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Product Therapy
Coaching Transformation: How a Hospitality Company Adopted the Product Model
00:43:21
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- [00:00]
A
I'm about to tell a real story of a real company doing a transformation. And this is not a tech company. This is not an American company. This is a company based in Mexico, a hospitality company. Over 18 properties, over 6,000 beds, 15,000 employees. They didn't do it. An army of consultants. They didn't do it. A product leader that was born into the product model. You know, it's change in culture, change in mindset. There are dynamics of trust, there's politics. And this is a real hospitality company acting like a tech company. I am super excited today to be joined by Anwar Shapur. He's the chief product and Technology officer at the Palace Hotels. And Gabby Borfram, who is a products and product leadership coach. I want to start this conversation where everybody tends to want to start a conversation on transformation, which is why the heck are we doing this? What's the motivation? So, Anwar, I'm going to kick off this conversation first question here. What was the motivation to change? Why did you need to transform? Why now?
- [01:04]
B
Thank you, Christian. Well, if you're asking why the heck are we doing this, why the heck would we develop software and technology in a way that doesn't deliver outcomes? Just spending every day of every, every hour of every day coming to the office and making a lot of effort for us to deliver something that doesn't have any value is just nonsense from my point of view.
- [01:25]
A
Well, Anwar, I mean, maybe describe Palace Hotels and the palace company because on one end many people feel like transforming has to be from a desperate place. Things are not working, things are broken. So now of course they want to transform. Everything is broken. But maybe describe where your company was at the beginning of this journey. What were some things that you were seeing? Either things that were going well or things that were not just to frame where you started this journey.
- [01:54]
B
The business was doing amazingly well. Actually. We started the journey two years ago and right after Covid, we had record years for the business as, as a company. But then what wasn't working was the way that we did technology or used technology for us to leverage the business. So the business was doing amazingly well, but it was not because of the technology that was being developed. So they say if something is working well, don't break it. But if we follow that mindset, we're not going anywhere more than where we currently are. So we decided to leverage on technology and that was a desire that we had had for the many previous years, around 10 years before that and we had not been successful at it. So we decided to do things Differently out of desperation, of frustration that we were not doing things that really made any sense in terms of technology, even though the business was working properly. But we know that technology can really drive much better results than what traditional efforts can.
- [03:00]
A
Oh, I love that a lot. And you know, many people ask me the question, when things are going well, you know, maybe we should just protect the business. And I often have to tell CEOs all the time, what's actually happening is you've actually earned the space to actually make the changes you want to. You know, when things are going well, it's actually time to double down because most people respond in wartime when things are chaotic and everybody defaults to what they've always done. So you're kind of framing a business. The business is doing well, but your biggest pain was how you use technology to solve problems. Tell me where you started. What was the first thing you did when you kind of made this realization? I want something different?
- [03:40]
B
Yeah, I really wanted something different for the way we did technology because after a year into the technology department, that is not my background and I had zero expertise on how to develop software, how to do good product. I had never even heard of those concepts. I realized that it was not working from any point of view. So I realized that things needed to change. And I attended Mark Egan's workshop, Transformed Workshop in New York. And in there I internalized and really believed on those concepts. So reading the books, after hearing some podcasts, after seeing how the best technology companies did all of what Marty promotes, I thought that it was impossible for a traditional non technology company to do things that way. Especially from Latin America, a family run business, even though it's a medium sized business, I really believe that it's not applicable to us. But I wanted to apply it in the best possible way. And that is the reason why I attended the workshop. But at the workshop I realized that it is totally applicable and that it had to be the way that we developed technology because if not, it really made no sense. And I was not okay with coming every day to the office and just do things that didn't. Nobody even cared about the company. Even though had 150 people in the product organization, counting development, they no data at the point, but all of the different roles that we had in technology, we still saw IT and development or product as the same thing. Like in serve of the business, there was a wall between everyone and technology or IT then. So we were basically a software factory. We were listening to requests, forming those requests into projects and decided to fund Some projects that would go down the lines of the software factory, that after defining the how the product would be or designing the prototypes, then it would become story points and the story points would become development. And then when it was done in JIRA and deployed in the infrastructure with a different team, of course then it would be done and all of the team, maybe a 50 people team, would then disperse and move around to a different project that was being funded at the time. So all of the project that had just been developed for three or four months, even though it had no real value, it stopped having any kind of maintenance after all the handoffs and handovers that they had. So it started to get old, of course, like technology does. It started to arise some problems and it was just not sustainable. When I went to New York for a transformation workshop, I approached Mari and he told me, I should introduce you to Gabi, who speaks Spanish like your team and she'll be able to go along with you introducing these concepts to everyone in the company. So the people I needed to convince the most were of course my brothers. And it was the last people I got to convince. I just recently ended up convincing them. And from time to time I feel like I've done nothing in that regard. But the fact is that the transformation needed to happen with small testings, like with the same principles as the product approach with small test, with the outcome in mind, with testing iterating, selecting the best ways or team to do so. So that transformation coming from the team and going upwards is what made it possible. Of course, along with Gabi, who had seen how the best companies work and has seen the best companies in action understand the benef, she helped me uncover all the benefits along the way. Because even though inside of Palace I was the only one who grasped the concepts and that had attended Mari's workshop, even I was not fully aware of the benefits that it would bring. So having Gabby along the way and believing in us, believing in me, really, really helped for this.
- [07:47]
A
Oh, I love this. So you're at Marty's workshop. This is where you meet Gabby. Gabby is a product coach and you say, look, I want to transform my company. So Gabby, I'm going to turn to you now. Give me a sense of your assessment, what was wrong or what was not working well with the parlors company and what needed to change after your first meeting with Anwar?
- [08:06]
C
Yeah, absolutely. I remember very vividly meeting Anouar and I remember a question that I asked him, Christian, I asked him, what? What if this doesn't work? Like what's plan B here. And he just looked me straight in the eye and he's like, there's no plan B, this is it. So I saw very quickly how committed he was to this, which I think is actually one of the keys to where we are today and how this company has evolved so much. It's the commitment, the buy in and the unwavering belief that he had from the very beginning. I would say that before even doing the assessment, he, Anwar, told me very clearly, if this is going to work, you're going to have to come here, people are going to have to see you, you're going to have to be a real person. You're not a screen on zoom, you are a person and you're going to meet everyone and they're going to need to trust you. So I'd say before assessing, the core thing for us was to develop trust both with the teams and also with the leaders, his brothers, and to together be able to explain to them. And I remember spending a couple days here in Merida with his team and with his brothers, basically answering questions and being like, any question that they asked us, we would answer. And anything that they wanted, explanations, should, we would explain. And it was so they knew that we were all on the same team and that we all wanted the best outcomes.
- [09:34]
A
Some part of the secret sauce of successful transformation, let's call it a key to transformation, is the combination of a belief that you can do it and a leader's commitment to doing it. Okay, let's get down to the details. What did you notice in the assessment? And then I want to start to know where you made changes in technology, infrastructure, where you made changes in people, and where you made changes in how you decided what to do. So, Gabby, walk me through what you uncovered in the assessment.
- [10:06]
C
Yeah. So when in the assessment, I was looking for three core areas. How they build software, how they solve problems, and how they decide which problems to solve. And I told Anwar, I was like, how you build is not the best, but it's not terrible. Like, if I was to invest, this is not the area that I would say would give us the most roi. I also told them we don't have trust at all to be telling people that we are going to change the problems that we solve. We have not earned that right yet. So the best thing for us to earn the right, because I told them as soon as we started this, our clock started ticking. So we need to deliver results. Like yesterday, the best place for us to start is to change how we solve problems. So I told them that my core recommendation was for us to start a pilot team. So I told them, give me your best product manager, your best designer, and your best engineers. Also, give me an area of the business that is customer facing enough, but that won't kind of like break the business if we do something wrong, because we want an area that we can actually play in that is big enough and visible enough, but at the same time, it's an area that we're going to have space.
- [11:20]
A
And the first recommendation was a pilot seat. And you, you anchored on how you picked the pilot team and you kind of called out some things. We don't want it to be too complex. We don't want it to, to feel too easy. So, so what did you pick? Which area of the company did you pick?
- [11:34]
C
Anwar, you can, you can tell a little bit more. And I told you, I was like, oh, like, let's find a product manager. And you're like, I don't have the person that has this title, but I have the person who I think will become our first product manager.
- [11:46]
B
That's right. And he has shown that he has all the ability to deliver in that regard. And he, after the huge overhaul of the leadership team, he's the only one person remaining. And unfortunately, we had to do an overhaul that big because even though the majority of the team has been able to adapt to the new way of thinking and collaborating, the leadership team that we had was not able to. So we had to find the right people for that. We're coming back to the pilot team. We selected the pilot team very strategically because it had to be some product that would be with the expertise of that person who had all the skills to become a product manager, but also one area that was not with so much oversight, so that the stakeholders that were used to defining how things should be, what they should build and all of that had not this very strong input so that they can work freely, go and talk to customers and go to the hotels, make experiments and understanding in much more depth than we had before what they should build as a new product team. And the funny thing is that we didn't build anything because thanks to this research, we ended up realizing that this multimillion dollar effort was going to waste. So we instead decided to improve what we currently had, and that has gone a long way and tripled the conversion that it had before.
- [13:16]
A
Wow. Okay. I want to make sure I come back to this, but I'm anchoring a couple of things here. One, are you saying you didn't Even have real product managers.
- [13:25]
B
Before we didn't really have product owners. We had these translators from the business to the IT team that only prioritized features or requests in a list that then turned into projects or story points for the agile teams to deliver something in a not agile way.
- [13:46]
A
I love that frame a lot.
- [13:48]
B
Well, if you consider agile something of three months, even though you ship things, you do pull requests every week or every day if it's not delivered to the customers until it's ready at least done in Jira all of the backlog, then it's not agile.
- [14:03]
C
Of course it looked like agile, but behind there was a big waterfall. So it was like all the agile ceremonies, all the titles, all the things, all the what we call kind of like transformation theater. Right? Like all the, the right names, the right plays, the right intention. But in reality what we were having was waterfall.
- [14:24]
A
I'm tracking on this story and thank you all for taking me along this journey. So I'm, I'm with you. We've picked a pilot team. We've picked a non person that was not a product manager. We've made him a product manager. I'm assuming they had maybe a designer with them or some other person. Now they've never worked this way before, so maybe tell me the coaching of what are we doing with a pilot team. We've now agreed let's start small, then start big. We pick a pilot, what are they doing? Where do we start?
- [14:50]
C
Yeah, we picked a pilot and I aligned with Anouar at the very beginning about this and I told them like if this is going to work, this pilot is not like let's show if this is possible. We need to have a poster child. Like we need everyone in leadership to be like wow, that is amazing. And we need everyone on the floor being like I want to be on that team. Like that is what we're aiming for and anything below that is not good enough. We knew that and we knew that that was a core piece of what we needed to do in order to deliver. I told them I'm going to coach this team every week. So I had a at least hour and a half meeting with this team every single week. And interestingly enough, our first meeting was on what it is for us to be a team, what it is for us to have each other now to rely on. Because before design was an agency model, it was more so like I'd bring something for design to take from a sketch to a thing that is in Figma and product was more like, okay, here's the list of stuff that the business told me to do. And engineers, they were like, barely there. They were just like giving off this thing to build. So we aligned on what the roads were. We aligned on what it was to get to work together. And we also aligned on who we were as people and we got to know each other. That was the first thing that we did. And I think it's so important because that is what allows us to run really fast afterwards, is establishing this trust.
- [16:21]
A
Can you walk me through some things that had to change? Behaviors, maybe rituals, I don't know what. What had to change and what kind of practice did you have to go through in order for them to learn the skills of solving a problem which is new to them, like you're saying, because they were very good at delivering projects or building shifting things that may not even work.
- [16:44]
C
Yeah, I think a core thing that we had to shift was like, what we are building in this feature doesn't mean success at all. Like, just building something and delivering it doesn't mean that we're done. We're actually done when we solve a problem that makes customers happy and that works for the business. So we needed to find that intersect. And that meant going from things to build to actually figuring out what problem we were focusing on. And then we also had been really accustomed or this team had been really accustomed to getting these feature requests that were really clear and really like, build this, build that. And now they were solving a problem. So they needed to go from this is what you do to here's your problem to solve. I taught them, customers are not going to tell you what to build. Your teams are not going to tell you what to build because they don't know. This is your job and this is what's fun about doing product. Customers know what their problems are. The business knows what their problems are. So it's on us to almost like be a detective and figure out, like, what are all these clues that the users are telling us? What are all these clues that the business is telling us and then to together come to a solution. I think that was another big shift of teams, sometimes not even being a part of the solution or being a part too late. Starting from a blank canvas and starting from a place of like, now we know these insights, we understand these users, and we are having to come up with a solution of what this is together and collaborate between product design and engineering.
- [18:26]
A
So, Anwar, as a leader, what are you looking for? How do you know that this pilot is succeeding? And how are you measuring Your success.
- [18:34]
B
We're measuring the success based on the key result that we decided to define as the outcome that we wanted for this team. So it was number of bookings made online instead of through a call center that was already jammed in a number of calls. And it wasn't going to be enough for the new hotels that we were opening. So we decided that we needed to move from the call center assisted bookings to the online bookings and we had a webpage already. So the pilot team first initially thought that we had to create an app because members, when we asked them through a survey some years ago how they would like to book, 40% said that through an app. So we had always in the back of our minds believed that 40% of guests, because they answered it through a survey, said that they wanted an app.
- [19:26]
C
We actually named it the App Team, right? Like it was like, oh, we're here to build the app. And when Anwar referred to this like multimillion dollar mistake that we avoided, it's we decided to not build the app.
- [19:40]
B
After going to the hotels, talking with the customers, understanding how they book, why they decide from one hotel to the other, why those dates, on what drives the decision for them to book through the call center or through online. However, the interface is. We realized that we needed a lot of work to be done on the webpage that we already had and that we had developed some months ago, but as a project. And we stopped maintaining it for a while. And after realizing that, we said, okay, the app is not the solution that we need. We need to focus much more on the continuous development of the webpage that we just got approved of as done. Because it was done in JIRA and because it was exactly like the prototype that had been designed some months prior to the release of it, but was not working as a business, it was not working for us to drive more sales towards the online bookings. So we continued improving that. And the conversion rate from that booking engine was below 1% and it's now above 5%. After having a year and a half of focus on how to improve the guest experience when booking online.
- [20:51]
A
We've spent a lot of time talking about changes to how you solve problems and I love that you framed it. This was our biggest bucket of change because it was our biggest gap. We worked in project teams, we gave people features to build rather than give them problems to solve. But I'm guessing there were some other changes Anwar in some other areas, but maybe say more about any way you changed how you might did build things, deployed or tested things, were there changes.
- [21:19]
B
That happened there at the end? If you don't have speed and empowerment on that regard, then it's also kind of a fractured interaction between the building of the solutions that you're deciding to build and the deployment of it. So we did have to hire a head of data data analytics team that would give the data to the team. And these data drove decisions both for the business and for the teams to be able to iterate continuously and with certainty.
- [21:53]
C
On the data part, I think that was actually one of our wins, one of our like political wins was that we started being able to be the reliable source of data for multiple areas of the business. So when people would say things that become kind of like a myth in the company, right? Like, oh, no one wants to do this. And then someone repeats that like 10 times, or like we need an app for example, right? And everyone keeps repeating and we show how many people actually would download the app or we show like a data point that trumps this myth that has been kind of like permeating through the company. So I would see data as not only crucial for the product teams to do their work and to actually be empowered to solve customer problems and business problems, but also it was a very big lever for us to gain trust.
- [22:43]
B
With the company totally and to also instill the data driven decision making for the business as a, as a whole.
- [22:50]
A
No, no, this is important because you're saying a couple of things. You made an investment in data, an investment in the data infrastructure, maybe some technologies on how you, you store and extract data, but you're also calling out the cultural implications of that investment, which is you are moving from maybe an organization fueled by lots of opinions, the one that was making data driven decisions.
- [23:13]
B
The projects were only funded depending on who the loudest person asked for it or how persistent that loud person is, and, and basically only sales. Because when we tried to tie ROI to projects, even though we had of course zero information on how much it would cost, because it's very impossible to know at the beginning of the of a project and how much it would return because it was not even outcome oriented, we tried to make happy numbers on the ROI of these projects and the result is that only sales projects were funded. So when switching to this product oriented mindset and data decisions, then we had much more information to be able to impact decisions and also focus on the client's experience and satisfaction. In the hotels, one of the four main verticals of teams is the hotel operations teams. So in there we're not focused on conversion or ticket size or those kinds of metrics, but instead we're focusing on the experience of the guest when they are arriving, when they are getting to their room, how much time we spend or how much time they need for a check in for a room service order to be delivered, for those kinds of things that really impact the experience of the guests at the hotels. And maybe are the deal breakers in terms of will they buy a membership at the hotels or will they come back ever again? Because if you at home order an Uber Eats and it takes 20 minutes to arrive and it's from an ex, from a stranger going to a restaurant, getting the food and taking it back home and then you come to the hotel and from the kitchen of the hotel, from a person that his whole job is to take that to the room, for that to take 40 minutes is just crazy. If you're booking a hotel based on the restaurants that it has, especially at all inclusive hotels like we are specialized in, but luxury hotels that their key selling point or that we, what we offer as a value point, as a value add is the gastronomy at the hotels, all these different kinds of restaurants, Lebanese food, Indian food, Peruvian food, all of that. If they are not able to get a table while they're staying at a hotel at one of the restaurants that they wanted to go, then that may be a decision on I'm not going back again because I am booking for the restaurant, but I'm not even able to get a table. That's one of the most important aspects of the vacation for our guests. And we only used to solve those problems by literally extending or doubling the size of the steakhouse restaurant and the Indian restaurants and the most sought after restaurants. Last year and I, and two years ago, we doubled the size of those restaurants and the restaurant that is not successful, the Peruvian one, even though the Peruvian food is amazing and the food actually was amazing as it was not successful, we changed it to an Italian American restaurant so that it's more convenient. But we never thought of using technology to solve those problems before. Maybe the discovery section of the app where you can learn about those different restaurants that you get at the resort is the solution to the problem. Instead of spending millions of dollars in the building to solve that problem.
- [26:30]
A
You know, the story you just narrated to me is like you shifted from a hotel that uses technology sometimes to almost like a technology company that provides hospitality. And you know, you just started framing all of these problems in your hotel, where in the past you may not have thought technology Had a role, maybe market the restaurant, maybe tell people about it. But you are now having people that are waking up every day looking for ways to solve those problems and we call them product. It's what a great story of changing how you solve problems in the company. So all of a sudden you have teams that are now closer to your customers, closer to the problems. You're discovering things you did not know before. You had no qualitative data or insights to why certain things were happening in the company.
- [27:19]
C
One thing that I loved on how Anwar was talking about, especially with the restaurants and the delivery of the food, like these are complex problems that involve a bunch of the parts of the business. And a core thing that we needed to do in order to be successful is to collaborate with all these stakeholders. So beyond product engineering, design data, there was a lot of understanding of the customers of the business and a real focus that went beyond what is right for technology and more of what is right for the hotel. So a true understanding of the business strategy that we were trying to do and then how the product could help that strategy be that enabler. Anwar also highlighted some of the teams and how we split up. That was a core area we worked on, which was around the team topology. So how do we want to divide this space and what makes sense here? We decided on like sales operations, vacation club team and an entire like HR department piece. And that was another big decision. We started working on a product vision. Once we had kind of like that leadership level being like this looks good and we had people wanting to work this way, we needed to start to make some moves in order to scale it because we talked a lot about the pilot team. The thing about it is that it's a pilot, it can't scale. So we needed more. And I think this is a core area that we worked really closely together in, which was hiring these people. So we brought in product leaders. To Anur's point, we brought in head of data and different engineering leaders. And this was all because we needed people that wanted to work this way and that were excited to work in the product model.
- [29:01]
B
Both the pilot team and setting the groundwork for this technical aspect of the delivery to be more product oriented or allowed for a more product oriented mindset. Then the rest of the teams also wanted to work this way. So Gavi started hearing about this and I started to hearing about these persons who wanted to work this way. And one way of doing this transition was, okay, so you're working on this project. The reason why this project was funded was because we expected this project to have a return on investment of X amount because we expect to have these business results. So all things aside, we want to improve this metric by this much. Okay, this is the key result. And then we just like that got an outcome oriented roadmap and we had the teams set in a way. And after like dividing the team or setting the team topologies right, like having one product manager, one tech lead, one designer ideally or one designer every two teams or things like that, we managed to have these are the different teams and they're responsible for these parts of the software that we developed. And it's for their maintainability, their security, their quality. And everything they do is make sure that this is developed in a better way permanently. They're not going to after some months switch to a different one. And that's how we decided what the teams would look like and we started bringing in the different people that would fill the spaces that we had. And that's how other culture started happening everywhere.
- [30:43]
A
What kind of resistance did you come up with and how were you able to overcome that?
- [30:47]
B
By being more stubborn. So there's still the more stubborn person in the room wins.
- [30:52]
C
But Christian, I think even before Anuar answers this, one thing that is really important to highlight is that Anuar didn't have a product background or a technology background. Like he joined this because he wanted to solve this problem. He's like, I care about this company. This is my family's company, I need to solve this. And he learned product. He became dangerously good at engineering, dangerously good at design. So I think that there was a lot of that learning too and that devotion and like commitment. I remember I would send him articles at night and by like 7am he would have sent me his thoughts on it already. Like, and I was like, whoa, this is fast. You know, this is someone that like really wants to do this.
- [31:34]
A
I love that I love and, and I cannot imagine it was easy. So I, I want to kind of hear where the pain was, what hurt, what challenge, what were the biggest challenges on this journey?
- [31:44]
B
Well, I mentioned that my brothers were the last people I got to convince on this way of working. And it, it was just after really getting to a point where there were a lot of opinions and feelings of what had happened in the previous year on this transformation journey. And this is a continuous thing. It's not like we're ever done transforming and every company is continuously moving to working in a better way. Right. So it's the same thing with us. It's never Done. And we were not nearly in a point where we thought that we were done. But it was like, okay, this is. We're changing the way we're working. I want to understand why you've given me the transformed book. It's still in their bookshelf. Maybe you will find one where you're sitting just right now. And the, the reality is that after many opinions of how this has been working, there were mixed feelings and it got to a point where they wanted to understand if what we had been building really worked or not. And just to reduce the this situation to one data point is they wanted for the stakeholders to receive of approved anything that had been delivered in the past or anything that has been delivered. So now the concept would not be is it done in jira? It would not be if we accepted has it driven results or has it delivered on the results it would have the stakeholder approved of receipt. And just that thing I decided I would not accept. So that of course had some really difficult conversations. And before it escalated, I say, okay, let's sit down for a full day. The four brothers, my three brothers and myself to fully understand what has been happening, why it has been happening this way, what is the plan, what has gone wrong, how we plan on it not happening again, all of the rest and what has to change on both sides of the table. If we put it like that, what needs to happen in technology and sales, or in technology and operations, or in technology and finance so that this collaboration with the department is much better. So after fully understanding and them seeing that we were really interested in the same results as they were, because it's the client's satisfaction or transactions or different aspects that they were also, that they also cared about. Then they trusted me on this because I also have to recognize that after so many broken promises from the past, the fact that they trusted me on, on this speaks a lot of the dynamics between, between us and what has allowed us to work in a, in a family company in an executive way, so that we are not having bad politics between brothers and affecting the company. So the key principle for us is let's protect the company from ourselves if we're, if we are ever in a disagreement. So that's the reason why we sat down for that work. And then it started permeating. Now also top down, this is phenomenal.
- [34:43]
A
To kind of hear the trust, the importance of trust in this journey. But, but to some extent your pilot teams were generating some success. It's like they were giving you permission to keep going in some ways because they were demonstrating results. But this entire journey so far for you, it's about two years. What are the results? So I'm kind of remembering the story of why you started this journey and. But tell me, what are the tangible results of your transformation?
- [35:12]
B
The most impactful is the fact that we are now in a culture of testing data analytics or data driven decisions and making this company wide cross department efforts as well. Not only technology has its okrs, but they are coming from an effort that is also involving sales and the sales center and the marketing team and all of the rest. So one key example of this is after working on a lot of features by focusing on the outcome of conversion rate of the web page, we decided that that was not going to be impactful enough. And when we started having these conversations, then we aligned marketing, sales, the sales center and the teams that surrounded the technology. We agreed that this had to be our objective as a team, as a company. So one example of a feature that really drove results, but just because of the collaboration with the rest of the departments, is that every time a guest doesn't finish booking their vacation on the webpage, then that turns into a lead for the call center team to call the guest and say, hey, how can I help you with your reservation? And, and what happened that you didn't book through the webpage? Are you having any questions or anything? And that gives us two things, of course, the closing of the sale that just from March 1st to now, so two months, has turned into $600,000 of bookings made thanks to these feature or collaboration or ability to know who tried to book and didn't end up booking. And also we get the intel, continuous intel for the continuous discovery for one of the continuous discoveries that we have to do on why they didn't book. So maybe they didn't feel safe or secure on the payment link. And then we explain how safe it is and that we are PCI compliant or anything that we can then improve so that the rest of the guests can feel safe or meet their needs when booking online without the help of an agent.
- [37:18]
C
Yeah, and Anwar, you just described, I think like continuous discovery in one of the most beautiful ways I've seen. Because one of the results was like, yeah, we made a lot more money, which is awesome. And also we now are gathering more information so that we can solve a big problem.
- [37:36]
A
If I was framing the question as what can you do today that you could not do before?
- [37:41]
B
Imagine those, those solutions of hey, the guests are complaining about going back to the example of the of the restaurant. The guests are complaining about the availability options at the restaurants they want to book at. And we say yes. And we're complaining that we have full restaurants full of staff and food and no guests. Why don't they discover. So instead of going for the solution of changing the whole concept of the restaurant, the menu, the staff, the uniforms, the decoration, everything, then let's just make sure that they are able to discover that this restaurant exists and how they get there, how they can book all of that. And it's an all inclusive resort, but it's not the typical all inclusive that only serves hamburgers and fries, but it serves serve specialty food both in room service and in the restaurants. So these are experiential things that we're talking about.
- [38:34]
A
You know, when people say why transform? I always, I say hopefully is so that you can do things you could not do before. And you are describing we could not do discovery as a culture. But I love that you went through some cultural elements. Today we are a more data driven company. We are a more customer centric company. We are a more collaborative company. We are working more as one team, we are more aligned as a company and in some ways we are more, we do more experiments and we test and we learn. We have more discovery centric as a company. What a fantastic framing. All right, my last question for you because many people are on this journey trying to do the jump on a transformation journey. I'm a leader. I'm inspired by this story you're telling me. What's your biggest advice to somebody that wants to embark on a transformation journey or lead a company through one?
- [39:26]
B
First, to make the same decision I did when I got out of the workshop, the transformed workshop, which is stop having thoughts of my own and start trusting Marty's thoughts on everything that has to be done. So I am not that creative. I am not going to get a sense on how to solve a problem that has been solved in the past, not by me. So fully believe on the teachings of the experts that have gone through this, then that leads me to get a coach like I did with Gabi, who has been key on all of this. Because one small derailing of this can set you in a whole different direction on where you're going or where you should go. And I always think of this as they are the guiding light. As in a boat that is going into an island, they are the guiding light that show you where you should go. Then you're not going to get lost, you may get distracted, then maybe a wave comes in, then you know how to correct course and get back to it.
- [40:25]
A
You know, it's. It sounds like a ridiculous type of thing. You're. You're calling out one. Many companies have transformed. There's a playbook. People have talked about what worked. You know, lean into kind of the Matti's book, the teachings around transform. And you're like, it's perfectly okay to get a guiding light, get a coach that has been there, done that. That can kind of help you through some of those tough decisions, in which is a lot of humility on your part. Because I'm going to say to you, you know, I have been through many companies that have tried to transform, but I do think one of the secrets is really the courage that you put into this journey, the humility and the grace. But, you know, you actually have a lot of business sense. There's a sense of ownership and agency around this. I didn't see you blaming somebody else for the failures or the challenges in here. So kudos to you kind of championing this journey.
- [41:15]
C
I would love to add one thing, that anuar Anwar is very humble. So he didn't say that about himself, but his determination, his just, like, unwavering commitment to grow, and his, like, ability to ask for help. I think were were huge. Um, I go back to the question of, like, what if this doesn't work? And he's like, this has to work. There's no plan B. I feel like that was really, really key. And he didn't even just say it. He embodied this through every single action that he took. And it's been like a huge pleasure to. To work together with him and his incredible team that I love. Like, this is one of his quotes that keeps coming to my mind. He's like, I hired a team that allows me to be bold. It's like, how incredible is that?
- [42:02]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Gabby. And I do want to add that the team that I managed to recruit and with whom I'm able to work every day is an amazing team. Is not easy to find amazing people in Merida that have the product sense and product abilities and the expertise or the humility to learn new things and unlearn what they have learned in the past. And that's key. And I'm very fortunate to be working with them. And we continue to. To grow every day.
- [42:29]
A
What a fantastic summary, Anwar, Gabby, it has been such an honor to have you on product therapy. Thank you for joining us. Want to learn more? Until next time, Please check out svpg.com Sign up for our newsletter that Mary Kagan puts out. Join us for one of our workshops near you and get access to all of the articles and content we put out. And thank you to everyone for joining us. Until next time, have a good day. A quick Disclaimer While this podcast is named Product Therapy, it is not hosted by licensed therapists or mental health professionals and it is in no way a substitute for professional mental health services. We recognize the importance of mental well being and encourage anyone facing personal difficulties to seek support from qualified professionals. See www.findahelpline.com.