Confusing Capability with Potential comes from a lack of strategic training.
Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of working with a wide range of operators which have included those that have employed me, but also those that I’ve worked with as a business coach, mentor or board advisor.
One dynamic that ties all of these operators together is the existential threat of ideological potential outstripping capability which in turn involves the subconscious trap of businesses planning without deeply thought through capability analysis. They press the GO button based on their confidence in potential. It happens all the time. Not just in hotels. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But as business leaders, don’t we need greater reassurances?
A real world example involved a really successful hotel deciding to open a wine bar in the same town (not the same property), and assuming that if they have the proven capability to sell wine in a hotel then the potential existed to sell wine in a wine bar. If anyone with experience is reading this, you might already see where the problem sits. In this example the role of wine in the hotel (which is part of a wider experience), required less knowledge to sell than what a customer would expect in a wine bar. And in this scenario they didn’t realise that they didn’t have a knowledge capable team to successfully make the transition. Faced with this emerging issue they reached out to suppliers to drive specialist wine evenings not fully aware that this didn’t fully include the staff, so the problem wasn’t resolutely resolved. Only when sales were poor and the energy of the launch had dissipated did the management decide to put their staff through some serious wine training including visits to vineyards and distilleries. At this point the business had suffered a knock in reputation, failed to drive repeat business and ultimately failed.
This is a really good example of how in hospitality we can sometimes assume that the potential growth and diversity of our team is as good as the capability they have previously delivered in a different role, or departmental dynamic. These two concepts are quite different and yet we see it every day in hotels. Senior leaders generally hope that potential rises to meet the demands required of capability but without establishing the capability first, any business venture or idea launched attracts increased risks.
So the moral of the story is that potential should not be rewarded or depended on until the capability has been proven. On occasion, to keep staff, how often have we moved a team member into a new role based on potential rather than capability? How often does that work out? Sometimes yes, but not every time. How often does an intuitive next-step idea fail to take off because your team weren’t fully prepared and subsequently didn’t buy into the route mapped out by potential.
