Culture and Leadership Lessons from the "Thinker In Residence" Professor on the Road - William Murray

Josiah One of my favorite things to do here at Hospitality Daily is bring you stories that are a bit unusual, and today's certainly fits the bill. I saw a photo of a professor of hospitality that I follow on LinkedIn saying that he was embarking on a trip to study one of Canada's most innovative hotel brands and become what he calls a thinker-in-residence for them. Stick around to not only find out what he means by this, but learn what he's learned and observed so far about culture, service, and providing remarkable hospitality.  

Josiah Tell us a little bit about yourself, and then let's talk about this amazing project that you're working on right now.

William I'm Dr. William Murray. I'm an associate professor in the School of Hospitality, Food, and Tourism at the Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph, which is one of the top hospitality schools here in Canada. So that's my day job, and I have been an educator in hospitality for 25 years, and I've been in the hospitality industry since I was, what, 14 years old. That's when I started. This is in my blood, and I've tried to go away, And just like the movies say, they keep pulling me back.

Josiah Well, you spend a lot of time educating, not only in the classroom but for people around the globe through LinkedIn, and your podcast. I feel like education, showing people what hospitality can be, has been just this constant theme throughout your career.

William It's teaching people about service and giving and hospitality. And I think it makes more sense as I look back on what I've been doing. I think, like a lot of us, we're just making it up as we go along, and we're saying and teaching what we think is important. So when I teach people how to run operations, I'm trying to teach them to do that with a soul and that people are first and that that's very important. And like numbers, when we do financial statements, numbers tell a story about the people in behind them. So there's a humanity behind that and that there's an individual behind the person that you're serving or the employee. So always trying to keep the human aspect of it front and center. And sometimes that's a little bit messy in a business environment, but I think it should be.

Josiah Yeah. I want to talk with you about something I saw you share: that you were beginning this new project, a two-week project where you are a thinker in residence. Tell us how this project came to be. And then I want to hear all about this.

William Okay. So I am working with. Hotel Zed, which is a small independent owner-operator, hotel company. Mandy Farmer and the Farmer family own this property. They also own Accent Inns. Now, Hotel Zed, they're a group of rebels. And this is the word that they use. They call themselves rebels in everything that they do. So when, and I've worked with Mandy, and she's been on my podcast before, and I've had a lot of conversations with her. When you get emails from them, They are one of those companies that strike out their titles and put in their own titles. So it could be vice president of XYZ slash oil painting lover, or Morgan, shout out to Morgan, who is the executive assistant for the president. And she's the orchestrator of awesomeness. What does that do? It's like a freedom to just be yourself. And they encourage it. You get to title it yourself. So when I'm writing back to them, I kept going in and changing my name. So I'd cross out associate professor, and I would write in player with clay, because I'm an amateur potter. And I would change it all the time, and they noticed that. So I put forward this idea. I'm on a research sabbatical, and I wanted to come out and study a company that was fun. I wanted to take the time to be energized and fun, and there was a resonance here. So I pitched the idea that I would come out and be their thinker in residence. And we do residencies all the time, right? The "in residence" thing. We have it with an "executive in residence," where we'll bring in people to our school. And then you'll have scholars in residence that go to other schools. Artists in residence. And here's one that you'll be interested in. My friend Tim Ostrom in Calgary runs a Residence Inn, and they have a fully funded artist-in-residence program where they fund artists to come in and give them space to perform or create and then share it with the public on their property. Amazing. So I said, well, if I'm going to go out, I'm not going to go and just say, hi, I'm an associate professor. I'm going to be the thinker in residence. And I told them this, and they just went 100% we're on board, let's go. Open access. And what I mean open access, open access to the employees, open access to the executives, open access to all their doc, open.

Josiah I got to tell you before we go any further, that is actually something that is super, super rare. I have worked as a journalist officially or unofficially for a very long time, and it is extremely rare that someone gives you open access because usually there are so many filters and people to talk with and people to check with, here are the approved spokespeople. So I just want to highlight for our listeners, that you might like what we're going to get into, but just to set the stage, open access is something that I would imagine is going to enable everything that you were hoping.

William It's an absolute unicorn. When I go out to a lot of companies, I love the companies that I get to work with, but there is a lot of protection of data and image management, and everything has to be on brand. With Hotel Z, this is exactly on brand. is coming in and figuring out who they are and what they do and sharing the, and the word they use is awesomeness quite a bit. So, sharing that is completely on brand for them. So, there was a great synergy there. And I hopped out and I'm spending two weeks with Hotel Z. They have three properties. So right now I'm sitting in one of their properties in Victoria, BC, and I'm going up to a, which is their first property. I'll be going up to Tofino, BC. to their resort property and then over into the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Kelowna, BC. So that's my two-week tour. I'll be seeing every property talking with lots of employees, and I've had meetings with all of their executive members. So it's just a nonstop conversation.

Josiah Why are you doing that? Why not just go to one?

William Well, the thing about properties is every property has a bit of their own uniqueness in how they execute. And I think that has to do with location and population. So here in Victoria, where it's a large city and Tofino is as a bit more of a remote resort town. And then Kelowna being in the heart of the Okanagan Valley, three very different locations. So how does that brand carry through and enact their identities? in these disparate locations. So to only do one location, bias one location over the other. So I felt it really important to see all the locations to get a full mosaic, so to speak. Anytime you're coming and doing a project, I love the phrase, I don't know what I don't know yet. So on a trip like this, I'm very much open to serendipity, but that doesn't work when you actually have a job and you need to produce outcomes. So I'm here with three outcomes. One is a research study on organizational culture, and then I'm writing two learning case studies for the hospitality industry.

Josiah I love the notion of going in without a specific objective or thing that you're hoping to find, but you know something, you know, the reputation this brand has. So you know, there's something, something is happening here. That's cool. And then you're going to go see for yourself. Now, my understanding is that you've already started some of these conversations. I'm curious what you're starting to hear. What are some of the early things that are standing out to you?

William When you're looking at organizational culture, if you come in with preconceived notions, and this is just my approach, if you come in with preconceived notions that culture is formed with a little bit of A, a little bit of B, and a little bit of C, then you look for A, B, and C. And then you're going to miss D and E because you have pre-assumptions of what the secret sauce is and what's going on. So I'm coming in using what's called a grounded theory approach and listening. Grounded theory allows me to talk to people, get their stories, and then use that to interpret. So it's reversed from coming in with a preconceived idea. Almost like an explorer. And so I'm using the idea that culture gets manifested in a couple of things. So one is the observable artifacts. Like, what do you see around you? Here at Zed, everything is 70s themed. like radical 70s theme. It's, they call it here in Victoria, they call it the Rainbow Hotel. The staff's uniforms are all individual. They have very broad parameters on dress code, right? Don't show inappropriate skin, don't have any ripped clothing. But they all have different types of t-shirts. The housekeepers have been personalizing their t-shirts and tie-dying their t-shirts. And it's very casual. And it has that casual 70s vibe. When you go into the lobby here to check in, it's like a living room. So it has the sunken chairs. It has vinyl record player with old music that you can go and listen to with headphones on. There's old typewriters. And I wrote some thank you notes yesterday on old typewriters. Very much impressing the younger staff that somebody like me can type. That's how I learned. The old typewriters ding. It's a great party trick. So you have these observable artifacts, both in people, tattoos, piercings, all accepted, welcome. And then you have a core set of values. So that would be the second one. So are there a shared set of values? And then third, is there a set of basic underlying assumptions that people within an organization hold? So just using those three boxes allows me to craft questions, have conversations, and see what are the observable artifacts, what are the values that you hold dear, and what are the underlying assumptions that you're using when you're making day-to-day decisions, particularly decisions that are tricky or hard.

Josiah That's interesting. I guess, are you starting to see anything in the implementation or how people engage with each other? Because I think what you've outlined makes a lot of sense, but I also hear a lot of people talk about wanting to be more casual, inviting, come as you are, share values. I guess like you've seen the industry from so many different angles. Do you feel like there's anything beyond that in the details where they're executing or maybe implementing these things in a slightly different way?

William I had a great conversation with the president of the company and I kept asking questions and I kept coming back. And this comment has come up quite a bit. He just said, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. We say these things. You're waiting to see where we do these things. And you know as well as I do, there are so many companies out there that their mission and vision statement live in a frame on a wall. It's great art, but it's not functional art. That's what we say, this is what we do. I say that one is espoused and one is enacted values. And the espoused values, what we say, and the enacted values, what we do, they don't align. Oh, that's not what we really did. I'm not seeing the other shoe drop here yet. I'm getting example after example, after example of how they live their values of people first profit second. And that's a great slogan, right? Leading with love, putting people first. Can you do it though? Show me that you did that. So How did they do that? One great example, back in COVID, which is one of the teaching cases that I'm writing, back in COVID, they worked very hard at deciding what to do. Very common response during COVID was the furloughs and the layoffs, the disruption of norm. So up to COVID, January of 2020, all employees were family, not here in our industry. Family, staff, family. And then in March 2020, it was, eh, it's not personal, it's business. It's not personal, it's business. Of course it's personal. Everything is personal. Here, they sat down really quickly and decided, how do we keep our family together? And if we need to make waves, how do we make people whole? So I'm not saying anything out of school that I've discovered this week is they worked very, very hard at making sure that if they had to lay people off, it was for as short a period of time as possible. They went out and created an individual plan for every single employee on a spreadsheet. So all employees at all properties with their personal contexts and what was important to them. So middle of a pandemic, single mom, four kids, this became a context for decision making. So if we needed to pull you back into work, was that going to cause more stress to you or was it better for you to get employee assistance and then come back when you were ready versus somebody else? That spreadsheet was more important than their profitability. Their people were more important than their profits. They stopped giving out profit and loss statements to their frontline managers. And most businesses use that in their ops meeting at eight o'clock every morning, you know, at the end daily. What's our occupancy? What's our ADR? And they understood it's going to be crap. Everything is in the toilet right now. Why am I giving this to you? So that's going to be your main focus. I'm not going to give that to you. Go take care of your people. It's going to cost money. Go take care of your people. And I think that that stems from Mandy Farmer, who had the attitude of, if we're going to go down as a business, we're going to go down taking care of our people.

Josiah Well, it's really those moments that are the toughest moments where they become defining moments for the culture, right? That's what people are going to remember, not just when times are good. But I think what also stands out to me is thinking about how you communicate, thinking about how you hold people accountable. You think about those managers that you mentioned deciding not to share those P&L statements in that moment. In an environment like that, that may look similar to the example you described. It may look very different in a different context, but I think that notion of aligning communication with how we hold people accountable and potentially doing things differently in a way that supports the outcome that we're looking to achieve seems to be a universal takeaway for our listeners. I wonder if we could, Bill, if we could talk a little bit about, this project is ongoing for you. And I wonder if we could go behind the scenes and share with our listeners what things you'll be looking for or how you're observing the culture. I think you touched on this in a few elements because who I have in mind for this is maybe, let's say someone who is currently working in an organization with a great culture; they took the job because they want to learn that culture. And I'm curious, you know, where do you look or what do you observe or who do you follow to pick up on culture? Or if you're somebody who's not working out of the property, but you're just trying to study the industry, you're an expert in this, you're the professor, you're doing this right now as we speak. I'm curious how someone could go about, you know, immersing themselves in that so that they can learn what a culture is all about.

William There's a great phrase, there's never nothing going on. And with culture, culture in any organization is ubiquitous. Now, it can go on a spectrum, we can have a weak culture or a strong culture, but there will never be no culture. So if we go back to those three areas of what can we observe through artifacts, what do we value? And I think When we talk about the values, it's what do we actually enact in our values? And if we say versus do different things, that's important as well, because that's going to say something about your values or your culture. And then what are the underlying assumptions that we make at work? So what do you see? And what do you see? What do you hear? What do you observe? What are the stories that people are telling? What are the tangibles and intangibles? So I often, when I'm doing this type of work, I find myself a mirror, and what I want to do is start to ask people questions. So in my questions for this particular research, I will say, tell me about a story that stands out for you. And people will tell stories that are important to them, and likely those stories are going to tell me something about what is important that went well, or what is important that didn't go well, and we'll be able to use that to tie that story back to what's important. So, for example, a story about putting people first. If you say, we put people first, my follow-up question is, show me. Like, give me a time when. Those situational interview questions, right? Give me a time when. Why do they allow you to wear those tattoos? Tell me about your septum ring. What's up with that uniform? Tell me about X, Y, Z. Or I will, in terms of research, I'll reflect back. So you'll say something to me, and this has been happening every single day for me, is people are telling me stories, and I say, what you're telling me is, make sure I get this correct. Hold on a second. because when you live in an environment, it becomes normalized to you. So the people who work in this brand speak about this brand like this is the way that business is done. And I spend my time listening to their stories going, that's not normal. And they went, what do you mean it's not normal? This is just how we do things here. Nobody else is doing it that way. So they've normalized being rebels. It's just the way they do things. So when you're looking at a culture, sometimes having a thinker in residence or somebody from the outside coming in is valuable because you can't see the environment that you're in. And having somebody look at and go, I'm seeing something very, very different.

Josiah I love that and I appreciate you walking through that because it seems in a sense that normalizing those behaviors is actually very productive. If you want to create a great culture, you want it to seem normal and not, almost not that special, right? This is just how we, we operate here. But if you're someone who is maybe new to the organization, or as you mentioned, outside the organization, trying to understand it, there's an element of curiosity there. There's the element of, wait, I haven't seen this elsewhere. This is different. And I imagine you're recording all these differences, right?

William Everything gets recorded. Yeah. Everything gets recorded. I'll give you an example. I said that here in Victoria, they call this property the Rainbow Property because it is painted in the brightest rainbow colors, 1970s, so pinks, yellows, blue greens, everywhere. Now that's going to attract some people and repel other people. Everybody who works here has said, well, I saw the building and I went, oh, that's kind of cool. I wonder what's going on there, and they walk in. and they get more of it as they come in. They walk into the lobby, they see the staff members, they see the uniforms, or how people talk to one another. They go, these are my people. They're finding their tribe, so to speak. Not to get too kitschy in the words that we use, but they're finding their people. And it's not gonna work for other people. So this physical environment is allowing some people who align with the values The physical environment is allowing them to go, this is in scope for me. And other people, it's not in scope for, it's out of scope.

Josiah That's great. I'm so excited to watch the outcome of this. I imagine a fair amount of these findings will be private. You maybe share with the Zed team and with your students, but I hope you share some of it publicly. And I guess for those listening, where can they follow you to learn about what you'll share through this project and just kind of other things that you're seeing in the industry?

William I'm sharing some of this project and just my adventures on LinkedIn. So I believe it's William C. Murray, but I could be wrong because I always forget what my handle is on LinkedIn, but I'm very easy to find. And I also talk about service on my podcast called The Service Center, which we'll be picking up again in 2024 once the tail end of my sabbatical wraps up and I'm not neck deep in all of this goodness. Beyond that, some of this will get published in academic journals. and then translated down into something more consumable. So hopefully through the conversation here in Canada and media. And you and I will continue to have these conversations, I hope, and we'll talk about some of those findings on the other side. That would be great.

Josiah We got to do this again, Bill. I had a lot of fun. Thanks for joining.

William Thanks for having me.