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Russ Hill shared thisHorst Schulze let every Ritz-Carlton employee spend up to $2,000 to fix a guest's problem on the spot. Years later he said almost nobody ever spent the full amount. Schulze started in hotels at 14, as a busboy in Germany. At 16 he wrote an essay about the maître d' he worked under. He called it "We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." In 1983 he joined the founding team of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company as vice president of operations. By 1988 he was its president. The essay title became the company motto. Schulze called the $2,000 an economic decision. He had worked out that the average guest was 43, and that a customer who kept coming back for life was worth about $200,000 to the company. Set against $200,000, a free breakfast is a rounding error. When Ritz-Carlton won its second Baldrige Award in 1999, the official award profile put it this way: "Any employee can spend up to $2,000 to immediately correct a problem or handle a complaint." Any employee. The busboy, the waiter, the bellman. In 2019 Schulze described what his people actually did with it. "Nobody ever spent $2,000, but they bought breakfast or sent a food basket or some cookies and so on, and the guests were amazed." In 2012 a father named Chris Hurn wrote about his family's stay at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island. His son had left behind a stuffed giraffe called Joshie. Hurn asked the staff for a single photo of Joshie by the pool. They sent Joshie home with a binder documenting his extended stay, photos included, and a Ritz-Carlton ID badge. Ritz-Carlton won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1992 and again in 1999. At the time it was the only service company to have won it twice. Here's what most leaders miss: the $2,000 told the person standing in front of the problem that they were trusted to solve it on the spot. Plenty of companies hand out authority by rank. So the person who sees the problem first is the person least allowed to fix it. By the time a small fix has climbed to someone with a signature, the customer has already left. Look at what your frontline people escalated last week. How many of those decisions cost less than the time it took to approve them? Lead In 30 transforms how managers and senior executives lead and deliver results in just 30 days. Message me to learn how this framework can work for your team. https://lnkd.in/gsb3qeCF
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Russ Hill shared thisIn 2004 Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from his senior team's meetings. His reasoning was that a good 4 page memo is harder to write than a 20 page deck, and the harder job forces better thinking. In a follow-up email dated June 9, 2004, Bezos explained the new rule to his senior team. "The reason writing a good 4 page memo is harder than 'writing' a 20 page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what's more important than what, and how things are related." He closed the obvious loophole in the same email. "If someone builds a list of bullet points in word, that would be just as bad as powerpoint." By 2018 the standard was 6 pages. In his 2017 letter to shareholders he described how meetings start: "We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of 'study hall.'" In a 2023 interview he put the reading at about 30 minutes, in silence, before the discussion starts. He also explained why the reading happens in the room. Sent in advance, people skim it or skip it, and then they are "bluffing like they were in college having pretended to do the reading." The writing takes longer than most people expect. The 2017 letter says a great memo "might take a week or more." By tradition, authors' names never appear on them. The memo is from the whole team. His view of the slide deck was blunt. "PowerPoint is really designed to persuade. It's kind of a sales tool. And internally, the last thing you want to do is sell." It is not a comfortable system. Bezos has described being the author of the memo as "mostly terrifying." His own summary: "I like a crisp document and a messy meeting." Here's what most leaders miss: a deck lets a half-finished idea look finished. Bullet points skip the word "because", and that word is where weak reasoning shows. Full sentences force the author to say what matters more, what depends on what, and why. The gaps become visible on the page before they become expensive in the meeting. Too many leadership teams spend the meeting discovering that nobody has thought the proposal through. Before your next big decision, ask the owner for 1 page of full sentences instead of the slides. Whatever they cannot write down is what they have not worked out yet. Lead In 30 transforms how managers and senior executives lead and deliver results in just 30 days. Message me to learn how this framework can work for your team. https://lnkd.in/gsb3qeCF
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Russ Hill shared thisArne Sorenson was in treatment for pancreatic cancer when COVID hit Marriott. He could have sent a memo. He recorded a video for Marriott's associates and gave them the hard numbers himself. On March 19, 2020, Marriott posted a message from its CEO to its associates. It ran just under 6 minutes. 10 months earlier Sorenson had announced he had stage 2 pancreatic cancer, and he was still in treatment. His team was a bit concerned about using video. He spoke to that in the first minute. "I feel good, and my team and I are 100% focused on overcoming the common crisis we face." Then he gave them the numbers. He said it was hitting harder than 9/11 and the 2009 financial crisis combined. In the worst quarter of those earlier crises, Marriott's hotel revenue had fallen roughly 25%. This time business in China had dropped 90%. In most markets it was already running 75% below normal. Then the decisions. New hiring paused. Hundreds of hotels closing or starting to close. Temporary leave for most of the US headquarters staff, for at least 60 to 90 days. No salary for Sorenson or for Bill Marriott for the rest of 2020. A 50% cut in pay for his executive team. Near the end he was visibly emotional. "There is simply nothing worse than telling highly valued associates, people who are the very heart of this company, that their roles are being impacted by events completely outside of their control." That October, Marriott permanently cut 673 roles at its headquarters. Sorenson died in February 2021, just under 11 months after the video. Here's what most leaders miss: when the news is bad, people are already working out what you are hiding. Every missing number becomes a rumor. The easy version is a memo, with the numbers softened. Sorenson delivered it himself. He named the decline, the leave, the length of it and his own salary, in the middle of his own cancer treatment. In a crisis, the distance between what leaders say and what their people believe gets wider every day nobody closes it. That is exactly the gap the 2026 Leadership Reality Report was built to expose. Comment REPORT and I'll send you the 2026 Leadership Reality Report.
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Russ Hill shared thisIn her first weeks running Accenture, Julie Sweet told the whole company that everyone, the mailroom included, had to take 10 technology courses. Here is what that standard was worth 6 years later: Sweet became CEO on September 1, 2019. Early on she launched a program the company calls TQ, short for technology quotient. Her own description of who it covered: "Everyone at Accenture, whether you work in the mailroom, in finance or with clients, has to take 10 courses in technology." Finance, facilities, client teams, the same 10 courses. Accenture put roughly $1 billion a year behind it in learning and development. Hiring was rebuilt to match. Candidates get asked what they have learned in the last 6 months. Then generative AI arrived, and the machine for teaching an entire company a new technology had already been running for 3 years. By August 31, 2025, more than 550,000 Accenture employees had completed foundational training in generative AI. In that fiscal year alone the company spent $1 billion on learning and delivered about 47 million training hours, 9% more than the year before. It reached about 77,000 skilled AI and data practitioners against a goal of 80,000 by the end of fiscal 2026. The standard carried a cost on both sides. In September 2025 Accenture announced an $865 million restructuring and cut about 11,000 roles, with Sweet saying the company was "exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need." Here's what most leaders miss: a standard nobody is measured against is a preference. Accenture spent $1 billion a year making its standard reachable, then held people to it. Both halves did the work. Most companies only do half. They announce the training and never check who took it, or they demand the new skill and never fund the learning that would produce it. Those numbers are what 6 years of boring, funded, mandatory courses buys a 779,000 person company. That is exactly the gap the 2026 Leadership Reality Report was built to expose. Comment REPORT and I'll send you the 2026 Leadership Reality Report.
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Russ Hill shared thisTricia Griffith joined Progressive in 1988 as an entry level claims rep. 28 years later she was running the company. Here is the job on her way up that most companies treat as a dead end: Griffith started at Progressive in 1988 as a claims representative, handling cases. She spent years managing inside that division. Then in 2002 she was named Chief Human Resources Officer. She held the seat for 6 years. In most companies that move settles the question of whether someone is CEO material, and the answer is no. HR gets filed as a support function. Somewhere leaders pass through rather than somewhere they come from. Progressive sent her back to the line. Claims Group President in 2008. Personal Lines Chief Operating Officer in 2014. On July 1, 2016 she became CEO. Net premiums written went from roughly $20 billion to $30 billion in about 3 years. Progressive passed Allstate in 2017 to become the 3rd largest auto insurer in the country. Fortune named her Businessperson of the Year in 2018. On 2024 industry market share data Progressive now sits 2nd in US auto insurance, ahead of Geico. Here's what most leaders miss: whoever decides who gets hired, who gets promoted and who gets trained is setting the ceiling on what your strategy is ever allowed to become. Griffith did not treat the HR seat as a rotation to survive. She had run claims before it and she ran claims after it, so she walked into the people system already knowing what it had to produce on the floor. That is the part most companies skip. They staff the function with people who have never carried an operating number, then wonder why the talent plan and the business plan never line up. In your company, is the HR seat on the path to the top job, or beside it? Your answer says more about your execution than your strategy deck does. Lead In 30 transforms how managers and senior executives lead and deliver results in just 30 days. Message me to learn how this framework can work for your team. https://lnkd.in/gsb3qeCF
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Russ Hill shared thisKen Frazier was 25 days into running Merck when he told the board he was scrapping profit targets Wall Street had already been promised. 1 analyst called it befuddling. Here is why he did it: Frazier became CEO of Merck on January 1, 2011. He inherited a multi-year earnings road map. Merck had already told investors what it would earn all the way through 2013. To hit those numbers, Merck would have to cut research and development. There was no other route. That was the industry move at the time. Pfizer was cutting research programs. The pressure on large drugmakers to follow was immense. 25 days into the job, Frazier told the board he intended to withdraw the remaining 3 years of guidance. Merck announced it in February 2011. The stock fell 3%. Bernstein's analyst called the decision "disingenuous." The Credit Suisse analyst called it "befuddling" and said there needed to be "more sharing of pain." Frazier refused to cut research to defend the target. Merck spent $7.7 billion on R&D in 2011, against $48 billion of revenue. On September 4, 2014, the FDA approved Keytruda, the first PD-1 inhibitor cleared in the United States. In 2024, Keytruda sold $29.5 billion. That was 46% of everything Merck sold that year. Here's what most leaders miss: a number you promise in public becomes the thing you protect. People will take apart the engine that produced the number in order to keep protecting it. Frazier could have made 2013. The cuts were sitting right there, every peer was taking them, and he would have been praised for discipline. The forecast would have survived. The research budget would have paid for it. Go and sort your own commitments. Some are promises about what you are going to build. Some are numbers you said out loud and now cannot walk back. Leaders get into trouble when they defend the second kind as hard as the first. Lead In 30 transforms how managers and senior executives lead and deliver results in just 30 days. Message me to learn how this framework can work for your team. https://lnkd.in/gsb3qeCF
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Russ Hill shared thisDan Schulman ran a company built to improve people's financial health. Then he measured his own lowest-paid US staff and found most had 4% to 6% of their pay left after the bills. Here is what he did next: PayPal's mission is to improve financial health for the people the banking system underserves. In 2018, Schulman pointed that mission at his own payroll. The company built a metric to do it. Estimated net disposable income: what is left of a paycheck after taxes and essential living expenses. 60% of PayPal's hourly and entry-level US employees came in between 4% and 6%. By the usual test, these people were paid correctly. PayPal's wages already met or exceeded both minimum wage and the market rate for the job. They cleared the benchmark and still could not absorb a car repair. Schulman announced the fix at a global all-hands in October 2019. It launched that December in 4 parts. Wages went up, calculated against local cost of living rather than the market rate. Healthcare premiums for US employees were cut 60% starting January 1, 2020. For an employee with a spouse and children that put $158 back into every paycheck. Roughly 8,600 employees who had never been granted equity received stock averaging $3,100. Financial coaching was put behind all of it. Then they kept measuring. Net disposable income for that group went from 4% to 6% in FY19, to 11% in FY20, to 15% in FY21. The target is 20%. Here's what most leaders miss: paying the market rate tells you what your competitors do. It tells you nothing about whether the people on your payroll can absorb a flat tire. PayPal found the gap because it built a measure and turned it inward. Most companies benchmark against the market and stop there, which answers a question about the market. The distance between what you believe about your team and what is true stays invisible until somebody goes and measures it. That is exactly the gap the 2026 Leadership Reality Report was built to expose. Comment REPORT and I'll send you the 2026 Leadership Reality Report.
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Russ Hill shared thisDawn Staley lost all 5 starters in one offseason, then went 38-0 and won the title. In the final her bench outscored Iowa's bench 37-0. Here's how she built a team that survived that: In 2023 South Carolina arrived at the Final Four at 36-0 and lost to Iowa, 77-73. Then all 5 starters left the program. Most coaches would have called the next year a rebuild. Lowered expectations publicly. Asked for patience while the new group learned. Staley's 2024 team went 38-0 and won the national championship, the first undefeated season in the program's history. The way they did it in the final is the part worth studying. South Carolina's bench scored 37 points. Iowa's bench scored 0. A freshman off that bench, Tessa Johnson, scored 19, more than any other South Carolina player on the floor. Kamilla Cardoso had 15 points and 17 rebounds. 5 Gamecocks reached double figures. Caitlin Clark scored 30 for Iowa. It was not enough. What carried that team was the standard, held as firmly by the players coming off the bench as by the 5 who started. Afterward she said of that team: "They etched their names in the history books when this is the unlikeliest group to do it." Here's what most leaders miss: the real test of a system is what it does when your best people leave. Most organizations never run that test deliberately. They discover the answer in the quarter after a resignation letter, when it turns out 3 people were carrying the standard and nobody else had been taught it. If your results depend on a handful of individuals, you do not yet have a team. You have a handful of individuals and an org chart. That is exactly the gap the 2026 Leadership Reality Report was built to expose. Comment REPORT and I'll send you the 2026 Leadership Reality Report.
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Russ Hill shared thisJim Weber inherited a shoe company close to bankruptcy and responded by making its product line smaller. By the time he left, Brooks was doing $1.2 billion. Here's the decision that did it: Weber joined the Brooks board in 1999 and became CEO in 2001. The company was close to going bankrupt. Brooks was making shoes across several sports, competing on price against companies many times its size. Then he looked at the categories and found the fact that decided everything. Running was the only category not losing money. So he cut the rest. Brooks stopped making shoes for the other sports and narrowed the whole brand to running. In his own words: "That focus was bold, but it's not like we had a lot of options." Sit with what that took. A company nearly out of cash, and the plan was to remove revenue on purpose. That is the reverse of how most organizations handle a bad year. They add. New categories, new channels, new segments, anything that might bring money through the door this quarter. Weber deleted the revenue that was losing money and put what was left behind the one thing that worked. It took years rather than quarters. Brooks reached $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, and Weber stepped down in 2024 after 23 years as CEO. Here's what most leaders miss: a priority you have not subtracted anything to fund is still only a preference. Most leadership teams can recite their priorities. Very few can name what they stopped doing to pay for them. If your list of focus areas has grown every year and nothing has ever come off it, your team has already worked out that the list does not decide anything. They are watching what you cancel, not what you announce at kickoff. Lead In 30 transforms how managers and senior executives lead and deliver results in just 30 days. Message me to learn how this framework can work for your team. https://lnkd.in/gsb3qeCF
Russ Hill commented on a post
7mo
congrats Melanie Tinto !
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Russ Hill liked thisRuss Hill liked thisI’m excited to share that I’ve been promoted to Area Director of Human Resources, further contributing to the East Region and Alabama Market. I look forward to continued growth, meaningful impact, and even greater success ahead #AtriumProud
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