keep going and lose a few more pounds. In part that’s because little victo- ries inspire greater confi- dence; in part it’s because outsiders begin to notice and offer positive feed- back, which creates even more commitment to keep going.When it comes to change, big vic- tories are the results of lots of little wins. That’s a point Harvard
Business School change guru John Kotter has made for years, including in the “Change or Die” essay. “It’s always impor- tant to identify, achieve, and celebrate some quick, positive results for the vital emotional lifts that they provide,” the article notes. Kotter “believes in the impor- tance of ‘short-term wins,’ meaning ‘victories that nourish faith in the change effort, emotionally reward the hard workers, keep the critics at bay, and build momentum. Without sufficient wins that are visible, timely, unambiguous, and mean- ingful to others, change efforts invariably run into serious problems.’” Here’s hoping your
change efforts—per- sonal or professional— don’t run into serious problems.
Bill Taylor is co-founder and founding editor of Fast Com- pany magazine, and author of PracticallyRadical: Not-So- CrazyWays to TransformYour Company, Shake UpYour Industry, and ChallengeYour- self. This article is excerpted from Taylor’s Harvard Busi- ness Review blog, at http:// blogs.hbr.org/taylor/2010 /09/how_i_downsized _myself.html.
When Eric Danziger stepped into his new role as president and CEO ofWyndham Hotel Group in
late 2008, he quickly realized, according to Marti Winer, vice president of event services for Wynd- hamWorldwide, “that we’d been treating all of our brands as individual entities. They had their individ- ual conventions with their own franchises, but what we were missing was a big communication message that we wanted to make sure reached all of our franchises—which was, not only are you
one, we needed to show the strength of Wyndham Hotel Group to all of our franchises; and number two, we needed to preserve the autonomy of each one of their brands.” To present Wyndham as one company, Winer
worked with Freeman on the concept of a Global Village, located at the center of the trade-show floor. “It was over 110 feet long and sort of looked like a football field,” she said, “but it demonstrated in our booth space what our hotel group looks like —a microcosm of what you get when you call our
part of a strong brand, such as Days Inn, or Super 8, or any one of our 13 brands, but you are also a part of Wyndham Hotel Group.We had not effec- tively been communicating the Wyndham Hotel Group value proposition to our franchises.” One of the first decisions was to hold a single
overarching conference, at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. “For the first time,” Winer said,“we were bringing all of our hotel brands under one roof at the same time.”And “being part of the conversation” from the genesis of this new event helped Winer follow through on Wyndham’s objectives. She said: “No matter how we designed this event, two things needed to happen. Number
office. It had all of our departments there, staffed by subject-matter experts. Built into that global vil- lage was a theater that sat 50 people and had top- ics predominantly covered by subject-matter experts of interest [to specific franchisees].” In addition, a technology lab on the trade-show floor provided hands-on help with software and tools to help franchises run their business. Wyndham’s inaugural Global Conference was
such a success, Winer said, that plans are in the works to stage it every 18 months. —Michelle Russell