Some companies, especially smaller companies, use the direct format to present the statement of cash flows. Most large corporations use the indirect format. Exhibit 1 provides an example of the cash flow statement for Moms Cookie Company using the direct format. (more…)
In the current environment even affluent travelers who once visited more exotic destinations are staying closer to home, which is supportive of the U.S. economy. I think that trend will continue for awhile. Another trend I see is that quality of service is falling at many properties. Whether a property is economy, mid-scale, or upscale, all service businesses should provide 100 percent customer satisfaction. Far too many forget that mission or deviate from it because of financial pressures or other concerns. I would like to see the industry increase its focus on improving employee satisfaction and quality of life along with the objective of also providing a higher level of service to our customers.
Pricing pressure is another trend that is putting a tremendous strain on the industry. This stems from the September 11th tragedy and the concerns regarding travel. Many hotel properties overreacted and set themselves back a few years with deep discounting. There definitely will be some fallout from that in terms of properties ceasing operation or being forced to sell the business. We also see the downside of this in terms of a lower quality of service. It is a lose/lose proposition properties are not only losing money, but they are also not able to offer the service customers expect. To regain that equilibrium it is a challenge and a threat to a lot of properties, but the industry will come back. In the last ten years, we’ve seen the industry come out of the 1991 recession; properties were able to get their finances in order, and with the help of an economic boom, the industry significantly rebounded. What was built during that period set a whole new foundation. I expect we’ll see this happen again in the coming years.
From a Certified Public Accountant to a world-class hotelier, Paul N. Leone has his eye on more than the bottom line. Leone has restored a strong sense of pride and teamwork in the 1,800 staff members at The Breakers since he was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer in October 1994, leading to dramatic improvements in service, profitability and industry ratings at the 560- room, historic Italian Renaissance property. The Breakers is located in the heart of Palm Beach and resides on 140 acres of oceanfront property.
The sentiment that The Breakers staff and customers are its greatest assets is at the very core of Leones values. He is considered to be an excellent communicator, approachable leader, extremely disciplined and dedicated to the highest standards of conduct and performance. A strong advocate of total quality management, and consistently delivering a superior, ever-improving product to his customers, Leone believes in hiring energetic, service oriented, talented people, and nourishing them with responsibility and his gratitude. Born and raised in New York, Leone was exposed to the hospitality industry at an early age having been raised in a family that owned and operated five local motels and two restaurants. But his ability to work well with numbers prevailed and he studied accounting at college to follow in his uncles footsteps and become a Certified Public Accountant.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Leone joined Coopers & Lybrand in Louisville, Kentucky. He later relocated to Coopers & Lybrand in West Palm Beach where he worked with various hospitality accounts, including The Breakers.
Leone joined The Breakers in 1984 as a Controller and was later promoted to Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In 1992, he was promoted to President of Flagler System Management and two years later became President and Chief Operating Officer of The Breakers.
He is involved in the following civic and charitable organizations: Member Florida Council of 100; Chairman Academy of the Palm Beaches; Director Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce; Director Palm Beach County Economic Council; Member of American Institute of Certified Public Accountants; Member of Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants; Member of American Hotel & Motel Association; Member of Florida Hotel & Motel Association
Our ability to continue improving our service comes from building relationships with our guests. Although we have done focus groups from time to time to tap into consumer trending, we believe that we should not have to embark on a massive research project to determine what our guests expect. We know what they want because we ask and we listen and we have a relationship with them. It has been rare that a surprise has emerged out of a focus group.
One of the key trends we have seen in recent years at upscale properties has been the move from formal to more casual. It used to be that a high- end resort was very formal. Today, our customers are probably more affluent than ever, but they are generally seeking a more relaxed experience and do not want to be held to dress codes and lists of rules and regulations. Offering higher quality but maintaining that casual feel is a difficult balance to strike, but that is what our customers expect and we have responded accordingly.
Another evolving trend in the post September 11th era has been the increase in family travel. There has been an overall surge in family travel recently, but it has been even more striking at the high-end resorts, where historically one did not consider bringing the children. Now children are traveling with their parents more than ever. Visiting a resort like ours for a family vacation is certainly appropriate. There is also multigenerational travel with grandparents, parents, and children all vacationing together. We need to be equipped to serve all markets.
In this time, the issue of climate has been spread around as there have been so many people who are involving their selves on the efforts of making earth becomes friendly again. The global warming issue has also increased the attention given by people against it and this is surely a big thing to be considered and thus it also gives impact to the process of application people usually do on their mortgage. (more…)
Leaving California meant tearing up everything, both professionally and personally. It was shattering for those involved with me, particularly my very staid British parents. Youre doing what? Youre giving up your job? Youre breaking off your engagement? Theres another woman? But I had finally crossed a bridge in my own mind, from the insecure overachiever mindset into an I will decide what I do with my life attitude.
It wasnt always easy, but it was an incredibly liberating year. I stayed on the MCG outplacement list for the whole of that year. I took up the offer of career counseling. It wasnt hugely useful. They made me do two or three standard psychological tests like the Myers-Briggs. There was the OK, you need to start thinking about what it is that you are looking for in your life approach and the Are there jobs that you think you would actually enjoy being in, and do any of those make sense in the context of where you are today? tack. Then it was, By the way, if youre going to go off to do something weird, we probably cant help you very much. Based on that process, I divided my search into conformist and nonconformist lines of investigation.
I felt that whatever happened, I was going to find something I enjoyed and got excited about even if it was badly paid. Maybe I got the idea from What Color Is Your Parachute?[1] I made a list of people I admired and things I liked doing.
It was a short list. There were two or three names on the Choose someone you really want to work with list: Richard Branson of Virgin, Charles Schwab, and, I think, the CEO of British Airways. Schwab was just launching the online brokerage, and that was exciting. British Airways was there because Ive always had a great passion for the airline industry. Branson had always been a role model for me, almost a folk hero. So that represented combining the traditional path with an untraditional company.
The nonconformist path was to turn a passion into a living or to turn a personal interest into a small business. My passions were scuba diving and wine. Diana, who had by this time become my fiance, shares my interest in wine. We looked at whether we could create a high-end wine tour businessthe kind of thing in which we would arrange dinners with the owners of the chateaux. Wed be the tour leaders and live in a nice little house in rural France for a fraction of the price of anything in London, earning enough money to be cheerful and happy doing something we enjoy. We have friends whove done that. Diana and I went as far as drawing up a business plan for joining them.
But I felt that if I was going to go the alternative routewhich meant a financial sacrificeI was going to make sure I explored things I had always wanted to do. One was getting my scuba-diving-instructor qualifications. So I took two months off to go to Fort Lauderdale to diving-instructor school. I was surrounded by eighteen-year-olds, because thats the age when people typically become diving instructors. I was thirty-five at the time. I spent eight weeks going from just being an enthusiastic recreational diver to a certified instructor. I got as far as gathering sales particulars for two scuba diving operationsone in the Caribbean, the other in Hawaiiand trying to figure out if and how I could make them work.
I was starting to wonder if the diving business would lose its appeal after a couple of years, once I saw up close some of the mundane realities of owning a business like that. As my wife-to-be pointed out, I didnt want to spend the rest of my life scraping barnacles off boats. Looking back now, I think I might have done that for two years and then walked away, because it is a repetitive existence. I wouldnt have made any money. I would have discovered all the hardships and the boredom that creeps into life on a Caribbean island. I went to that edge and looked over and then came back again.
So when Diana said, If you really want to do this, Ill come with you. But understand that moving to the Caribbean is not what I want to do. Cant you at least just look at a couple of other things that are a bit more normal? I decided to take one more crack at what I would call a traditional career move.
When I got back, I spoke to some headhunters. I interviewed with GE Capital in London again, which confirmed that I would never like working there. I talked to two or three other companies. I looked at jobs in strategy, finance, anything with commercial responsibility. I called up the chief executive of Majestic Wine Warehouses off the cuff, because I liked their business model. That put me back into the nonconformist job search. I started calling a half-dozen people who I thought had neat businesses. My line was, Im really enthusiastic about what youre doing and would love to explore working with you. I was generally told that they would love to have me but couldnt afford me or that there wasnt a slot for someone with my skills at the moment. I called everyone I knew, figuring I could at least do some freelance work. I was having sporadic contact with Virgin, but nothing happened. I only had offers for traditional jobs, all of them standard career extensions for people coming out of consulting. I was about to go do a three-week project for Schwab in Birmingham, England, when out of the blue, the phone rang.
It was Virgin. I didnt know the guy personally, but he was part of the MCG network. I had called him a couple of times just to say that I was freelancing and he should call if anything came up. Literally, I had three days notice. It was a project to explore establishing a credit card business. So I found myself catapulted into the new business group at Virgin. It was incredibly dynamic and chaotic, but for the first time in my life, I found myself enjoying getting up in the morning and going to work. And so I spent the next twenty months here, technically as a freelancer, before I was offered a job managing capital portfolios.
The group Im part of decides what businesses to start, grow, or exit. It turned out that the tool set I had from investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and strategy consulting was the ideal combination for this role. Would I have ended up just as happy in any other setting where I could combine my skills? I dont think so. What is different here is that I am working for a person whom Ive always admired, whos an extraordinary leader and entrepreneur, and from whom I know I will learn a lot. At the same time, I have ownership of my recommendations and their results.
[1]Richard Nelson Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, 31st ed. (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2000).
Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
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Everything hit Gary McCarthy all at once. After years of putting off the search for a more rewarding career, at age thirty-five the English business consultant got what he felt was a negative performance evaluation. His boss concludedunfairly, thought Garythat he had not pulled his weight on a key project. That was the last straw. It was one thing for Gary to decide to quit consulting; it was quite another for his company to tell him he was not up to par. That same week, Gary met Diana, the woman who would become his wife. The problem: He was already engaged to someone else.
It was a snapping point, says Gary, remembering that time in his life.
The bad study and meeting Diana happened in close proximity and prompted a major rethink. I finally bucked up the courage to see MetaConsulting Group (MCG) for what it wasa job.
If I look back over my career, I have always responded to social pressure, what others thought was the right thing for me to do. After college, I worked at a prominent investment bank. I was working with someone I admired, but I found the work boring and repetitive. At the end of five years, I realized that running valuation models was not fundamentally what I wanted to be doing. The work is very, very cookie-cutter. Id never seen how a company works. All I did was process numbers.
I wanted to do something different but was shocked to realize that people were already pigeonholing me. I tried to brainstorm with friends and family about what other things I might do. All the ideas that came back were a version of Well, you could get a middle management job in a finance department of a company. Or, You could become a trainee in a management program. That prompted me to go to business school in the U.S., which typically means I dont like what I have been doing and I dont know what to do next, so Ill go to school for a couple of years and come up with a strategy.
I absolutely loved being in the States. I had always dreamed of living on the West Coast. But I ended up doing the Gary copout again, just as I did out of college. MCG offered me a green card and a perch in San Francisco for a couple of years while I figured out what I really wanted to do. So I headed out there for a new beginning.
I did not enjoy consulting at MCG for the same reasons I had not liked banking. I liked the problem solving but found the work repetitive, the tools constraining. Intellectually, I enjoyed analyzing companies, but I hated the treadmill. And you are always the paid adviser. I longed to manage the problem, not the client. I wanted ownership of the solution.
After two years, I took a three-month sabbatical. I was tired. I needed a break, having burned myself out on a couple of big projects. But I knew it was a signal that I was starting to go into an exploration phase again. I was still in the I dont know what I want to do with my life mode. I started looking at what I would call traditional transitions out of MCG. One idea was to explore alternative careers within MCG, in other offices. I spoke to the people in Hong Kong, where Id spent my childhood, about helping them develop the MCG practice in Asia. At the same time, I started interviewing with companies like GE Capital, where I could combine my consulting and finance backgrounds. But it was obvious to me I didnt want to do any of those things.
The bad evaluation really knocked me out, because deep in my heart I knew that I wasnt as good at the job as I pretended to be. There was an element of truth to it. Yet it seemed unfair, in that it was delivered by a guy who had not spent any time understanding what was going on in the project. That combination of events was a catalyst: I was being told that I might fall off the ladder at MCGs instigation rather than my own instigation. I had to recognize the fact that my heart wasnt in it and that I had been going through the motions for some time.
I realized that until this time I had never said to myself, Youd better be damn sure when you wake up that youre doing what you want to be doing as opposed to what you feel you ought to be doing or what somebody else thinks you ought to be doing. Within the space of three weeks, I told MCG I was leaving. I told them I wasnt even remotely sure what I was going to do next, but I was going to take some time to think about it. I broke off my engagement and left California. I up and went home to the U.K.
Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
The typical burned-out, stressed-outor even merely disaffectedprofessional looking for change knows that he or she wants something new but doesnt (yet) know what. Those of us with a little more direction come equipped with a long list of career ideasone that is usually well padded with sensible options that really do not appeal. Even when we have more precise notions of whats next, we tend to change our minds as we learn more about what they really entail. Bottom line, no matter where we start, our ideas for change change along the way, as we change. Where we end up often surprises us. For these reasons, as much as we would like to, we simply cannot plan and program our way into our reinvention.
Making a career change means rethinking our working identity. As Gary McCarthys story illustrates, this is not a straightforward process of trading in an old, tired role for a new and improved one; nor can we always make progress along a straight and linear path. Trying very hard to go in one direction can lead us, circuitously, to another. So spending a lot of time at the start looking inside to find the truth that can guide a systematic search can be counterproductive (it may even be a defense against changing). Sometimes the best way to find oneself is to flirt with many possibilities.
Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
This book is about how people like Pierre and Lucy make their way to the next phases of their professional lives. It is divided into two parts that will flesh out the frameworks outlined in figures 1-1 and 1-2.
Part 1, Identity in Transition, describes the process of questioning and testing our working identities, eventually making more profound changes than we initially imagined. Chapter 2, Possible Selves, explains that although most of us would prefer to begin with a firm answer to the question, Who do I really want to become? the best way to start is by asking smaller, more testable questions, such as, Which among my various possible selves should I start to explore now? How can I do that? Chapter 3, Between Identities, describes the long, chaotic period of transition that begins when we start testing; during this time, identity remains undefined because we are not yet ready to give up our old roles, and alternative possibilities are still elusive. We are truly in-between. Chapter 4, Deep Change, shows how necessary this unpleasant time is, as our sense of identity shatters before it reconfigures.
Part 2, Identity in Practice, describes what actions throughout the transition period increase the likelihood of making a successful change. Chapter 5, Crafting Experiments, describes how we probe the future by transforming abstract possibilities into tangible projects we can evaluate. Chapter 6, Shifting Connections, shows how finding new mentors, role models, and professional groups eases our membership in new communities. And chapter 7, Making Sense, maps out how we rewrite the story of our lives.
The book concludes with chapter 8, Becoming Yourself, in which the unconventional strategies outlined in this book are summarized. It suggests ways to kick off the lifelong process of questioning and affirming the relationship between who we are and what we do. Making important career moves, and ultimately, life changes, requires us to live through long periods of uncertainty and doubt. We can learn much from the experiences of others to make these difficult passages easier to navigate.
Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
A view of human beings as defined by our internal statesour talents, goals, and preferencesis deeply ingrained in the Western world. This view is at the root of conventional approaches for making career decisions: If our true identity is inside, deep within ourselves, only introspection can lead to the right action steps and a better-fitting career.
Neither Lucys nor Pierres experience conforms to this model, nor do the other reinvention stories we examine here. Instead, like most people, Pierre and Lucy learned about themselves experientially, by doing rather than thinking. Certainly, reflecting on past experiences, future dreams, and current values or strengths is an essential and valuable step. But reflection best comes later, when we have some momentum and when there is something new to reflect on. Our old identities, even when they are out of whack with our core values and fundamental preferences, remain entrenched because they are anchored in our daily activities, strong relationships, and life stories. In the same way, identities change in practice, as we start doing new things (crafting experiments), interacting with different people (shifting connections), and reinterpreting our life stories through the lens of the emerging possibilities (making sense).
Long before they took the leap, Pierre and Lucy tried out their new roles on a limited, experimental scale. They made increasing investments of their time and energy rather than one momentous decision. Neither at the start imagined the magnitude of the changes ahead. Pierres experiments consisted of spending time at the monastery, giving seminars, and developing his own spiritual practice. He began a book linking his interests in bereavement and Buddhism. Lucy hired a personal coach, attended seminars, and later went back to school for a masters while continuing her job as a manager. Even after leaving ForumOne, she experimented with consulting jobs to eliminate those too much like her old line of work.
Pierre and Lucy also shared the good fortune of having a guiding figure to help them over the chasm, and both enjoyed the encouragement of a new professional community. But these were not career counselors, outplacers, or headhunters, nor were they family and close friends. Instead, they found support in new acquaintances and peer groups. For Pierre, meeting a Tibetan lama who was, like he, a European, turned an abstract notion to a concrete reality embodied in a mentor figure. As he spent more and more of his time at the monastery, he found an intellectual and spiritual community he wanted to be part of. Lucy also found a role model in the organizational consultant whom she engaged at Pink. The consultant helped her see she was on the wrong track and pointed her to the community of organizational development professionals she immediately recognized she wanted to be part of.
All good stories hinge on turning points, dramatic moments when the clouds part and the truth is revealed. In this regard, too, Pierre and Lucy are typical. Both experienced events that triggered a realization that they were fed up with the old and ready to embrace something new. A project that Pierre had slaved on died a political death. Lucys company was restructured and the political infighting heightened. Suddenly, both saw themselves in a future they no longer wanted.
Few working lives are untouched by organizational changes, internal management shuffles, office politics, and the stress, burnout, or disaffection that goes with the territory. But, these external triggers are rarely enough to propel a deeper change. The barrier, for both Pierre and Lucy, was a lingering hope that both old and new selves could happily coexist. On vacation, forced to make sense of the nonsense of his actions, Pierre finally realized he had to choose. Lucys husbands question, Are you happy? tipped her off to her rising malaise with her managerial role and the toll it was taking. For both, a small, symbolic moment, rather than an operatic event, jelled awareness that the time was ripe for change. Significantly, this personal turning point came late in the transition process, when both Pierre and Lucy were well along the way.
Pierres and Lucys stories are far from unique. Once we start questioning not only whether we are in the right job or organization but also what we thought we wanted in the future, the planned and methodical job search methods we have all been taught fail us. As summarized in figure 1-2, during times of identity in transitionwhen our possible selves are shifting wildlythe only way to create change is to put our possible identities into practice, working and crafting them until they are sufficiently grounded in experience to guide more decisive steps.
Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
