How Vision Guides the Moves You Make - Christine Poon, Detroit EDITION

Josiah: I think one of the things I've appreciated about your writing is you wrote about the zone of genius, where you have strengths and passions and areas of contribution all coming together. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that concept, because I found it interesting. I think our listeners might benefit from understanding that a little bit more as they think about what a next opportunity might look like for them.

Christina: I have this practice of asking myself yearly, "Where are you at, Christina? What have you accomplished, and what are you going to accomplish next?" And it kind of repositions myself in where I'm at professionally and personally. So when I do those reviews with myself, it's really eye-opening, because when you look back, you realize how much you've accomplished, and when you look forward, I love to see a page full of ideas and inspiration. If that page is not full, that's when I start asking myself, "Am I at the right place at the right time, or do I need to think of something else, another move?" Because I love being stimulated, and for me to be passionate about what I do every day, I feel it comes across, and I give my best self when that happens. That's what I mean by that crux of, what am I passionate about? What gets me up, energized every day? And what am I really great at? When I get the answers to those questions, it... how can I say this... it pushes me forward to the next step, if there is one to take. So for now, I'm at the beautiful Detroit EDITION. I can tell you, my pages are full. I've got chapters and chapters of things that I wanna realize here, that I wanna do, and it just excites me so much. I hope that's what people look for when they're somewhere: find that great connection between all of the things that you love to do, you're great at, and that gets you up with high energy in the morning. It's so important. We work every day, and we spend a lot of hours doing what we do.

Josiah: Now, I wanna talk a little bit about the personal career side of the hospitality business, because this is something that you've spent some time writing about. I've really enjoyed following along your journey as you've shared it on LinkedIn. How can you encourage our listeners to think about taking a leap in their career, a big step forward? You were leading this really successful hotel in an amazing city, you had a team that you loved, you were really embedded into the community with Union Square Partnership, and you were... I feel like you had kind of a dream job in many regards. How did you know it was time for a new chapter?

Christina: I love that, because it's a thought that a lot of people don't necessarily take the time to go through, right? When I enter into a hotel, for me personally, I always have a vision for the property when I walk into it, and I tell myself, "All right, here's where we can bring this property, and here's what the team can accomplish," and I put that down on paper and go, "Okay, here's the vision for the next three to five years. Here's what we need to do to make that happen." It's sort of like, I would say, a filmmaker. Once you've put down what the movie is going to be about, then you assemble your cast, and then you go through the filming process. Once it's done and that masterpiece is out there, it's kind of done, and you wanna move on to your next movie. That's a little bit how I would explain it for my own experience. Let's say the W again. I came onto that property, I listened to what the owners wanted to do with it, what was the brand's aspiration with that property. I also spoke to the team members and said, "You're here every day. What do you want? What's your hope for this property?" And with all of that information, data, and aspirations of everybody, basically, we put together that vision and said, "All right, what does it take to get there?"

Josiah: This is fascinating to me, and I wanna get into what you're doing now, but I wanna expand this idea of the vision and the learning process, because you had been a leader at a number of other hospitality organizations, and then you come into this property in New York. You are talking to everyone, from ownership investors into the teams on the ground. As an experienced hospitality leader, were there things that surprised you in those conversations, or things that you discovered that you weren't expecting, when you first walked into it?

Christina: I was pleasantly surprised how ambitious everybody was. Because typically people hold back on their ambitions or on their dreams, I find. When you ask some people, "Well, what do you wanna do? Where do you see yourself?" often they'll be very restrained in their responses. But when asked properly, in the right environment, it's incredible what people have, as I call it, a dream, a dream vision for something. And when you go and seek that and get it from them, it's just fascinating. So that surprised me in a very pleasant manner. I'm talking about hourly associates, managers, owners, everybody had this really ambitious idea of what they wanted, and I loved it.

Josiah: You said when you ask properly, it seems the way that you are having these conversations matters a lot. What have you learned about asking properly, or in the right way, that brings out what you need to know in these conversations?

Christina: We hear this often, where we are told, "Listen more than you talk," and it's something that really makes a difference. Also, build a connection. If you just show up and say, "Hey, what do you think? What are your dreams?" it's not gonna come out. They need to build that rapport with you and have that trust, and they will then share their wildest dreams. I don't know if that makes any sense, what I'm saying.

Josiah: It makes sense. It's really about taking the time to build the connection, and listen, and come back with more questions until you get the true answer. That makes a lot of sense.

Josiah: I wanna talk a little bit about the opportunity you're working on now. How did it all come to be?

Christina: It's pretty wild, actually. I was coming onto my fifth anniversary with the W New York, and the project itself was really coming to a conclusion, where our five-year vision really came to life. We checked almost every single box, and I work for a fantastic company. They really look out for us. And the question came, "What's your next move, Christina? We feel like you might be starting to itch for another opportunity." I didn't really know the answer to that, because I was still kind of entrenched in my project, but I knew I had to think of the next one. And that yearly review that I mentioned earlier, it came down to me saying, "You know what? I love project work. That's something that resonates with me, and I think I'm great at it, so I wanna continue down that route." So I mentioned that, and somebody I trust a lot walked up to me and just whispered, "What do you think about Detroit?" I'm like, "Excuse me? Did you say Detroit?" He's like, "Yes, you should think about it." And then we just left it at that.

Being nerdy like I am, I went on YouTube, Google, searched it all. I said, "What's happening there? Why would this person that I trust so much talk to me about this city out of the blue?" It was very interesting what I uncovered about it. And EDITION is a brand that's always interested me because it's so close to, again, all my passion points. But I wasn't convinced, because it's a city I didn't know, and when you don't know something, you're always a little bit afraid of it, right? So I told my husband and son, who live with me, "Let's go check it out. Let's go spend the weekend there. We'll discover, and we'll know if this works." So the decision to go from New York to Detroit didn't happen at a desk. It really happened standing at the construction site. We talked about vision earlier, and it, like, totally came to me, where I said, "Oh my God, I could see the guest experience here, the associate experience. It's just gonna be so phenomenal. I wanna be part of this." And also the story of the ownership group really appealed to me. When somebody invests in the building, that's one thing. When they invest in their city and community, that's impactful. So that resonated with me, and I figured, if I'm gonna spend the next three to five years of my life working on something, it might as well be worthwhile like this one, where we're bringing together something incredible for the city.

Josiah: Tell me a little bit more about that visit, because I feel like we have more and more information at our fingertips. We have YouTube, as you mentioned, and it's funny for me, I'm based in San Francisco, and I sometimes watch YouTube videos of San Francisco and think, wait, this is nothing like it actually is. There's something about being in a place, experiencing it for yourself. What are some of the things that stood out to you when you visited and you were spending some time there in the city, considering this opportunity?

Christina: I honestly did not know what to expect. I had never been in this area of the Midwest before. You hear of things, right? Detroit didn't have the best reputation a few years ago. What has changed a lot in the past three years, and the next three to five years are gonna be just explosive. When I walked it, I was surprised by how modern it felt, even though it's the original architecture, because everybody took care of the buildings in the past few years, revamped them. Just gorgeous architecture. I was not expecting that. The people are genuinely nice, and that's another big important factor when you decide, "Where do I wanna live? Where do I wanna spend my time? Where do I wanna build a team?" If they start off with that DNA, imagine what we can accomplish together. They're ready. Super sweet. Great. Let's teach them service standards, and we're gonna smash it out of the ballpark for sure.