Editor’s Note: Connecting the Dots is a series of monthly conversations with Michael Dominguez, President and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International. The series examines issues in the global economy that will “connect the dots” to be helpful not only in business but in life as well.
Well, we know in today's environment there's just so much noise and so many narratives that are coming at us. Our job as leaders is to be very strategic and to be very forward looking. I just returned from MPI’s World Education Congress, and one of the comments I made in the discussion there is, I knew the 90 days starting in March were going to be very choppy and very hard to manage.
What I didn't do was spend a lot of time struggling with that 90-day window. What I looked at is what does this mean over the next 18 months, and how should I be planning? I think that is the strategic outlook you should be looking at. One of the things I continue to remind everybody, there is a fed president (Beth) Hammack, who is the president of the Federal Reserve in Cleveland.
She was brilliant. I was able to see her on CNBC, and they kept trying to sucker in on what could happen if President Trump throws out a tweet about a Federal Reserve (Chair Jerome) Powell and what could that mean. Her answer was just brilliant. She goes: I am just trying to focus on the real economy and the real economy is not showing cracks. The stock market is not the real economy. That is investment. That is speculation and sometimes we get driven by it. Yes, it matters to all of us. The point is that is not an economic indicator of what is going on. She continued to focus on, I need to look at the real economy, but she said something that I think is the best advice I could give anybody in this environment.
She said it is a great time to put your noise reduction headphones on and start to try to tune out all of the noise. For those of you to get all of your news from social media, the one thing I would recommend is you need to change your algorithm, which means you need to be looking at a variety of different sources because if you stay on a single source, your algorithm will start to feed you the same narrative.
One of the most popular slides I've shown—and it's the second most popular slide I've ever shown when I'm presenting in the industry outside of a hamburger slide. I showed it one time around food costs—it’s an AllSides Media Bias Chart and it reminds us that all media has a narrative. There is a center, little left of center, far left of center, a little right of center, far right of center. Where you get your news, where you get your information has a point of view.
It doesn't mean they're lying to you. It means they're telling you what they want to tell you and it is very important for you to go dig deeper. When I read a headline, when I see something and my first question that I ask myself is first, what's the source, and then let me go find other sources and let me read other angles about this.
I think it's prudent for all of us that are running our businesses or running teams; it’s our responsibility as leaders to get to the right information and if there is any other advice I could give you, as this is a real important time to try to remain calm and most importantly, try to remove your emotions from the data that we are seeing.
My job is to understand what is really happening in the environment so that I can lead the team that I am responsible for, but it does not mean that my emotion or my opinion should be brought to bear. That is something that I think is really hard to do in these uncertain times and highly politicized times. I think it's important for us to remain calm, dig deeper and make sure that we understand where the sources are coming from.