The Modern Digital Executive: Ep. 6 with Lori Gustafson (full)

That's right. Jeremy, thanks so much for having me on. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I'm the Chief Brand and Digital Officer here at Marriott Vacations Worldwide. We're located in Orlando, Florida. MVW, as we refer to it oftentimes internally, is a leader in the vacation ownership and third-party management and exchange space. We've got seven great premium brands that span across the Marriott and Hyatt portfolio, as well as a variety of travel technologies, and we're squarely focused in the leisure or vacation space. So it's an incredibly fun business to be in. We've got a 40-year rich history and actually spun out from Marriott International about 10 years ago, so a publicly traded company that's doing really great things, especially when it comes to digital. So excited to talk with you today about that.

I've had the opportunity to work at really large companies in different phases of growth: Garden Restaurants being one of them, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment being another, and now even at Marriott Vacations Worldwide. So spanning a lot of travel and hospitality brands, which I think we can all relate to in our personal lives. Those tend to be pretty face-to-face businesses, and so when you think about that digital transformation, it's a lot of like, what does that look like? How does that impact our business? For me, it's probably started with the mindset. When it comes to driving and influencing your organization to do big, significant things, you've got to have the right mindset right from the beginning. And that mindset shift is really driven by humans, I would say, not tools, not processes. The right mindset really shapes how people see and interpret the world and leads to a specific pattern of thinking and behaving. So if you're trying to change people's habits in your organization, especially those who have very tenured individuals in their organization or maybe have grown up through a specific functional area or lane, being able to influence those individuals and have them see a bigger picture and be along for the journey is really important. It's human nature to come to those individuals and try to reiterate what's in it for them. That's sort of the mindset: if we do this, this is what this means for you and your business and your people. And ultimately, the mindset is probably number one. The second is, I always lead with a point of view. I've learned not to really wait to be assigned the job of innovation or transformational thinking. I've found that the more senior you go up in an organization, people want something to react to. The CEOs and boards that I've had the opportunity to spend great time with, they want to hear from experts. If you're listening to this right now as an up-and-comer in your organization, or even if you're in that C-suite, it's a good reminder to always lead with your point of view. That allows you to really walk the talk and make sure that there's no gap in the say and do thinking. And then the third, in my experience, finding early adopters who can really partner with you and champion the vision across the organization is incredibly important. Transformations aren't always time-boxed when you think about going into a long-range planning session or maybe starting a huge project that's characterized as being transformational. Oftentimes they're part of a long-term strategy. One of the pieces of having these champions and early adopters early on is for them to socialize your quick wins. That's really important to gain momentum, inertia, energy, because so much about driving these types of transformational programs forward is really casting the vision and rallying your organizational troops to help you deliver. Those are probably three of the big ones that if I had to reflect on what I've learned: mindset, leading with a point of view, and finding early adopters and championing those quick wins would probably be important and imperative to any future effort that I do.

That's right. I mean, because if you think about it, there's incredibly talented experts across technology fields. You can always find external resources to help you fill a gap or have an expertise in a space that you might not have internally. But if you don't have the people internally to really champion and drive the vision forward and to really rally and be able to influence outcomes happening, the people leadership is just such a critical part of any transformational effort and that implementation and long-term adoption. So much about transformational work, it's not just digitizing an antiquated or analog process, it's about reimagining what that process should be. You're really saying to someone today, 'I know you do it this way, tell me what it looks like to do it in the future.' Oftentimes you gotta help people along the journey there and then have the technology support and futuristic thinking to get there. Then it's a many-step process.

Two things to me. The word transformation or innovation or modernization, those words mean new ways of working, new ways of thinking, and I think ultimately new ways of being. While initial efforts, and I put this in parentheses, kind of a transformational movement usually focuses on functions or bringing new consumer products to market or changing business models. I really think transformation shouldn't be limited to that. Often companies, as you said, embark on these efforts to do something differently, to go faster, to automate, to make it self-service, to have a more data-driven approach. But ultimately, the new ways of being is really adopting a customer-centric mindset as well as deploying agile ways of working across the entire organization so that everyone benefits, no matter the function or whether it's a corporate initiative, and regardless of the audience. I think we often talk a lot about the impacts transformations make on customers, but I also think the associate experience is equally as important. We're seeing that in all the trends now around employee experience or EX. Not just taking what we do today and automating it or simplifying it or making it digital, it's really how do you reimagine or rethink how that business process is done and then deliver that powered by a technology solution and then roll that out. That is a pretty tall order.

That's exactly right. You know, for me specifically, digital I think is an enabler, it's not an end. It's really a bold ambition. In our category in particular, you still want to be able to make sure that we don't lose high-touch moments or opportunities to really delight our guests, in our case our owners, our members. But at the same time, we have to be cognizant of the ways in which we want to work. So when you're booking your vacation experience, there are a few steps you take. How you search by destination or by experience is really important. How do we inspire you and become the experts in this space across our organization? How do we rally around delivering the best possible experience to you? And I would also say simultaneously being efficient and making sure that we also care a lot about how our associates can deliver on that too. So whether you're working in a call center, you're managing our AI chatbots, you are working in a resort operations capacity where you're in the field and having that frontline experience, making sure that we empower people with the tools and solutions and experiences that help them get on vacation is important. And sometimes it's easier said than done. Any of these implementations and any of the changes that you make, you're going to find stumbling blocks. I mean, that's the fun of any kind of change that you implement, right?

Mindset, vision setting, and then a commitment to the investment. Our CEO and board have a commitment to enabling these types of transformations, and then having the support internally to make it happen. It starts with people, the right people and the right talent to make it come to life. We're facing what a lot of companies are facing: a run of acquisitions over the last five years. Our company's doubled in size, so with that comes a variety of technical debt at times. I think every company and everybody listening is faced with legacy technology solutions that are a hindrance or in some way creating some pain point. Technology partners and teams desperately want to move to more cloud-based solutions, more the technology solutions of the future. So that pivot to perform and transform simultaneously: less than 12% of corporate America executives are scoring well and being able to do both right now. And so going back to how do you show quick wins, how do you deliver for the business today and also simultaneously transform for the future? I think it's a really challenging business and professional charge. And how do you calibrate your teams, how you organize yourself? If you can sort of think about it that way over the next five or ten years, you're earning the credibility and the right to proceed internally. I believe our team will win and our organization will win. And that's also what I think is a good way for folks to think about it: straddling both of those priorities is a difficult task for anyone to focus on in the next 10 years.

For the mindset piece, when you're talking about this, how do you get buy-in, consensus, how do you drive that with your teams today? I go on a listening and learning tour, which I've learned from leaders and individuals even on my team. That's been my approach: to seek to listen and learn first, which I know sounds really simple. But taking time to meet with the top 50 or 100 individuals across your organization, depending on the size, and asking them about what is it that they do on the day-to-day, and what would make it better for them, and what are the ideas that they've had, and if you could have one thing, what would that thing be? What are you passionate about, and what do you think our customers really want? Those are some of the key questions I think really start to help you uncover core needs in your organization and also simultaneously understand what's important to those people who have decision-making capabilities. And if you're able to capture and catalog that and then distill that back, so it goes back to 'what's in it for me,' that has been one of my successful tactics in order to start to drive a bit of that vision. Not a pride of authorship moment, it's 'you are a part of the solutioning here, and here's what I heard when I spoke with you about what we really need, and then here's what's next.' And being able to story tell in a way that imagine if you were an associate, this is the experience you would have: you'd have all of this entire Salesforce ecosystem right at your fingertips, and you'll be able to navigate this way, saving yourself X number of time. Here's the productivity increases, here's the KPIs or benefits that would be delivered for both our customers and for our people. That tends to be the next step I would say. And then the third piece of that would be like, okay, well here's what I need from you in order to deliver on this vision. And so those are the three things that I would do in order to start to drive that mindset shift: bringing people along for the journey, getting that buy-in, and then enabling them to feel the ownership for it.

That's right. I mean, every company has its own dynamics and situation in terms of what's a priority. So in the larger companies in particular, that kind of cross-functional, horizontal view, horizontal buy-in is really important, especially if you're trying to have a more singular view of your customer or be able to deliver solutions that impact all the way across the organization.

Real. AI and ML, machine learning, we're multiple years off from realizing full potential, but I think there's going to be major upside and positive impacts to organizations with AI.

You know, a little bit of hype, a little bit of real, and a little bit of WTF. I'd say an equal slice of each one of those. I do believe ultimately it will be a realized vision, and given the investment and technology companies who have a big role to play in our consumption, it's still a ways out. But I do believe it will be real. But right now I would say it's equally thirds of each one of those responses.

Crypto, I think it's in a hype stage right now. I do believe there's a future world for crypto obviously in a meaningful way from a vision casting perspective. In crypto, I think it's a little too soon to tell. I think it's going to be a mainstay, and it just depends. I think we're a little too early to tell on how much impact it makes and the role it plays in the future.

I think it's here for sure to stay. I think there will be adaptable ways of working that will probably be the norm in terms of an expectation of current and next generation workers. I do believe the role you play in the job you have is telling, right? So for our organization, we're in the hospitality and travel business. The majority of our workforce has to be in a face-to-face interaction, right? You can't really at this point—I mean, the future's coming, so eventually there'll be robots to check you in somewhere at some place—but at this point in our trajectory, you need people to be on site to run a resort, to have a sales operation in certain cases, while having somebody in those capacities. But I think it's very different for call center operations and corporate functions and developers and technology resources, individuals who are wanting to be very content with their home position and really can work anywhere. So I would say that it's going to be a bit of both. I would say it is real. I do think we'll see maybe a bit of a pendulum swing. I think we've shifted really far and it's going to come back to a more modest middle, which is definitely better than where we were pre-COVID. And I think it's the way of the future for sure.

Open floor. This is one of the things that's really exciting for me. I'd love to just brag on my company for a second. And to do that, I'd love to start with a big picture about our industry and the strength of leisure travel. Leisure travel in particular is booming, which is great news for us. I think it's great news for anybody listening to this right now who wants to take their family and friends on vacation. Marriott Vacations Worldwide is 100% leisure focused, again as I mentioned. We have these globally recognized premium travel and hospitality brands. What's exciting for us is with leisure's relevance and vacations being viewed as non-discretionary, we do believe the time is right to innovate. And what we're saying is designing the vacation ownership experience for the future. So last week we actually had our Investor Day at the New York Stock Exchange, and we announced that we're embarking on a multi-year initiative called Vacation Next. And we've just introduced a new owner program which we'll be debuting this summer called Abound by Marriott Vacations. It's all about being able to make sure we're appealing to the next generation of travelers. Given the strength of our brands and our focus on the segment and future innovations, we're perfectly positioned for what's ahead. And for anybody who wants to follow along our journey, you can find me on LinkedIn at Lori Gustafson. I think that's probably the best way to reach me. If you type me in, I'm sure I'll come up. Really excited about the future ahead, and thanks so much for having me today.

My pleasure. Take care.