Collaboration Leads to Innovation
A few weeks ago, I wrote my first ever blog post (you can read that here) as part of my commitment to write more content. The inspiration came from attending a leadership event last year. The topic for the day was on maximising your Leadership potential and was run alongside David Guile’s Book “Potential”.
It was a day high on energy.
What made the room feel so energised was that the mix was amazing. Some people with full careers behind them, still leading from the front and some just starting out but with no less leadership potential. Some 2 months later, my brain is awash with ideas, but I’ll come on to that later and in fact, I’m not even here today to write about Leadership. Something more poignant grabbed me.
You see, in a world that seems to enjoy consistently reporting it’s moans across all areas (remind me why bad news sells?), moaning and being negative about the world was certainly not the over-riding message I took away from my day. On the contrary, listening to Harry Murray MBE talk about the Lucknam Park journey with such passion, Robin Sheppard discuss his battle back from ill health with such humour and Danny Pecorelli talk with poise and professionalism on the part that vitality plays in business. That’s not to under play the inspirational input of Stephanie Hocking of Andrew Brownsword Hotels and David Taylor from Principal. Every one of these superb presentations talked about the issues that are widely reported across the industry in all areas of the press but, critically, did not let it consume them or influence direction of the discussion points.
And all this inspirational talk got me thinking.
Talent and Knowledge
There is a phenomenal amount of talent and knowledge in our industry. It’s actually everywhere and you don’t even have to look that hard and yet the only message that ever seems to get out to the wider press is that it is an under paid and over worked sector where people are not treated well. My experience is very different and the rewards you can get are incredible. After all, “We’re in the dreams business” to quote Harry Murray.
So, what can we do to get a better message across? I’ll explore this in one of my future articles, but I see a wonderful opportunity for us all and there’s no time like the present to act.
Collaboration
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a collaborative approach to what I do. This, to me, is the only way forward in any walk of life. We all seem keen on dividing and conquering but I can’t believe that the benefits of a collaborative mindset are being lost. A study of cross sector champions in 2015 found many benefits to enlisting a collaborative mindset. The top ten are here
Now if you explore even a couple of them, such as opportunities and risk being more transparent and manageable or the fact that everyone gets to contribute, so you get the opportunity to tap into everyone’s knowledge bank, not just a few people, then suddenly, you have an environment where innovation thrives, and problems get solved. Simple, yes?
Hospitality Champions
So, my thought process was simply this. As an industry, if we have such talented, knowledgeable, and driven people available to us at all levels, what chance is there for a coming together of all of this to create a group of people that drive the solutions and innovation through a collaborative set of goals. Now an organisation such as the BHA may already be doing this but the message coming out of there does not give that impression. I’d be all ears on whether it’s being done.
And if it’s not, then it should. It would need someone to drive it.
I’d be up for that, I’d be unbelievably up for that.
Thank you for reading.