PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER
Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Pres­tige Hold­ings Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Si­mon Hardy is urg­ing grad­uands of the Grow To Lead De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme to guard against a mind­set which pits its com­pa­ny's de­part­ments against each oth­er.

The pro­gramme was con­duct­ed by Pres­tige in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.

""It forced you to look in the mir­ror and re­al­ize that your biggest bot­tle­neck wasn't sup­ply chain de­lays. Sor­ry, Jim, it was your own mind­set," said Hardy at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the pro­gramme on Thurs­day.

He con­tin­ued, "Let's be hon­est. Be­fore this pro­gram, your de­part­ments could be like si­los. Fo­cus on­ly on your own per­spec­tive. Front of house blam­ing back of house, mar­ket­ing blam­ing op­er­a­tions, pur­chas­ing al­ways blam­ing some­one. Grow to lead smashed those si­los to pieces so that you can de­liv­er hap­pi­ness seam­less­ly. It's about one uni­fied pur­pose. You're not com­pet­ing brands or de­part­ments. You're part of one sin­gle restau­rant group, the largest in the Caribbean."

He said hav­ing such a nar­row mind­set in a large com­pa­ny could be detri­men­tal.

"By the way, si­los breed stag­na­tion, your cross func­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion is the se­cret sauce to the qual­i­ty and speed of our in­no­va­tion past the salt when you help an­oth­er brand or de­part­ment win the en­tire com­pa­ny feasts," said Hardy.

"Cel­e­brate the fric­tion. Cre­ative con­flict brings the flavour. Po­lite si­lence leaves your strat­e­gy bland, de­code the guest and the crew you op­er­ate in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, yet lead­ers some­times for­get that lead­er­ship is the ul­ti­mate form of hos­pi­tal­i­ty," he said.

Hardy said the course shift­ed the fo­cus from a "one sided, task-ori­ent­ed be­hav­ior" to a more holis­tic, mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach.

This he said would al­low the com­pa­ny's ex­ec­u­tives to bet­ter serve the pub­lic due to a greater lev­el of un­der­stand­ing.

"Ul­ti­mate­ly, it's about serv­ing your peo­ple. First, if you de­liv­er hap­pi­ness to your team, they will serve hap­pi­ness to our guests. Lis­ten past the noise, stop think­ing about your next counter ar­gu­ment, and hear the re­al hu­man is­sue be­hind what­ev­er prob­lem you face. So it's about cre­at­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty a com­pa­ny where mis­takes are hid­den is a com­pa­ny that fails," Hardy said.

CEO of the ALJGSB, Mar­i­ano Browne echoed the need to build trust among com­pa­ny lead­er­ship.

"Take time. (There are) all dif­fer­ent sorts of bar­ri­ers that you have to cross in terms of get­ting to the point where you achieve trust, and not on­ly trust knowl­edge in terms of what the per­son will do, how they will do it, and what they will fol­low through with," said Browne in his ad­dress at the event.