Christmas 2014

Best wishes to everyone for a wonderful holiday season as we wrap up 2014! As some of my friends will chuckle at hearing, it's a year in which I actually stayed in one place!

I tend to think of my current gig in Las Vegas as a kind of extended vacation - not quite where I'd like to be permanently, as I do consider Denver to be my home. But in return, I'm settled into a great job in Operational Excellence at The Venetian and Palazzo, the world's largest integrated resort, with a great boss, a fantastic working team, and a leadership group that simply gets hospitality.  And I must say, I certainly don't miss the snow and cold this time of year - natives are complaining about how it's "only" 55 today. Sillies.

Plenty of challenges on the job: We've implemented our Leadership Promise and the Maestro live sessions that go along with them. We had also implemented Genio, an internal intranet site that was chock-full of knowledge management and social features for all our leaders. It was testing well with our most senior cadre of 120 leaders, and then in February, a major hacking incident took down many systems at The Venetian and we lost our intranet as a newborn.

In the ensuing months, we've been forced to abandon our very intuitive, very easy intranet software and we've had to bow to the Microsoft gods and use SharePoint as the basis for a new Genio intranet. Without spending several chapters on frustration (believe me, I could)...I can only give my friends and colleagues one bit of advice: Run from SharePoint as fast as you can if someone in your organization suggests it. Its learning curve, unintuitive features, and downright clunky approach have made it an 8-month ordeal just to get our intranet back to where it was in February.  Were Bill Gates and Paul Allen to visit my office, I'd probably slap them first.

Luckily, the hardest part is finally over and we're back to a leadership model that incorporates a strong Leadership Promise, significant live sessions with interactive elements, and an intranet that makes it all a continuous learning journey instead of a series of "classes." Very fun, and a great partnership with the Ken Blanchard Companies.

Next up: A branding of our overall guest experience, as The Palazzo begins to have its own unique identity differing from The Venetian. Plenty to keep me busy!

I also got to see some great family and friends in Vegas this year. Hey, it's a destination resort! Dewey and Cindy said hello and we had a great dinner at Table 10 - I am proud to say that I made position #2 on Dewey and Cindy's Top 5 Most Awesome Things of 2014. (Somehow I did not beat out their whole-house remodel.)

Best-boss-ever Linda McGill came out and I got to give her the nickel tour of the back of the house - huge as it is. She marveled at our uniform store - completely automated like a self-service dry cleaner to handle our 9,500 Team Members' uniform and cleaning needs. 

And of course, there have been side trips to LA to see Jim and Joe, Bill and Bob, and lots of forays back home to see Bill and Gary, Paul, Dan, Tim and the gang.

One fall trip to Denver included a grand reunion of the RockResorts gang, including best-boss-ever (yes, I said that earlier and I mean it both times!) Ed Mace. (He's on the right in this photo, with Dave Dudar and Linda on the left, and Debbie McCarthy on the right.) It was wonderful to catch up with how everyone from that era is doing these days.

Life is good. 2015 looks outstanding. Recession's over, people. Have a wonderful holiday and come see me in Vegas!