the pieces start fitting together.

That lesson has stayed with me far beyond accounting.
In operations. In commercial strategy. In governance. And increasingly, in life itself.
Curiosity and humility are a powerful combination.
Together, they allow us to transform weaknesses into strengths.

Thank you for reading my article.

This article is about how numbers helped me to channel my curiosity.

This is the second of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.

I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and inspired you to keep learning.

Curiosity, humility, and continuous learning remain among the most valuable tools we possess.

About the Author

Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.

Website

https://gransier.com

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