Hotel executives are well aware of the challenges that cumbersome tech stacks and siloed data have created. And yet the overall direction of the industry will continue to demand more and more technology adoption – both for labor efficiencies and revenue growth – further complicating all the platforms in use and necessary interfaces.

The core of cores problem may not be with the software ecosystems we’ve built up over the decades, however, but with the business practices that have crept into our companies and are now out of alignment with the rapid pace of innovation that the post covid, hyper-capitalist world requires. Hence, even before any new vendor evaluations or tech stack redevelopment, hotels should first look at their ‘human stack’ to find all the team inefficiencies that are stifling expedient change.

Learning From Big Tech

Evaluating the human stack is something that we have leaned into as part of any consulting assignment we undertake under the banner of our ‘Teams N Tech’ (TNT) auditing program. When an owner or C-level executive first comes to us with a technology problem or growth-oriented directive, we often find that the hindrance is deeper – that the real problem lies in how the various teams make decisions, how workflows (or working blocks of time) are managed and interdepartmental politics.

One of most salient problems is overcrowded meetings where the efficiencies of the medium are lost due to too many participants. The more attendees you add, the longer it takes to align on a time then get underway while everyone waits for the tardy joiner. Then the more people you have, the longer it takes to require consensus and the more hesitant some participants will be with their thoughts.

Fans of symbology and shorthand principles to help with memorability, we have frequently deployed the ‘two pizza rule’ as famously named and used by Amazon. No meeting should have more participants than can be adequately fed by two whole pizzas. Abiding by this rule requires more purpose to meetings – clear agendas and justifiable roles for each attendee.

Closely related to this, another huge time suck is simply having too many meetings when an email or management-by-exception style of empowerment will suffice. For this, we can learn from Shopify’s recent ‘calendar purge’ mandate. Going forward for 2023, the company removed all recurring meetings with more than two employees. Then Wednesdays were declared meeting-free while all big team meetings were confined to Thursdays.

Propelling this was the inference that many meetings in larger organizations – as well as the busywork arranging for these meetings – tend to become vehicles for maintaining the status quo rather than assemblies where decisions are made promptly. Any hotel can also succumb to this ‘statis creep’.

Rethinking Meeting Design

The overall lesson we can learn from Amazon and Shopify is that meeting design needs a rethink in order to maximize each team member’s productivity. The need for this organizational revamp has become all the more critical with a remote, hybrid or flexible working arrangement – something that many hotel companies have considered or implemented in order to incentivize employees to stay.

In fact, it goes deeper than that. People have largely entered the hospitality industry to be guest-facing and to do the meaningful work of directly helping guests. Poorly managed meetings can detract from this goal, which then negatively impacts motivation, raises job-related stress and can be a factor in turnover.

You also need to consider where those meetings are taking place. Oftentimes the fluorescent-lit, drab back-of-house offices where hoteliers meet seldom elevate moods like those front-of-house public spaces imbued with natural light and more pleasant furnishings.

Various technologies – albeit combined with policy shifts – can help to shift the Five Ws of meetings so that your human stack then has the bandwidth to keep pace with the tech that society now demands.