In her speech, Marilyn Carlson Nelson says that the hospitality industry helps to make the world a smaller place through facilitating what she refers to as “positive globalization.” Indeed, globalization is a process where parts of the world and cultures that initially were far away from each other are brought together in an interaction that encourages them to collaborate instead of clashing. Through such cooperation, new collective identities are developed, the strict borders and misunderstandings between the nations become erased as their representatives grow closer to each other. This is what “positive globalization” means to me.
Making traveling and tourism easier, the businesses of the hospitality industry provide a larger range of opportunities for people all around the world to move around, learn about the world, expand their list of places where they feel comfortable and safe. This alters the perception of the world as a huge, strange, and hostile place and replaces it with the idea of global friendliness, accessibility, and security.
In my opinion, the outlook of a fresh college graduate is rather close to the one described by Marilyn, because a graduate perceives the world as a place with a lot of opportunities and open doors. A fresh college graduate feels free, inspired, and empowered to pursue various chances, and so does Marilyn when she speaks about using power for good.
The descriptions of her journeys and dialogues confirm that the Carlson Industries has embraced the three facets of sustainability and has been trying to preserve the global economic welfare, make a positive impact on the environment, and work on the side of social justice preserving the right values and addressing the current problems of the world.
Marilyn quotes the words of wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte, who addressed his troops, offering each of them to obtain a new perspective and imagine themselves as the potential generals, so when the opportunity strikes, they are prepared to take over the leading roles and become the decision-makers. In my understanding, the wisdom of Napoleon emphasizes that there are no unimportant employees. On the contrary, each of them is to be a leader within their own field and be prepared to think outside the box and become an active leader in cases when there is no one else to take care of certain duties.
The specific stories considering the decision making of individual managers of the Carlson Industries shared by Marilyn illustrate that the workers of this company follow the guidelines described in Napoleon’s wisdom. In times of emergencies and disasters, individual managers took over the responsibilities and started to act as leaders providing help and shelter for thousands of other people. Most importantly, they did all that based on their own belief, their own initiative, empowered by their values.
Becoming a part of the solution instead of a part of a problem is rather hard at times because this requires certain emotional and psychological confidence, strength, and endurance. Taking over the role of a doer instead of the role of a watcher needs courage, and is a part of mentality which can be cultivated and exercised. In the world of business, such mentality can be taught within the organizational culture in order to raise leadership qualities in every single employee and build a staff consisting of proactive thinkers.
Marilyn Carlson Nelson mentions that Carlson Industries was founded in 1938 by her father who had a goal to build a company that would last. This way, the Carlson Industries is a privately held business. The difference between privately and publically held businesses is in the integrity behind their management. The main purpose of the managers of publically held businesses is to be financially successful and earn a lot of money quickly, whereas the goal of privately held businesses is to survive and be passed through generations. Such businesses are built thoroughly with the inclusion of managers who trust and know each other very well, the share owners are family.
Marilyn explains that after she became the CEO of the Carlson Industries she decided to introduce changes to the way the business operated. For example, she stopped the internally encouraged competition between the businesses of the company. She brought them together in collaboration and facilitated sharing of resources and opportunities for the common goals and for the competition with the peers outside of the Carlson Industries. Besides, Marilyn focused on the improvement of human capital of her business creating the working conditions attractive for the high-performing employees to maximize the quality of the working process and this way increase the revenues.
In my opinion, these changes had a positive impact on the structure of the Carlson Industries. Viewing the human capital as a very valuable resource is a modern perspective, attracting better professionals the businesses become more flexible and sophisticated and can compete and innovate on higher level. Another strong improvement increasing the integrity of the business was re-building the structure and removing the internal competition. The compensation system of the organization was changed.
Marilyn explains that the leadership model employed by the Carlson Industries is composed of several blocks which are the opposing components of the structure. They are put on the opposite ends of the schematic circle. Self-management and integrity are in the middle of the circle. Performance orientation and stewardship and one the left and right sides of the circle. Relationships and process discipline are at the top and bottom of the circle. This model is based on the balance between these elements. Representing very different spheres of influence they create equilibrium in the management.
This circle brings the Carlson Industries towards sustainability because it introduces the strong corporate and human values to the organizational culture emphasizing structure, trust and reliability, leadership and professional confidence, the use of power for good and also orientation at strong business performance. In my opinion, the company that is composed of interdependent and integratable services is a very strong competitor. It provides a range of services that can be used by the same customer. This way, if all of these services are of good quality one regular customer is capable of bringing quite a lot of income.
Besides, providing a full-coverage of services for a client the company has better chances to create high customer loyalty. In this care, the profit gained from the interaction with one customer can be calculated from the point of view of the lifetime customer value with better precision. Besides, gaining more regular customers the company does not only secure their future financial success but also creates strong reputation as a competitor.