{"id":12835,"date":"2016-04-25T08:29:58","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T12:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/margiewarrellold.flywheelsites.com\/?p=12835"},"modified":"2016-04-25T08:29:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T12:29:58","slug":"bill-marriott-embrace-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/margiewarrell.com\/bill-marriott-embrace-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Embrace Change, Risk Mistakes: My interview with Bill Marriott"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It’s by embracing change and risking mistakes\u00a0that you get ahead.” ~ Bill Marriott<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the things I most love about my\u00a0work is the people I get to meet. So it was a huge honor to be invited into Marriott headquarters to interview J.W. “Bill” Marriott, who has spent his life building the Marriott hotel chain. With hotels\u00a0in 87 countries (and counting), it’s come a long way from the 9 stool\u00a0root-beer stand his father C.W. Marriott started\u00a0out with in 1927!<\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t in the hotel industry you may not\u00a0know that Marriott International recently made a USD$13.6 billion acquisition of Starwood hotels -think Sheraton & Westin. It\u2019s been regarded as bold move by industry analysts; one that\u2019s made\u00a0a few people nervous. (I think that’s partly why I was invited along!)<\/p>\n

Change, even change for the better, has a way of stoking anxiety<\/strong>.\"Tweet:<\/a>\u00a0By it’s very\u00a0nature it creates uncertainty and triggers our instinct for self-preservation. How will this change affect me? What if I can’t adapt?\u00a0What if it fails? What if I get left behind? What if….?!<\/em><\/p>\n

The truth is that change is never easy. There’d be far fewer people stuck in jobs they loathe and living lives of quiet desperation and never realizing their\u00a0potential.\u00a0Bill\u00a0Marriott summed it up well:<\/p>\n

“Change is good. Not always easy, but good and necessary. Getting too comfortable with the status quo can set you up for failure.”<\/strong>\"Tweet:<\/a><\/p>\n

If C.W. Marriott had been averse to change, I wouldn’t be writing this today. Not only did he have to change his business mix past root beer to keep his customers coming in over the winter months back in the late 1920’s, but he would never have ventured out of the restaurant business where he’d made a name for himself to open\u00a0the first Marriott motel in 1959. Today Marriott International has over 4,400 hotels with\u00a0several thousand more to join\u00a0the Marriott family when\u00a0the Starwood acquisition is finalized (making it the largest hotelier in the world.) Not bad for a business that began as a soda stand.<\/p>\n

Of course as human beings we are wired to want to stick to what we know we can succeed at, where familiarity is high and\u00a0the risk of messing things up is low. Yet as I wrote in Stop Playing Safe<\/em><\/a>, playing it safe can leave people (and organizations) stagnating, languishing… getting too comfortable for their\u00a0own good. As I have written before, growth and comfort can’t ride the same horse.\u00a0Confidence is like a muscle, if you don’t keep flexing it, you lose it.<\/b>\"Tweet:<\/a><\/p>\n