Talk about a hotbed of true entrepreneurial activity - I recently saw it and felt it at the Ace Hotel in New York City. Think of how the Woodstock rock festival capitalized on a big idea of like-minded, free spirits meeting up with little planning. This 4.5 star Ace Hotel is doing the same for entrepreneurs. It is all happening in the Ace lobby around large tables, sofa circles and side-by-side chairs. The combination of no schedules, no appointments and no rent is the genius idea of the hotel because the entrepreneurs give the hotel such a high vibe and energy that makes your run-of-the-mill business incubators feel like the sterile energy of a cake walk held in a community center. Oh, by the way, Ace is run by creatives and millennials who knock it out of the park with great customer service in a very cool way. No, it doesn't have the intensity of the Ritz culture, but it has the ease of how I might get you a beer or fetch your coat at my home. When I asked for something, they answered with a smile and "sure."
At first I thought maybe Ace rounded up every millennial with a customer service ethic. These people are good at it and they are doing it in a new way. Then, I realized they are just talking the right language with creatives and millenials. On the work table, a nice little sign says, "we love each other but it is best if we keep our eyes on our belongings". Instead of saying, "We are not responsible for theft,” as I see in most parking lots, movie theaters etc. When I got to my room, I quickly realized this new language had spilled over into reimagining what a hotel room is. But that's another blog for another day because what I really got out of my stay at the Ace was a new idea that could help almost every company in America to gain a creative culture similar to what the Ace Hotel and its staff embody and similar to what I saw among numerous companies in their lobby.
I think it is time we have reverse age mentoring. Instead of a bunch of blowhards telling young people what to do - how about having the young people mentoring the old people on how to converse in a social media world. If you are trying to grow a company today and don't understand the creatives and social media conversation, I don't think you have a chance of making it over the long run. Yes, you might bang around and keep it patched up for awhile but you are not going to be your market leader with the kind of exponential thinking that it takes today.
If you hire a marketing agency, a consultant or any service firm, you need to ask them how they have engaged the radically changing world of language, media and shear business communications. Are their leaders receptive to reverse age mentoring? Have they even visited a hot spot like the Ace Hotel? If they answer, "Well, we don't have to because our methodology still works,” then fire them as fast as you can see them. Get that mindset out of our life and business.
Yes, I know that means most consulting agencies are now as obsolete as a grandfather clock. I built my company through the dot com era and out of it. I can tell you a lot of what I knew about leadership is now wrong. The customer service methodology we created for the IT industry would not work today. We greatly emulated what Disney and Ritz did for the consumer and the methodology was implemented by 86% of the Fortune 500, but would be way too formal and intense for today.
The Oxford Center surprised a lot of people when we brought the blog What Now Atlanta under our umbrella. While I liked it as a platform, I went after it mainly because I wanted both the "What Now" thinking and founder of the blog, Caleb J. Spivak, in our company to challenge us and bring the social media conversation.
If your potential service or strategic partners say they have indeed engaged in the radical changes happening in business, then you need to ask them what they changed as a result of it. If they haven't made any changes to leadership, then again don't touch them with a 10-foot pole. They don't get it and probably never will.
