Marriott: Creating and Succeeding-and Giving Back to the Community By Alan S. Horowitz A man whose family's net worth is about $2 billion, whose employees number more than 130,000, whose last name is prominently displayed on hundreds of buildings and whose business interests literally span the globe, would seem likely to make his company his top priority. Not so with J. W. (Bill) Marriott Jr., chairman of the board and CEO of Bethesda, Maryland-based Marriott International Inc., one of the world's major hotel management companies. And why his company isn't his top priority helps explain his record of taking care of his people and giving back to the community. Marriott is a religious man who devotes 15 to 20 hours a week to work related to his church. His father, J.W. Marriott Sr., when asked by strangers the key to his success, would respond by saying, "Work and prayer." "There's no substitute for hard work," says Marriott of his father's view of success, "and he felt prayer was an important part of his success." Marriott's family upbringing and his religious beliefs have helped him establish clearly defined values and priorities. Business, while important, has its place. When asked how he achieves a balance between his personal and business lives, he says: "I don't have a problem with it. I set my priorities, and I say, 'Family comes first.'" This isn't just talk. When he learned some of his grandchildren (he's got 11) had a Christmas program at school that conflicted with a company board meeting, he was able to move the time of the board meeting and attend both it and his grandchildren's program. When his wife had a big luncheon for a charity she heads and asked him to come, he rearranged his schedule (he had planned to go to Chicago that day) so he could be with his wife. In fact, on Marriott's list of priorities, business doesn't even come in second. "To me family is number one, church is number two and the business is number three. When I take care of the first two of these, then I put all of my extra efforts into the business." He goes on to admit, "This doesn't leave very much time to pursue some things I might like to do from a personal standpoint, but it helps to focus you on the three main objectives, and hopefully you do as good a job as you can with family, church and business." A Record of Philanthropy Marriott's orientation toward giving and family helps explain his and his company's strong track record regarding philanthropy. In February of this year, the company announced a community service and volunteer effort called the "Spirit to Serve Our Communities." It focuses on four key areas. Career opportunities: To help people prepare for work, find jobs and develop careers. Family services: To find solutions to issues that affect personal and work life. Community partnerships: To address critical community needs. Employee involvement: To engage Marriott employees in improving where they live and work. The company has already pledged to introduce 25,000 students from around the world to careers in the hospitality industry over the next five years. The company says it will "reach out to young people at risk who can benefit the most from a helping hand." Recently, Marriott International and The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation donated a new 20-foot refrigerated truck filled with food from the company's vendors to the San Antonio (Texas) Food Bank. The truck will be used to deliver refrigerated products from Marriott and other businesses to hundreds of agencies that feed needy children, families and seniors throughout San Antonio and 21 Texas counties. The company participates in Second Harvest, the largest charitable hunger relief organization in the United States, which distributes surplus food from businesses such as Marriott International to food banks across the country. Born into The Hospitality Industry A slight, unassuming man who looks younger than his 66 years, Marriott was steeped at an early age in the hospitality and restaurant industry. The Marriott family dynasty was started by Marriott Sr., who founded the company in 1927. After leaving his home state of Utah to go on a church mission in Washington, D.C., Marriott Sr. decided those in the sweltering east needed better access to refreshing drinks. From an initial root beer stand that became the Hot Shoppes restaurant chain grew the current Marriott colossus, which numbers more than 1,800 hotels in over 50 countries worldwide. Bill Marriott Jr. was born in 1932 and educated at the University of Utah, where he met his future wife, the former Donna Garff. The couple have four children. Marriott began working for his father about six months after Hot Shoppes opened its first hotel (motel, actually) in 1955 in Arlington, Virginia, and has been with the company ever since. Success has not always been assured. In the early 1990s, as the real estate market tanked and hotel occupancy rates dropped, the company found itself in significant trouble. "We had a huge amount of debt and we were having a liquidity problem, although we never went into bankruptcy," he says. The company quickly worked to cut back on its expenses and weathered the storm. Today it prospers. He attributes his success in skirting disaster at that time to the teamwork he and his managers were able to garner from the company's employees. How did he get the troops to support him? The desire to survive helped. "There's no motivator like fear," he says. He held a meeting with his top 150 or so executives and laid out for them the situation. "Every one of them had stock in the company, and their stock had gone from $40 a share to $8." But that wasn't all. "Even above that," he says, "I think there was pride in the company. They felt good about working here and were anxious to see the company pull out of this dark situation we were in." Instilling pride in one's employees is one of the hallmarks of Marriott's management style. He visits about 200 hotels a year and says he shakes the hands of 50 to 200 employees at every facility while getting his picture taken with most of them. "The only reason to do that is to let them know there's a person with their name on the building who really cares about them, that they're important," he says. He and his company do more than just create photo ops. Employees have access to a telephone resource line they can call and talk to a professional counselor about almost any kind of family, personal, medical or other problem. Reflecting all the foreign nationals who work for the company, counseling is available in 27 languages. To the community at large, the company is working hard to help people get off welfare rolls and and become productive members of society. "We are the number one company in the country in taking people off welfare and putting them to work," says Marriott. The company has set up "Pathways To Independence," a competency-based training program that provides those who have been out of the job market for an extended period of time with opportunities to become productive members of society by joining Marriott's workforce. Working in cooperation with partners, Marriott trains welfare recipients in a combination of classroom instruction and actual occupational experiences. Participants who successfully complete the program receive a full-time job offer, with benefits, at a Marriott business. Not only does a program like this help the community and the individuals involved, it boosts morale of Marriott employees. "This sends a signal throughout the company that this is a company that puts employees first," says Marriott. "And we believe that." He goes on to say: "Money's important, but it's not everything. Everybody can pay money. It's a matter of the climate you develop in your company and the kind of attitude you have towards people, that they're important, that they come first." Attitude Counts The Marriott road to success encompasses more than just treating employees well. Bill Marriott appears to be an astute student of human behavior. The importance of attitude in personal success? "It's 100 percent. I think if you have a positive mental attitude, you can conquer Mt. Everest. With a positive mental attitude, you can run 80 percent [occupancy rate] in your hotels when everybody else is running 65 percent. Eliminate the negatives and accentuate the positives." He recognizes that attitudes are hard to change. "[You] have to want to change [your attitude]," he says. "It has to come from within. It can't come because someone tells you to do it." Though a noted risk-taker himself, Marriott's mentor, his father, was risk averse. "It was very difficult for him to make decisions that involved any kind of risk. Consequently, a lot of things that should have been decided on, he was reluctant to decide on," says Marriott. A story he tells about his father is that when the senior Marriott built his first hotel, he did not want to be personally responsible for the debt of the hotel, so he took the company public, which meant the debt belonged to the company. The result is, according to Marriott, the family now owns 18 percent of the company (which is worth billions), whereas it might own as much as 85 percent had his father not taken the company public when he did.