Development of hotel staff into general manager positions
We worked with a large hotel chain operating in the UK to formalise the development of staff into general manager positions within the hotels. The general manager (GM) role is the most senior within a hotel and carries great prestige. However, developing the right people into GM roles was problematic, which made succession planning difficult for the organisation. Additionally the client was experiencing problems with the attributes of current GMs and needed to change the role to meet the demands of the future. This project involved the design of a development process that would meet the joint needs of developing people into the new GM role and improve succession planning.
The new general manager process had to address these key needs:
- No formal development process existed for individuals aspiring to the GM role. This made it difficult for the organisation to promote internally in a consistent, structured way, which resulted in frequent shortages of suitable individuals for the GM role vacancies.
- A recent organisational fitness exercise had demonstrated that, whilst many staff wanted to progress to the role of general manager, many did not possess the requisite skills and competencies. Therefore a skills deficit existed within the population of GM aspirants.
- Further to this, a significant proportion of the existing GMs did not meet the expectations of the organisation for the future development of the business.
- A typical GM had a predominantly operational outlook whilst what was needed were these operational skills balanced by additional, more commercial qualities. A key need to be addressed by the project was therefore the development of a new profile for the role of General Manager that included the new qualities required by the business. These qualities include a more strategic and commercial focus combined with effective management skills.
As a result of participating in the development process all aspiring candidates for the role had to be able to understand the requirements of the GM role in the future and plan their development accordingly.
The development process would also need to communicate the nature of the GM role and the expectations that would be placed on future incumbents.
The development process needed to be suitable for the purposes of succession planning by the organisation.
Criterion Partnership made these recommendations:
- To develop a new profile for the role of general manager that was aligned with the future business direction of the organisation.
- To design a pre-development centre process (‘self-development journey’) for all individuals aspiring to the role of GM.
- To design a development centre for individuals who have successfully completed the self-development journey, which feeds into self-development planning and succession planning.
We recommended that the development process will enable the client to understand the number of suitable candidates for GM appointments and their degree of readiness for the role. We therefore recommended that the design of the development centre should be a development/selection hybrid that would produce development plans for the participants and succession planning information for the organisation.