EP #19 | BRAD DEAN | Road to CEO with Will Marlow

[Music] you're listening to road to ceo nothing but in-depth interviews with executives about their journeys as ceo i'm your host will marlowe and i hope you enjoy the show if you haven't gone through some dramatic transformation you've missed an opportunity and you're almost guaranteed to be less effective than before [Music] welcome back to road to ceo i'm here today with brad dean the ceo of discover puerto rico he's going to talk to us about what it's been like to lead the branding and tourism marketing for an extremely popular tourist destination during some very challenging times brad thank you so much for joining us hey will bienvenidos welcome from puerto rico great to be with you it's awesome to have you and so where are you in puerto rico right now i am sitting in the historic city of old san juan that's where our offices are uh it's a city it just turned 500 years old so when i leave my uh my semi-high tech office i walk out on cobblestone streets that you know one day christopher columbus and ponce de leon were strolling over so always a reminder of the the history and the culture that's in this island and it keeps me very centered on what's most important when it comes to promoting tourism that's fascinating yet i think there are probably very few cities in the in the in the continental us that are that that are that old it is definitely one of the oldest cities in the united states and one of the things that really makes puerto rico unique is this rich vibrant culture in history literally you know five centuries or more of recorded history all throughout the island you don't typically think of that when you think of puerto rico yeah but it's really one of the most differentiating points for our island especially for visitors who are looking to do something more than just relax on a beach so as we get started here why don't we start at the beginning can you tell us what is discover puerto rico how long has it been around what's the mission well discover puerto rico was formed in 2018 where a non-profit entity with one mission and that is to promote tourism to puerto rico and we believe in the transformative power of travel and not simply generate economic impact but to shape communities and change lives and 2018 as you might recall puerto rico was coming out of what was at that time the worst uh you know natural crisis in the history of the united states hurricanes irma and maria had devastated puerto rico what people often forget is just a couple years before that puerto rico had been shut down with the zika virus so you go through this this major health care crisis then a major natural disaster and we were formed to help lead the island out of the uh the depths of that disaster and bring tourism back at the same time we were created in a wave of privatization the governor and the government at that time recognized that they probably had too much centralized activity in the government so we were bringing a new model a private sector-led organization lots of new strategies and trying to come out of the depths of some severe crises and as you know today the records are being set tourism has led the recovery in puerto rico so it's been an interesting ride for four years but one that has reinforced just how resilient the island and its people are but also how important travel and tourism is to economic recovery that's fantastic is so um is that a common model for tourism marketing so you know for tourism in other cities in the u.s or other states do they have is it private is it privately funded or is it government-run yeah the the traditional model which you see a lot in the united states and canada and at times other parts of the world is a it's kind of a public private partnership so typically most destination marketing organizations dmos as we often refer to ourselves are funded with some allotment of public funding usually it's a hotel tax and that's a natural incentive of course to grow tourism if we're funded by the taxes tourists pay and that's a very common model throughout our industry and in many cases you have a local board of directors maybe some hoteliers or restauranteurs this is people who are involved in the industry for various reasons puerto rico had never used that model for decades the tourism promotion had been largely politicized so typically it was you know part of a new administration when a new governor would be re-elected or elected to office they would bring in people you know from their campaign and others to run tourism and it worked for the politicos it was disastrous for tourism because what we ended up with is a constantly changing brand and strategy we don't re-elect governors very often in puerto rico i think the last governor was re-elected in the 90s so just imagine if every four years mcdonald's fired michael jordan got rid of the golden arches changed their menu you and i would never know what to expect when we pull up the drive-through and what we found coming out of hurricane maria was the brand of puerto rico wasn't so much uh negative it was neutral people knew we were an island they knew we were related to the united states beyond that they really truly didn't understand a lot about puerto rico so amidst this major challenge of recovery after a natural disaster we also had to build a brand so we started with this model which is more common in the united states it brings the private sector together but we obviously work very closely with the public sector and the intent is to make certain that we're not only building the brand for the future but delivering the results for the bottom line today okay so this does bring you more in line with the way other locations can other destinations can be marketed maybe not exactly the same but it is you know the word privatization sometimes i think catches people a little bit and they maybe have some negative connotations but it's a model that really is very strong it is it's a it's a very um well-tested successful model it's been used in many communities particularly throughout the mainland us and will you make an interesting point when you talk about privatization in puerto rico there's a long list of stories that haven't always ended well and so one of the challenges for us and particularly for me as a leader coming from the outside in was to specifically and clearly communicate who we are what we're doing and what we're about and not fall to the prey of those who have a fear of privatization because they've heard it didn't work or they know examples of where it didn't work but at the end of the day every destination marketing organization is a little unique based upon its industry makeup its community and one of the challenges for us has been and frankly for me as a leader is to not just be really good at telling the world about puerto rico we've had to challenge ourselves to get really good at telling the puerto rico about its dmo okay so what tell me what is a george bailey moment you know if you've watched the movie it's a wonderful life george bailey the main character in that movie which seems to run in on endless loops during the holidays uh you've got this guy who gets into a midlife crisis he's in a job he never wanted uh living in a community never wanted to live in not doing anything that he had aspired to do and he hits this midlife crisis he's about to take his own life and this angel in training named clarence shows up changes everything around shows george bailey what the world would have been like without it and he realizes he's had this tremendous impact lives have been saved and lives have been enriched because of him and for me that's exactly what we experienced in 2020 it was our george bailey moment the world stopped traveling and we had to see unfortunately what it was like without travel without meetings without conferences and conventions and well i got to tell you it wasn't a pretty picture i think all of us really appreciated the importance of meeting face to face and gathering the importance of being able to travel the importance of being able to to see family and friends in person and hey listen zoom and teams and all these virtual connections are super convenient and very helpful but you can't build an economy and sustain our future on virtual connections so for a lot of us in the travel and tourism industry the pandemic was our george bailey moment when we realized what the world was like without us and i think it's given us some swagger some confidence to know that as we lead this recovery i think of it as the great recovery you know we've read about the great depression we lifted the great recession we're in the great recovery of travel and tourism right now it's fueled in part by recognizing what we went through and of course we don't ever want to go through it again but i think it's made a lot of us me in particular much more appreciative and cognizant of those other benefits beyond the taxes beyond the job creation beyond the economic impact the true intrinsic benefit of travel and tourism and and if that's a lesson that we had to learn going through a pandemic so be it but i hope we don't ever have to learn it again you and me both i i know for my company you know i run an ad agency and for my company i lost about 30 of my revenue you know overnight uh i think was march 11th you know when the when the wa i think that was the date the who declared the global pandemic and and you know accounts started getting shut down and paused and all of that so losing 30 percent overnight was challenging what was it like for you i would imagine it would be i can't even imagine how challenging that would have been yeah you know i mean the numbers tell the story and that you know we we went from what was really going to be an all-time record year for tourism in puerto rico it was like jamming the brakes on when you're going 65 miles an hour down the interstate i mean we literally just stopped but i think what made it really difficult for me particularly in a leadership perspective was two things one is we had to just be vulnerable and honest with our team i i didn't know is this going to last a couple of weeks a couple of months had no idea we'd be talking about it here in 2022 so the uncertainty of not only not knowing what was going to happen but not knowing uh that you don't know what's going to happen it was just uh they really put a lot of intense pressure on us and of course that becomes a very human discussion right it's not just about the number of visitors the number of visitors means are we going to be able to sustain your job are we going to be able to keep our organization afloat the other thing is that it went exactly against our dna and you can appreciate this being a promoter the last thing anyone in travel and tourism marketing ever wants to do is say stop traveling you know don't come here that just completely runs counter to what we would normally do but we had to train ourselves to recognize that look one of the ways we're going to come out of this is maintaining the trust of the consumer the meeting planner the traveler and the only way we're going to be able to maintain your trust is to be honest and straight up and transparent so we went from promoting tourism saying come visit us to saying it's not quite time all in good time we're going to be here when you're ready and when it's time to travel and we really focused on just becoming the single best resource for information about what was going on we said look if we can't invite people to come let's at least lay the groundwork for the recovery and the longer that went the better off i think we benefited but i gotta tell you it was tough it just challenged everything in me as a promoter as a tourism leader and an organizational leader and but i also will say this we found a lot of opportunities coming out of this and uh i think it's it's it's creating winners and losers it's challenging those of us who you know had traditionally operated by certain guidelines and strategies to rethink a lot of what we've done so in some ways it's become an exciting opportunity but boy oh boy the casualties involved not only the physical health casualties that we've seen friends and family and community members suffer but the impact on organizations like yours and ours i hope you're enjoying road to ceo it would be great if you took a moment to subscribe either on the youtube page or wherever you happen to be listening to the podcast and if you really liked the show it would be great if you leave us a 5 star rating and write a review on apple podcast this will help more people discover the show which will help us make more episodes secondly i want to give a shout out to roykoo.com which is our sponsor for the road to ceo podcast royko.com provides a black belt style certification program for people who want to learn how to do google ads seo and google analytic 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the will marlow agency and so we love the program and it has made onboarding new team members much easier and faster and it also ensures that everyone on our team has an excellent baseline of knowledge for managing paid advertising campaigns so head over to royko.com and either check out the free training lessons there or sign up for the black belt program now back to the show yeah yeah so so i'd like to dig into this so um so in turn so uh was there one moment when you realized that you had to shut down you had to was it or was it gradual did you what was that like you know in terms of just getting that word out and making the decision that kova's not going away it's uh it's something we've got to deal with so we've got to start changing that message and telling people not to come yeah you know the the first time it hit me really i was actually uh packing bags for a trip a major trade show that takes place every year in europe and we of course knew about covet and and it seemed to be spreading at that point it just barely reached the west coast of the united states and it really hit me when i got the notice that this major trade show that's been going on for decades was shutting down and of course it was a couple weeks later when the men's final four basketball tournament you know closed down as well and it became a bit of a surreal experience for all of us but i'll tell you what really hit me as a leader is we we had already established a pretty robust crisis communication plan our team along with our public relations agency catch them out of new york have worked extensively on this and because puerto rico had dealt with the zika virus we at least had a little bit of a glimpse into what you might have to deal with in terms of uh you know some kind of a viral or communicative disease although nobody could have been really prepared for covet and what we've seen so there was at least some thought process and i have a real simple premise i use during every crisis i learned this in my previous job myrtle beach south carolina where we frequently dealt with hurricanes and tropical storms everybody on your team has a role during a crisis but everybody's role changes so we set expectations you might be a graphic designer by day but during the crisis you're reaching out to members so we try to re-establish that so for you know two three four weeks we were solid because we knew that we had to be reactive and responsive at that point primarily just you know tracking information and trends and sharing that but then it hit me the longer this started to go on the more i realized revenues are going to be impacted and let's face it our job is to promote travel and tourism if you can't travel to puerto rico what are we doing we made a decision at the time it was a little controversial i know some people questioned it and thought i'd lost my mind we said we're going to do two things number one we're not gonna lay anybody off we're not gonna furlough um we're gonna keep you as long as we can the second thing is we're not gonna go dark we're not gonna shut down now we can't really promote tourism by inviting people to come right now but let's put a premium on maintaining that relationship with clients and customers and travelers let's stay top of mind and my thought was just simple that you know the longer this goes on the more demand there's going to be pent up the more we want to stay in front of you know the potential travelers and meeting planners and those who are bringing business to the island what i didn't realize is how many of my peers were going to shut down so we became you know one of the few voices at a time when many were not out there but we had to rethink it so for example you know we couldn't invite meeting planners to come visit us and bring conferences and conventions so we sent them packages of puerto rican coffee and said hey if you've got to be stuck at home sequestered you know in your home in your bedroom your office at least enjoy a good cup of coffee and while we weren't directly selling puerto rico what we were doing is helping our coffee farmers uh maintaining the conversation with our clients and because puerto rico has a number of coffee haciendas that you can visit and see how coffee is harvested and roasted we said this is going to be a great experience for you when you are able to travel back that decision that early on kind of fueled our team to come up with some creative ideas uh you know one example is our team said well we don't have much of a budget but we do have research that tells us what people are going to want to do when the pandemic is lifted let's go create an a an episodic series of content about puerto rico's culture that focuses on what people are going to be looking for and with a very low budget all the production and talent in-house our team actually ended up winning three emmys with this sounds like puerto rico series we would never have created that in a normal environment so i think a lot of it goes back to two strategies number one we told our team for as long as we can keep you employed we're gonna do it second your roles are changing our measurements are changing but let's stay top of mind with our consumers and i think that fueled some creativity and the innovative approach that laid the groundwork for what two years later has turned out to be a record recovery for puerto rico that's that's fantastic and i want to get into that recovery but can you lay can you tell me the timeline here so around march 2020 it sounds like you started changing your message adapting people's roles and kind of thinking through you know how to how to stay relevant during this crisis is that right so was that essentially march how long did that last well for the first 90 days it was just that and really nothing more you know honestly we we weren't sure uh and we had to start managing cash flow and all of those concerns just like everyone else had by about august september of that year we realized that it's going to be a while i mean we were going to be probably the tail end of the recovery uh there were a lot of people talking about when they could travel they probably stay in close so we really focused in on who are the most likely targets to come and late in 2020 early in 2021 we started to see some travel come back now here in puerto rico we had some pretty stringent health and safety protocols in place including some [Music] extensive screening at the airport and while that was a barrier to travel we turned into an opportunity and said look nobody is doing what we're doing at the airport um you know you're going to be safe let's create a bit of a biological barrier here in puerto rico and what that did is it allowed us to put ourselves sort of in a class of being if if not elite at least unique in terms of how we were managing that so once the governor did begin to lift restrictions in 2021 we were able to go out uh in about february march time frame and start to beat the drums again and say now is the time to come back so you know it started for about three months we just had to do nothing but kind of pull back on our messaging and rethink the strategies and then for the next nine months we were laying the groundwork and we figured the longer this last the more important it's going to be when people start traveling when we started promoting in 2021 there was a huge upsurge in travel and it turned out 2021 ended up being our all-time record year with more visitation and higher yields than ever before but then we went right back into it with omicron and so we just had to break out the book again and went right back through this and so it's really been you know two years of start and stop starting to stop but one of the lessons learned for me as a leader is if if you don't limit your people um in in other words you give them unlimited opportunities not limited budget but i love an opportunity to shine what we've seen is some of our team has stepped up in ways we never thought that they could we wouldn't have expected them to do it and i've seen the same thing from an organizational standpoint if i look at the winners and losers in travel and tourism right now it's not the usual suspects that are winning and a lot of success i think has been destinations that have stepped back re-thought their strategy and been super responsive to consumer trends and that's probably a lesson learned for all of us going forward you don't just have to go through a crisis to do that we continually have to rethink and reevaluate and reposition all the while stay mindful what people are really looking for in a travel experience that's a great story about getting through covet as an organization now did i hear you right that you get a lot of your revenue from hotel taxes or is that other organizations that's correct that's pretty typical for dmos and and our funding comes from a portion of the taxes that visitors pay to hotels uh overall it's about two percent of the tax allotment that visitors generate so you know for puerto rico uh you know it's it's a multi-billion dollar economic impact hundreds of millions of dollars of tax collections which fund schools and roads and bridge construction and law enforcement and then we put a little bit back in the till to promote tourism so we can keep the tourism engine running yeah okay so then so then that money would have dried up for the most part for some time yeah yeah and we you know we ran on a base budget of next to nothing for a while we made our team a priority and and hey listen some people were i know we're going to watch this and say yeah i had to cut people and and in some cases you just couldn't avoid it we did get to a point we just didn't have enough work for everybody but in our case we recognized that a relatively young organization and knowing we weren't going to be putting a lot of money into media that the best resource we had the best opportunity we had to lead the recovery was our team and i also had to be mindful of my stakeholders you know it's a non-profit whose role is to grow tourism i have to measure my impact by my partners so when hotels are laying off their sales staff that was all the more reason for me to keep sales people on board so we just tried to realign our priorities saying we're going to get people in place not just because we felt it was the right thing to do because we needed them we wouldn't be spending a lot in paid advertising and media we weren't going to have a lot of public relations fam trips we weren't going to be doing a lot of press conferences the website wasn't going to change over a lot let's just be really really good and transparent at providing the information people need so they know what's happening in terms of health and safety protocols and the status of the island let's be really good at staying in front of our customers our clients and travelers and let's be really creative and you know it's amazing when you tell your team you got no budget but here's the objective sometimes when you're back to the wall is exactly when uh you step up and shine the most and we're seeing it now today with record revenues record visitation and maybe the most important statistic of all today coming out of the pandemic more people employed in leisure and hospitality than ever before in the history of puerto rico so we saw it with hurricane maria we saw it after the earthquakes we've seen it after the pandemic when you unite and resolve and stay behind the right strategy and you do the right things and you put the right people in place great things can happen especially in travel and tourism so so tell me about this recovery so it is so obvious so it's it's a record year um and you know or you know i'll tell you what actually let me i want to back up for a moment so i want to make sure i i don't forget this other question so uh so you lost revenue um you cut expenses activities went down but did you cut were there any alternative sources of revenue were there any was there any was did that become a factor were you were you able to get funding from to fill the gaps in any ways or was it just sort of leaning down and trying to really you know make it through as best you could we really didn't i mean in a uh in a normal environment you know you would look to your private sector partners to step up but in the travel and tourism industry they were struggling so they couldn't you know fund a promotional agency and obviously we all know when one really important premise of good fiscal management is having reserves unfortunately because we were a new organization we hadn't been able to build up reserves and being funded largely by hotel taxes it just wasn't feasible early on especially keep in mind we were coming out of a major natural disaster so we really did we just had to focus on what money we had reserved or built up and then we knew there would be continue to be a little bit of residual money coming in uh because there's always a delay in our our flow so you know we're funded today with money that was paid by visitors a few months ago but i will tell you will as a leader that created so much uncertainty for me because i'm a numbers guy and and i like to know where things are going i don't like surprises and so i was really flying you know on the premise that we may not have money to operate 90 days from now but we're very honest and transparent with our team and our point to our partners in the public and private sector was hey today tourism is not there but you're going to need us more than ever before our mission is probably more relevant than ever before and i got to say this the government of puerto rico was there with us and when things did start to ramp back up when we were able to go out there with a message the federal government had stepped in and helped the government of puerto rico so we were able to put a little bit of money in to get the engine restarted and that really helped us launch this full-scale recovery that has turned into record-setting performance so so okay so now let's let's hear about the the current performance so it seems like more people than ever are coming to puerto rico and enjoying vacations and and tourism is is booming is that you know what can you tell us about that yeah the numbers have just been historic i mean it's more visitors than ever before we're seeing longer lengths of stay the average spend is significantly higher than what it was which of course is generating more tax collections all of this aligns with what you would expect being on an island that we're seeing more traffic at our airport than in any recent year and as i mentioned earlier maybe the most important number is employment has come back strong now a couple things that are important to note and keep in mind is that we are seeing significant shifts in the base of travelers who's traveling why they're traveling and where they're coming from one of the most exciting changes for us is seeing a broader reach into the midwestern u.s and even the western united states historically puerto rico is pulled from east coast you know states like new york and florida we still pull a lot of visitors there but we're broadening our reach and becoming more of a national destination and part of that's fueled by new air service so even in the midst of a pandemic being able to increase your outreach bring visitors from new markets add more air service i think is in part due to the fact we didn't close down during the pandemic and also we took a much different strategy and this actually began when we opened in 2018 historically puerto rico had promoted itself as a beach destination and we do have some beautiful beaches but so does every other caribbean island puerto rico saying it has beautiful beaches it's kind of like las vegas saying we have big casinos we know you got that tell me what i don't know so we had really been focusing on what differentiated our brand the art the history the music the dance and the fact that there were 78 communities uh beyond you know that san juan which of course is the historic capital 77 other communities that have great amenities so we had already been working towards that and one of the things we saw during this historic recovery is more visitor dispersion than ever before visitors coming and visiting places that they didn't even know they could go to the uh the thermal baths in kuama which ponce de leon thought was a fountain of youth the longest zip line in the western hemisphere which is in the center part the mountain region coffee haciendas the historic city of ponce the surfing and rincon so people were beginning to experience more puerto rico well naturally you'd expect that means longer stays and more spending so it's really been a change in the visitor base change in behaviors and i got to give our team credit they have been uber responsive to these changes and we may not always be ahead of them but we're certainly reacting to what we're seeing another change we recognized and this was sort of solving a problem but the problem became the opportunity is that uh you can appreciate this midway through the pandemic depending on where you live your expectation of what the to what you were going to experience in puerto rico might differ if you were coming from a state where mass mandates were common and social distancing was strictly enforced your expectations might be different than say a state where there was no mass mandate and they weren't social distancing and and we certainly saw that and our message was clear we want you to come we want you to enjoy our island but we do want you to respect the laws and and the guidelines and it made us focus on what we called at that time the responsible traveler the traveler who's looking to enjoy and get out get away from home but they're going to follow the rules we didn't want to create a conflict by bringing visitors who wouldn't adhere to the local standards that actually enlightened us a bit and it's carried forward in our marketing even today where we're really uh emphasizing a relationship with the conscientious traveler the traveler who wants to connect in a deep way with the destination wants to leave a destination better than they found it so again it's one of those situations where out of challenge comes opportunity and if you're in tuned to that and looking for that you can innovate even in the midst of a really serious crisis that's interesting so that's that sounds like a very desirable travel traveler to to appeal to so that that's one of the things that came out of of covid to a certain extent it is and it um and it we didn't let it be limited by covet it came from that but it actually i think fueled some of the innovation and creativity within our marketing team uh as we began to reposition our brand coming out of that of course during the pandemic it was all about you know first it's not time to travel then it's time to plan then it was time to travel but now that we we're beyond it we've set records and we're building based on that we've kind of repositioned our brand uh the new positioning is what we refer to as is live more request was a familiar friendly collegial term that referring to people of puerto rican birth or descent but to us it's more than just a sign of our heritage it's it's a lifestyle it's it's a it's a mindset we want people to to not just visit as a vacation we want them to get a little taste of what it's like to live the puerto rican lifestyle and i think that that kind of deep connection with travelers really made us step back and rethink how do we promote travel and it's ultimately based on a question do we live to travel or do we travel to live and if you could connect with people on that level we just think this is an opportunity not only to expand market share and maybe you know enter new spaces we can redefine a new space at traveler now i know that sounds bold but we're just crazy enough to think we can pull that off so liberia was really about elevating puerto rico as not just a great island destination but a lifestyle and we think it's a lifestyle that many people want and need to connect to in this moment so every industry is a little different and in some industries um there will be a lot of communication between ceos of of competing organizations and competing destinations perhaps in this case would during the covid crisis did you did you talk to other leaders other tourism leaders outside of puerto rico you know or is that something that maybe is is less common in your space no it's very common in our space i i refer to as friendly competition especially when you get into the meetings and convention side or destinations where you're always bumping up against each other going after the same travelers we see that here in the caribbean you know where there's there's certainly competition amongst the islands but even when we get into some segments of travel where we're competing with our friends in the mainland and and generally it's a very collegial relationship but i found during the pandemic not only was i talking to them more frequently in part because we had a lot more time to talk didn't we right but also um you know one of the tests for me as a leader was to be more vulnerable and not only with my team but with my peers i mean you know hey let's face it ceos we we want to have all the answers we'll look to to have the answers or at least ask the right questions when you don't know what to expect tomorrow and you can't predict what's going to happen with protocols and safety much less the airlines the cruise lines is it just an environment of deep massive uncertainty and for most of us who are in leadership role is not a place that we're comfortable being we want to clear up that confusion right we want to end the chaos and i found myself really having just honest frank uh open-heart discussions with a lot of my peers i also tried to be encouraging because i'd been through enough crises especially here in puerto rico where we had seen more than a few challenges and i recognized for some of my peers they hadn't really been tested in the way that we were being tested so i always looked to you know i felt during the pandemic uh a ceo uh that often meant chief encouragement officer so encouraging our team encouraging our partners encouraging my peers and also listening to what they were doing and you know our space while there's a lot of innovators uh let's face it you know we're all doing much the same thing we don't necessarily do it the same way so we were watching each other very closely to see what are you doing what's your team trying what's working what's not and i think it probably strengthened a lot of relationships that were already there but we got to know each other in different ways and you know one of the things i will say about the virtual meeting scenarios i got more familiar with people's children their pets their artistic preferences than ever before by seeing you know peeking into their uh their personal life on zoom calls and i think that helped me also get to know some of my peers in a different way yeah i think the yeah i think we all probably can relate to to that deeper level of connection that did ironically come out of these zoom meetings and all of that stuff from my perspective a lot of that i think will carry forward forever you know we'll be doing you know even though we do things in person now we also do quite a bit still on zoom and and over virtual meetings and i imagine that's going to continue uh do you think that those changes you know in terms of you being a more vulnerable leader that sort of thing is that a change that is a permanent change in your opinion or is it something that you're you'll you know was was right for that time but maybe not moving forward i think it has to be i i think as a leader if you haven't gone through some dramatic transformation you've missed an opportunity and you're almost guaranteed to be less effective than before no certainly there's some behaviors and habits and and protocols that we use to get through it but i think one of the lessons this taught me particularly on the mental health level i would pretty commonly you know see somebody i knew before and say how you doing but i wasn't really asking that question to know now i'm asking it and i really want to know i also think it really challenged us to not only manage with empathy which is always an important balance for me i'm driven by results i'm very results-oriented but we have to lead with empathy as well is recognizing some of the challenges that i probably didn't appreciate i have two you know adult children i can't imagine what it was like with a young child where you're part-time professional part-time homeschooler uh with some of our staff who are caregivers for parents or grandparents uh the challenges and balancing this were extraordinary and i don't know that i really truly appreciated that so shame on me if i don't carry that forward uh you know as a leader now there's some things you know we're all wrestling with remote work and where does that go uh so i think there's some things we've we've adapted to that we'll maybe moderate or tweak going are coming out of this but on a personal level i would hope that looking back on my career people will note that one of the things that changed about brad dean as a leader is willing to be more vulnerable willing to connect on a human level maybe more frequently or more readily and also being mindful of all of those other you know balancing priorities that that come into play that probably became more apparent during the pandemic yeah i think that's great i've always one of the things that really excites me is building a high performance team and i i feel similarly to you that that building a high performance team you know i got better at that during cove at least i i think i did i tried to and i think that a lot of the empathy that we were uh kind of in a position to to remember to deepen i think that really made a big difference in my own leadership style as well well for certain and listen when you go through any crisis especially like what we've been through the past couple of years it should change you right it it must change you and uh when you when you go through a crisis you know you're going to deal with things that you just can't control but you can control how you react and respond and not everybody's uh trained and programmed to do that the same way and so that's one of the things i found was you know helping encouraging but also it was incredibly important to be transparent and clear and and i found myself over commuting things i don't know if that was the zoom era where it was just uh maybe i don't feel as comfortable communicating virtually as i did in person or maybe it was just the confusion and the chaos that we felt like we were dealing with constantly but i found that that really i couldn't say the the necessary messages enough i had to continually repeat him and reinsert him and you know as a leader set the goal even when you don't know exactly you know what's going to happen when you're going to come out of this we always reminded our team that what you were doing was important before it's even more important now and we can look back now with record results and and see that that was the case so did you always want to be ceo of an organization i didn't set out necessarily to be ceo i've always viewed leadership as both a tremendous responsibility but also tremendous privilege i mean as leaders we have the opportunity and the privilege and the responsibility to positively impact people's lives their livelihood their communities and indirectly their families and their future and so i've always been drawn to that the title for me uh doesn't matter i've been a general manager i've been a cfo i've been the ceo uh my first leadership responsibility i think was in second grade when mrs holmes taught me to be class leader and i just i always found that leadership to be a great privilege and responsibility and if it comes with the title of ceo that's great uh i've always found too i think when people get more focused on title than than impact and responsibility it can be that can it can certainly be a distraction and here in puerto rico given the fact that it's a new organization a new model i'm just hoping people call me a friend and a partner and whatever the other titles they want to give me is fine so um was was kovid was that the most difficult challenge that you've had so far in your career and this could be going back before uh before leading discover puerto rico was that the most difficult or or were there any others that maybe maybe passed that even no i think this one just because of the scope the scale and the impact it's had on you know the the i mean from the lives that have been lost to the families that have lost people and it couldn't be with them in the end to the constant ongoing uh uncertainty and challenge and and then throw into that the um you know the politicizing of this and and the the sharp divisive lines have been drawn i think this has tested being a leader as a leader in ways that never had now i've dealt with you know a number of crises i mean wildfires and hurricanes earthquakes and uh even you know shootings and and those hold some unique challenges in themselves but at least you know in situations like those you know there's an incoming and you can usually foresee it now it may not happen quick enough or soon enough the way you want this one i think because of the prolonged nature of it and just the uncertainty that was there especially you know as we began to get out of it and then saw a resurgence with the variants uh certainly made this one a unique test and for us here in puerto rico we went through the zika virus and then the hurricanes and then earthquakes and and then the pandemic so we've been no stranger to crisis but but yet i look around and i see resiliency and and strength in puerto rico that to me is inspiring and i think one of the things that we did early on and i'd like to think this was a brilliant visionary decision but i can't take credit for that we hired for culture we weren't sure because we were an organization how much political influence would be you know we would be facing uh to hire you know someone's friend or relatives or or uh business partners so we made a rule early on when we were building our staff in 2018 we said look before i interview anybody before any of our management team interviews anybody we're going to use a firm that's going to do independent screening and they're going to do two screens one is going to be a skills test the other is going to be a culture test so by the time i interview them i'm going to know that they're a fit for the job and a fit for the organization i'd never done this before but we did it to kind of insulate the process it became one of the best decisions that we've we've made as an organization and i've made as a leader because what it did is it assured that we got people who had very consistent values and one of the values that we look for was the ability to overcome adversity now in my mind that was because we were coming back from a hurricane i had no idea that that was prepping our team and helping us staff our team to be prepared for what we knew or what would eventually become uh some very challenging crises so it's reinforced to me the importance of hiring for culture the importance of making sure your values are not just words in them and the annual report and on the wall but words you live by and hiring for that and i don't think i will ever staff an organization again without being cognizant of the culture that we're hiring for the values that we're living by and the need to have people who have overcome adversity in their personal life for their professional life because that's not something you have time to train for in the midst of a crisis i think that's fascinating and i talked to very few ceos that that talk about hiring for culture i do that myself and i agree with you completely once you start doing that it you see this amazing benefit from it and i can't i also can't imagine going back to to the day when i used to hire without really having that framework yeah i've had this debate with some of my peers who say yeah but you know if you hire talent you hire skills people will acclimate to the culture hey it doesn't usually work that way and i'll tell you the opportunity dismissed if you don't do it is we've all made bad hiring decisions right we've all hired somebody to say gosh i wish you could have that one over what i found is when you define the culture and live by it make that very clear when you make those bad hiring decisions those people who aren't a fit they figure it out sooner than anyone else so oftentimes it saves you those hard discussions and those difficult decisions down the road and we've had that happen and thankfully not very often but on the rare occasion that somebody you know gets through the hiring process and then realizes this is not for me they want to leave oftentimes before you're showing them the door so i would never go back to it before it wasn't something i had done historically and i probably would have argued against this point a few years ago but because we did it because it's worked so well and i've seen the impact uh not only on the results of the organization uh and the potential performance that we're curating but also we're nurturing a team that has some instant bonding and natural team building and when you hire the right people and they align with the values it makes it so much easier for people to find their passion and their purpose intersecting and you can do that in your organization there's no doubt you're going to accomplish great things yeah i agree completely and i always think about how you know i think it's a pretty commonly accepted position that people enjoy being around people who are similar to them or who share similar values and so when you hire people who share similar values you're creating an environment where people are more likely to get along they're more likely to enjoy their co-workers you know and and so for me i run an organization that really is a services business and so for me having people who are happy having people who are you know who who cooperate well with one another and who help each other out um that creates this tremendous uh uh you know dynamic that starts to really propel the speed of movement and so i can't you know so for a services business i can't imagine you know hiring only for skills you know you really i mean obviously you've got to have the skills but skills plus culture is just such an amazing combination yeah and you don't have to decide between the two i think right what you prioritize really determines uh your approach and i think ultimately uh if if you don't do it it limits yourself but hey at the end of the day uh the results are speak for themselves and uh unity creates a sense of community community will breed that collaboration that cooperation and you know you don't hire clones you hire unique people who do bring some uh some of the uniqueness and their own values into the workplace but when you can hire a team that are already aligned with the values uh it makes it so much easier not only to live by those but to build around those and that's what we found here at discover puerto rico is it we didn't necessarily do it thinking that it was going to have that impact but it certainly has so i would never do it differently going forward yeah that that's really fascinating um so i always like to ask are there any things that you really wish you had had known differently or done differently when you started out i imagine maybe this is one of them the hiring for culture but uh any anything stand out to you that you know going back years in your in your career that that maybe you didn't didn't know that that you've now is really a big part of your your career yeah well i think you framed it the right way i i'm a big believer you just you don't live with regrets right there's there's a reason why the the rear view mirror is this big and the windshield is that big we need to be driving our lives looking forward but i but we all fail we all have things we would do differently and as long as you're failing forward right john maxwell docks if you're always failing forward by learning and growing then that's okay and there's some things certainly that i wish i had learned earlier in my career and when i talk to younger leaders who are looking for mentors or just you know yearning for knowledge i always offer this to them because i think it was when i lessons i learned that really made me a better leader the one is change happens through people it doesn't happen at people it doesn't happen around people if you really want to affect change whether it's in your home your relationships your workplace your community it happens through people and that can be slow sometimes that can be messy it may be some start and stop uh but i learned at one point in my career i learned that if i'm really going to affect long-term lasting change it has to happen to people i also early on in my career i went as a manager i was taught about the importance of delegation i worked for a large organization that drilled this into us and delegation is important delegation responsibility is certainly important we get swamped uh if we're not but i think it's not enough to delegate responsibility you also have to delegate ownership and one of the the qualities i think in my leadership that's evolved over the years is when i realized that i would create a lot more buy-in and a lot more inspired passionate work by giving people ownership not just delegating the responsibility here's what you're going to do but giving them ownership and giving kpis that don't just measure performance that they inspire and motivate then i really started to see something change in the organizations i was leading not only did we get better at what we do we began to eclipse the performance of our competitors exceed the expectations of our stakeholders and the development potential of people rose now that was me changing so obviously you know that was me as a leader lifting the lid on them and so i'm a big proponent of not simply delegating responsibility delegating ownership where you can and then i don't think we can say it enough i didn't focus on communication skills early in my career and i realized more and more the leader and saw it especially during the pandemic that uh as a leader you have to be crystal clear and consistent in communications and that's not about giving speeches it's not uh you know about being able to stand of a big audience i mean you might be doing that but it's about being able to have that one-on-one and build true trusting relationships which often starts with the ability to not only clearly consistently deliver a message but to be a great listener and to earn people's trust and respect and pay that back and um those are easy lessons to speak of they sometimes take you know hard painful lessons to learn but those are the three things i think as i could go back early on in my career as a leader that i would probably force feed myself because once i really internalized those it not only made me more effective as a leader it impacted my team and the people around me and as leaders ultimately that's our core responsibility are there any simple metrics that you use to measure whether or not you're being successful or whether or not discover puerto rico is successful are there any you know simple metrics that that you follow just as kind of a you know they really guide either your management or your or your priorities um is that something that factors in for you yeah i don't know i'd call them simple but there's certainly a lot i mean obviously the numerical performance measurements and we're very clear in our organization to measure our internal performance but also translate that to the external impact as well i can drive impressions and create earned media and place ads but if i'm not filling hotel rooms if i'm not filling airplanes then there's a disconnect so i i look at that as a kind of a foundational premise i can't ever get away from those economic measurements but i think that's just a part of the story we also try to identify where our greatest impact is not only on say driving the economic results or building the brand we can measure those quantitatively and qualitatively but also on driving the pace of innovation and i think that's a an important role for organization i know our industry looks to us for that now if you're in a role we're not expected to innovate then it doesn't matter but i'm always constantly evaluating from my own perspective and then from stakeholders perspective are we bringing enough new ideas to the table are we innovating enough and i think that also falls into an important leadership lesson is as leaders we have to be willing to let our people fail if we're not failing uh often i'll say then we're probably not doing enough now that's easy to say but when you're in the boardroom explaining to your board of directors what didn't work or when you've got to explain to local government partners or media where you've fallen short those can be some really really tough lessons to learn so you have to take measured risk but i think especially in this day and age if our challenge is to respond uh to the disruption that we're seeing around us then we have to get ahead of that so i'm always evaluating the organization on the internal pace of change which has to be at least as fast as the external or otherwise you lose control and secondly how much of that are we driving how much of that are we bringing but it's got to be measured it's got to be impactful and if that's not happening then that's on me more so than anybody else and while morale is important we certainly pay attention to morale what i really like to test and and when someone comes into organization i always challenge them hey when you meet some of our staff ask me about the mission statement ask them about the values i'm i'm almost maniacal about this i want you to be able to walk into my office talk to any member of our team and in their own word their own way they should be able to tell you what the mission the vision and the values are and how they drive those and i know that sounds kind of corny but if your mission vision values are only known when somebody's reading the annual report then you're losing a great opportunity and for me as a leader if my team can't share that in an honest straightforward way from the heart and make it relevant to them and to you then as a leader i'm failing so what's next for puerto rico right now puerto rico is in an extraordinary time and place right now we've had some bankruptcy in our past that's been resolved with a lot of credit to the governor and the fiscal oversight board puerto rico is in the best fiscal condition it's been in in decades and you know when you get a new lease on life you're not dealing with overbearing debt now you've got an opportunity to start to invest in people in infrastructure secondly the federal government's making a massive investment in the infrastructure rebuilding the power grid roads and bridges that have been damaged schools that have been closed because they w

2022-07-05 13:23

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