CHIP CONLEY Joie De Vivre Hotels

Chip Conley• Founder, executive chairman &

chief creating officer of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which is a chain of hotel/boutiques on the west coast US.

• He founded it in 1987 at the age of 26.

• He is a well-known businessman that graduated from Stanford University with a BA and MBA.

• He has written multiple books such as “Peak: how great companies get their mojo from Maslow.

• Chip Conley founded his company Joie De Vivre (joy of living) in a mission of creating a company based on ethics and goals.

Background

• He went to Stanford University and graduated at 23

• At the age of 26, he formed the company Joie de Vivre, currently the United States second largest and California’s largest independent boutique hotel collection.

• Conley wanted to create a company based on the joy of life, hence the company name

• His leadership practices have been featured in several popular media outlets including TIME, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal.

• In addition to owning a highly successful company, he gives back to those in need by setting up events where he and his employees volunteer for causes such as AIDS, and he even gives a percentage of hotel stay revenues to certain organizations and foundations in need around areas where his hotels are located

About Joie De Vivre hotel -According to him, he wanted his customers to experience a sort of “identity refreshment” in their home away from home -He designed each individual hotel with a special theme, and that is partly what attracts so many stakeholders apart from his innovative management style.-His hotels cater to all segments of the market, from people who want an affordable, leisure vacation, to high-end business travelers.

Facing economic and political issues

• In 2001, in the midst of the dot.com bust and 9/11 attacks in New York City, the hospitality industry underwent a major loss in business

• Americans were boycotting anything that sounded French because of the Iraq war at the time the French pulled their troops, which made Americans feel like they were abandoned.

• People in America started calling fries freedom fries and basically started boycotting all things French

• The name of his hotel was joie de vivre and it was a huge hit on his company.

• Went to self help and stumbled upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

MASLOW and CONLEY• From this book he found a new confidence in himself that he could re-

model his company to follow Maslow’s pyramid. • He credits this find as the reason why, even in the middle of an

economic crisis, his company’s annual revenues began to increase significantly

• Between the years of 2001 and 2008, Joie de Vivre tripled it’s annual revenues during the dot.com bust and french boycots

“Being proficient in both psychology and business is the smartest means of being successful as a 21st century leader”

• “I believe that meaning at work is far more important than meaning in work. When employees believe in the work of the company, the whole Hierarchy of Needs is satisfied. “

• -Chip Conley (Getting More Mojo from Maslow)

• One of the most profound decisions I made during the depth of that last downturn was to start managing the business based on meaning and to start measuring meaning in various ways, from asking questions on biannual work-climate surveys to querying line workers in monthly staff meetings, “What’s the best experience you’ve had in the past month here at work?”

• -Chip Conley (Getting More Mojo from Maslow)

Conley’s hierarchy of needs• • Survival (psychological and safety)• • Success (social and self-esteem), and• • Transformation (self-actualization).

• By having more employees who feel that they have reached the self- actualizing stage, he believes the employees, customers, and investors will have a better feeling of self-actualization, and in turn the company’s objectives will be reached in a more effective and efficient manner.

INTANGIBLES • He also began to talk to other companies and their leaders and

asking them what they focus on (pertaining to Maslow’s pyramid). He found that many of the companies were focusing on the lower levels of the pyramid, as opposed to the self-actualization portion, the intangible .

• Even though more than 90% of the leaders said they believe intangibles are important, less than 7% of them had a process to measure it (Partridge).

• This finding was inspiring to Conley because he realized that he needed to focus more on the people to create this said “Joie de Vivre” image; specifically employees, customers, and investors.

Maslow model & Mission / Vision• Using Maslow’s model, he began setting new company

objectives and plans in order to become a better company as a whole. Even though he is concerned with Joie de Vivre’s success, he cares more about the people involved in making the success possible.

• He began by planning ways to improve relationships with everyone his company was involved with, including the three stakeholders he believes to be the most important in a company: customers, employees, and investors

Vision of Joie De Vivre by Conley

• His vision for Joie de Vivre is to become the largest operator and creator of boutique hotels in the United States.

• “We distilled our credo into a two-word mantra, “Create Joy,” which is stamped into the blue rubber bracelets that all new employees receive during orientation and that many veteran staffers routinely wear.”

• Beginning as an entrepreneur with little experience, he was still confident that his long-term vision would one day become true, and it is not far off now being that Joie de Vivre is currently the second largest boutique hotel collection in the

Mission

• His mission is “Creating Opportunities to Celebrate the Joy of Life”. • This corresponds with his belief that his employees

and customers should truly feel happy. • He is more concerned with the people rather than

making a profit, and with this mission, it shows his employees that he is a compassionate manager.

Implementing & effects• He began to ask all of his employees if they knew the mission of Joie de

Vivre, which is “Creating Opportunities to Celebrate the Joy of Life”• Conley came to realize that many of his employees did not know the

mission or what they wanted out of their work experience, so he began to implement changes so that everyone was on the same page

• He began conducting annual questionnaires between each hotel manager and their employees, as well as a questionnaire for recent or recurring guests, about what they wanted out of Joie de Vivre

• After several times doing this, he found not only did the employees, including managers, begin to give him better responses about why they were working for his company or what they wanted to see happen within it, but he started getting more recurring customers

GOALS Even though Joie de Vivre’s singular goal is to “create landmark destinations full of soul and personality” (Joie de Vivre), Conley set several other goals in order to live up to the meaning of Joie de Vivre.

• Manage his employees to have a true sense of happiness and self-fulfillment in the workplace so not only would this happiness produce good quality work, but they would reach the top level of Maslow’s pyramid even if they weren’t managers;

• Create a company that is not only known for their one of a kind hotels, but a company that is dedicated to it’s community and environment.

Employees • The employees of Joie de Vivre have actual relationships with customers aside

from catering to their needs. One of the ongoing goals of Conley is to increase the relationship between his employees and customers.

• He wants his employees to feel that they are making a difference in people’s lives, even if it is as small as giving them a clean and comfortable place to sleep.

• Conley, mostly involved with the planning and leading aspects of management, does add some influence to the organizing aspect of Joie de Vivre.

• To begin, he helps in organizing the employee roles. Since his company has three chains to it-

• • Hotels• • Spas• • Restaurants-

• Conley has to come up with different things he’d like each of the different employee roles to entail. He wants the hotel staff to be more than just a maid service, but to be “host families” instead.

• Helps to build actual relationships between employees and customers

Decision process• Conley is a manager who is all about taking the opinions and

suggestions of his employees and actually using them in practice.

• He values the input of his employees because they are the people who are on the job each day, so at times they may have better suggestions than he for a certain situation.

Theme of hotel and Chips role• Takes the time to pick great locations for each one, he helps

pick out the theme, and he sets the vision for how he wants customers to feel when they come to each specific venue.

• To him, organizing the facilities is a lot of fun and a challenge because he is always striving to be more innovative each time he opens up a new facility.

Leading• He encourages people to complete their tasks in such different

ways that makes them feel like they are not just working, but making a difference.

• Encourages people of all different backgrounds, whether it is cultural, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation, to compete with others to obtain better opportunities, such as being promoted to a manager position

• Makes his company a place of diversity where his employees do not have to feel like they are being cheated out of opportunities, and this motivates his employees even more because they feel respected and are able to look up to him for that.

Recruitment & Joie de Vivre heart

• Conley developed a “Joie de Vivre Heart” that each new employee is introduced to. The heart has four values of the company that he wants all employees to know, which are:

• • Creating a unique corporate culture• • Building an enthusiastic staff• • Developing strong customer loyalty• • Maintaining a profitable and sustainable business

• He introduces this heart to his new employees before they start training so that they get a sense of what he wants all employees to be apart of, no matter which job they are being hired for.

ETHICS• Conley was a man very inspired by ethics, which is also one of

the reasons he named his company Joie de Vivre. He always made sure that his employees and customers had full satisfaction and that no one was ever bothered by something.

• He even did studies on the Gross National Happiness index and wrote an equation for it. He has put his ideals of life into his company, which led to a greater success rate.

• Joie de Vivre has implemented Conley’s ethical beliefs into their company moto and vision, they simply do not want to sell sleep but want to create dreams.

Ethical work Chip has initiated • Joie de Vivre this year alone has donated over 1.3 million

dollars to local organizations where they are established.• They have partnered with the Surfrider foundation for over

five years to help clean beaches on the Californian coast where their hotels are located.

• Wherever Joie de Vivre has a hotel they think it is very important to get involved with the community. It is so important that it is one of the main criteria’s the general managers are evaluated on.

• They take 75 homeless people and provide them with a really good day .

• Also during the holidays they partner up with Glide kitchen to help provide 2000 meals each day, their employees work the breakfast shift.

• Joie de Vivre has been blessed with the ability to give back to the community and through Conley’s beliefs of ethics they do everything that they can do give to those who are just starting or those who need help.

Success

• Conley is nothing short of an inspirational man, he has changed the course of the business world by his thoughts of what people need and how to treat them and not to mention his business is well-known because of the time and effort he put into making it something spectacular.

• Joie de Vivre is famous because of Chip, because of his thoughts on how employee satisfaction is a main drive in how a Company should be run. He makes life seem simple and easy in a world where it is not, and you have to give him credit for that.

Reference• http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/and-now-the-good

-news/getting-more-mojo-from-maslow.html

• Getting More Mojo from Maslow• In order to survive the struggles of the economic recession,

we need to reframe difficult business experiences as opportunities to find meaning in our work.

• By Chip Conley

VIDEO• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UROCz70tlMY