J.W. Marriott on Leading

Listened to Shane Parrish on the Knowledge Project podcast, as he spoke about J.W. Marriott, the founder responsible for the Marriott international hotel brands. It's a member-only episode, so you'll have to join to get access. I really like this series, so I feel it's worth the money. Check it out at https://fs.blog/

Something that stuck out to me were Bill's business and leadership principles. 3 concepts and 15 rules that he outlined for his son.

“I just had three general ideas in my mind, all equally important. One was to render friendly service to our guests. The second was to provide quality food at a fair price. The third was to work as hard as I could day and night to make a profit. When we added more Hot Shoppes, it just wasn’t to get bigger.

It was to build up a pool of capable, dependable employees who knew our ways of doing business and like to work for us. Then when we added the in-flight service and the hotels and the specialty restaurants. It was a natural and logical extension of what we were already doing and knew how to do.”

And then Bill wrote down 15 guideposts distilled from four decades of building a business.

1. Keep physically fit, mentally and spiritually strong.
2. Guard your habits. Bad ones will destroy you.
3. Pray about every difficult problem.
4. Study and follow professional management principles.
5. People are number one. Their development, loyalty, interest, team, spirit. Develop managers in every area. This is your prime responsibility.
6. Make crystal clear what decisions each manager is responsible for. Have all the facts, then decide and stick to it.
7. Don’t criticize people, but make a fair appraisal of their qualifications with their supervisor only. Anything you say about somebody usually gets back to them.
8. See the good in people and then try to develop those qualities.
9. If inefficiency cannot be overcome, find a job the employee can do or terminate now. Don’t wait
10. Manage your time. Short conversations to the point. Make every minute count.
11. Delegate and hold accountable for results.
12. Let your staff take care of details. Save your energy for planning, thinking, promoting new ideas. Don’t do anything someone else can do for you.
13. Ideas keep the business alive. Know what your competitors are doing. Spend time and money on research and development.
14. Don’t try to do an employee’s job for him, counsel, and suggest.
15. Think objectively and keep a sense of humor. Make the business fun for you and others.

I feel this advice is solid and can still be applied today to leadership in general. Thanks for sharing Shane! You can also read a little more about J.W. "Bill" Marriott at https://www.marriott.com/culture-and-values/j-willard-marriott.mi