Today is November 19 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you ask others what they think?”
People who navigate the chaos like Bill Marriott Jr., the son of Alice and J. Willard Marriott, the founder of Marriott International, has emphasized the value of asking others what they think throughout his career.
Marriott attended St. Albans School in Washington, DC, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in finance from the University of Utah, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He served on an aircraft carrier as an officer in the United States Navy Supply Corps.
Marriott has described how he learned a lifelong management lesson from an offhand remark made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he and his wife, Mamie, were guests at the house of Marriott's father in 1954. When Eisenhower was given the option to either go outside and shoot quail in the cold or stand by the fire, he turned to 22-year-old Bill Marriott and simply asked, "What do you think we should do?"
According to Marriott, "So I tried to adopt that style of management as I progressed in life. The four most important words in the English language are, 'What do you think?’ And that's why I would visit over 200 hotels a year to meet with our associates. You can talk about all the technology, distribution and other things that are taking place. If you take good care of your associates, they'll take good care of the customers and the customers will come back. We're in the people business. We don't manufacture anything. We just take care of our guests.”
How often do you ask others what they think?