“I have felt your pain,” related the CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality at the DPHA Annual Conference held in late October in Phoenix (see related Editorial). Existing economic conditions are déjà vu all over again to Chip Conley. In 2001, Conley saw his own company on the brink of bankruptcy. The dotcom implosion caused the revenue of his chain of California boutique hotels to drop by more than 60%.

Sound familiar?

With guest nights plummeting, Joie De Vivre’s problems were compounded by the fact that 80% of its reservations were made online or through hotel Web sites that charged commissions.

Conley realized then that the same old tactics and business approaches would not enable his company to survive.

Our industry is facing similar challenges. The forecast is cloudy at best. In the Washington, DC region, there is an 8.2-year supply of condominiums, according to research firm Delta Associates. This figure is telling because the national capital area is one of the stronger economies in the nation.

So, what are we to do? We must capitalize on the lessons Conley’s experiences teach, because we cannot afford to go to market using the same tools we have relied upon in the past.

Developing the Calling

Depressed in 2001, Conley left his office and went to the bookstore. Instead of browsing through the business section, he turned to the psychology racks and became reacquainted with Abraham Maslow. In studying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Conley determined that he could apply those principles to his business operations and developed three distinct hierarchies for his employees, his customers and his investors.

Conley discovered that most employees either have a job, a career or a calling. The lowest rung of the employee pyramid is a job that fulfills basic needs of security and food. Employees who look at their positions as a job view what they do daily simply as a way to pay the bills.

The middle rung of Conley’s employee pyramid is recognition. “Recognition is about not only knowing someone’s name but also their talents, goals and dreams.” The middle rung finds those in an organization who have elected to pursue a career. They find “great motivation in the way they are recognized at work,” Conley writes in Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. “Yet, outside rewards and recognition can wear out as motivators over the course of a long career, because there’s a certain level of compliance required. More and more people are finding that they need something that feels more internally generated as their infuser of energy.”