Steve Wynn on an Employee's Power to Impact the Hotel Industry | Milken Institute

So my presentation today—I asked this question: is there anybody in the room that doesn't think that a single individual employee, acting alone with a single guest, does not indeed have the power to change the history of the enterprise? I think we would all agree it's a rhetorical question answered by yes. An act of personal consideration, an act of kindness, that strikes the receiver of that in an extraordinary way, is something you never forget. If somebody in this hotel—the Beverly Hilton—walks up and helps you with a problem when you look fuddled or confused because you don't know where the next meeting is, and somebody like a porter walks over and says, 'Excuse me, sir, you look a little confused. Can I help you?' 'Well, actually, yeah, I'm trying to find the international terrace for a speech.' 'Just a minute, sir, I'll be right back.' Runs over, gets a sheet of paper, looks at the international terrace. 'Oh, are you going to the Wynn presentation? Yeah, come on, I'll show you where it is.' That's all. That's your day. You're not going to stop talking about it. And the thing that I've learned and that I'm going to share with you today is this: I've already told you what my one wish would be if I had one wish. So if someone walked up to you—a consultant or a friend—and said, 'I have a technique that will provide instant gratification for every one of your employees acting alone, without anyone watching, in a closed room, with a single guest,' would you like that? And if you were in my business or any other service business, I'd love that. How could such a phenomenal result occur? I mean, things like Employee of the Month, Employee of the Year, all of these—Manager of the Year—all of these programs dignify and demonstrate management's respect for the best among us, and those are very good things. But they rely upon a boss observing the behavior of an employee and acknowledging it. And let's be honest, none of us in this room can escape the influence of our own prejudice. It's a subjective world. We like certain people and we react to certain people better than others. We can't escape it. It's human nature. So that's why Employees of the Month are interesting and they do serve a function, but they're subjective, and they need to have the boss see you do a good thing so that you can get distinguished. We know that anything that's instantly gratifying is bound to be repeated. I don't have to go into details with a group of healthy heterosexuals in this room, but if anything is instantly gratifying, we tend to do it over and over again. So if I say that there's a way of giving instant gratification to an employee acting alone in a room with a single guest and no observer, that they will repeat it and they can change the course of the history of the enterprise. And that technique is the only way in the world to get to the point where 7,400 people, every 24 hours, manage to make a standing, surviving impression on thousands upon thousands of guests.