The Four Seasons is a hotel chain catering to luxury stays in medium sized hotels. It is one of the best hotel chain in the world and even if have never stayed there, you should check out the hotel and how it has retained its reputation as one of the best hotels in the world. The chain was started by Isadore Sharp who wrote a book called Four Seasons – the story of a Business Philosophy, Penguin Group, Toronto, 2009. Mr. Sharp outlines the maturing of the nature of the hotel business and how his and chains values and principles became the correct business model for the Four Seasons.

For all companies it is easier to manage when the company profits are growing, but the real question is how does it manage when there is a downturn and seeming stable jobs are threatened by slimming the organization – what happens to the people first values. Mr. Sharp acknowledges there were times when the economy went down, but the company was fortunate it had choices. The fist thing the company did was reaffirm product quality. If you are going to be a world leader, you have to keep quality high in good times as well as bad. Since the hotel business was down, it is a great time to renovate and refurbish the hotels and that was done. An add bonus is in a downturn prices tend to fall and you can still keep your suppliers working.  Another area was marketing, even though they are soft dollars, studies show companies which had not cut back their marketing expanded their market share when the economy picked up.

The company went through its operations and determined different method to simplifying reporting methods and access to the files. The recession is a good time to look at or prospective for new developments as land prices have fallen. The reality is sellers will out number buyers and if you can be a buyer, many opportunities are to be found, including those which you never thought you could afford or new partnerships with some creative thinking can be formed.

Four Seasons went through other downturns and putting people first policy meant communication and more communication comes first, because every employee in the business has a reasonable idea of how the business is doing. Four Seasons moved to a 4 day work week and pooling of jobs – which meant in a hotel there is always many things to do, it means the person may not be in the same department, but there is work to be done. If you believe that service is your industry, the element of trust has to be play a significant role – and as everyone in the world knows trust is easily broken or it takes a great deal of effort to maintain and grow it.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every organization in the world in good times says they are like the Four Seasons, in bad times they are not. If your stocks have been paying a dividend for many years, you know either they are similar to Four Seasons or they have a monopoly or monopoly like conditions which it matters less. If those conditions are maintained, those working for the company will be relatively loyal because it is profitable company. When economies go through downturns it tests the way companies are run because it often times means job cuts. In a service economy the big expense is employees; what does a company do or not do? Ideally it can still pay the bills and look for opportunities because if they do not get them in the downturn they may never get them. If you buy dividend paying stocks that have paid and even raised their dividends over the years, the income will allow you options in the downturn and the up turns in the economy.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.