Feather Falls Casino:Feather Falls Casino:
How A Successful Casino
Becomes More SuccessfulPart 1: Birth, Success, and Growing Pains
Feather Fall Casino’s new General Manager Randy Carter, a veteran of 15 years in the casino business, faced the following challenges: A need for more employees, a shallow labor pool, untrained managers, deteriorating communications, inconsistencies throughout the casino, high turnover, low employee morale, and questionable customer service. And, it was only 10:45 AM on Monday.
Was he facing symptoms of inferior previous management? No, just the opposite. There were the symptoms of organizational success – growing pains resulting from the successes of previous management.Birth:
Concow’ Maidu Piaute opened Feather Falls Casino in June 1996 with 97 slot machines, a 2,800 square foot trailer, and 68 employees. In August 68 machines and a 2,800 square foot trailer were added. The next month another 135 slot machines and a 5,600 square foot trailer were added. In three months, FFC had established itself with 350 slot machines in an 11,200 square foot casino.
In January 1998 Feather Falls Casino opened its permanent 38,000 square feet casino with 350 slot machines, twelve 21 tables, bingo, poker, a restaurant, and snack bar. The original 11,200 square feet of trailers were added to the new building to provide additional customer space for slot machines and beverage services. Success and growth continued. In its first five years Feather Falls Casino’s staff increased from the original 68 to over 370, slot machines increased from 97 to 1,000, and increased its revenues at an incredible pace.
Opening September 13, 2002, a new facility will add over 40,000 square feet of gaming space, a world class 200 seat buffet, an entertainment lounge, and second floor banquet rooms. Feather Falls Casino will have grown to over 100,000 square feet in six years.Youthful bliss:
Original employees remember their casino as one large family working together. There was no need for managers, departments, communications systems, organizational structure, written procedures, or formal training.
If employees had a question or a problem, they went directly to the boss for an answer. There was no supervisor, manager, or department manager; just THE manager. Have a suggestion for an improvement? Need an additional employee? Need to buy supplies or equipment? Want to know what’s going on? Simply stop THE manager and ask.
Questions about how to do a task could be answered by peers. Most everybody did or knew how to do everything. You didn’t call maintenance, housekeeping, or the drop team; you already were on the maintenance, housekeeping, and the drop team.
With Feather Falls Casino’s rapid success and growth came new challenges and growing pains.Rapid growth of a youthful organization:
One person couldn’t manage the entire operation. Managers were added, then more, until there were over 40 managers and supervisors. Departments were created, then more until there were 15 departments. Each with its own manager, bureaucracy, and special purpose.
Employees were added to handle the additional customers until the number reached 375. The family grew so that many employees didn’t know one another. Jobs became specialized so that employees no longer knew how to do others’ tasks, or the importance of them.
As the casino grew it experienced growing pains. Feather Falls Casino’s success and growth created new organizational challenges.Growing pains of success - - new challenges:
Employment: High industry hiring standards, a limited labor pool, and extreme competition contributed to delays in hiring qualified people. Consequently, new hires were hurried into uniforms with little or no training. New supervisors and managers were promoted with the same expediency. Without a clear definition of job performance success, the informal definition became: Don’t take chances. Don’t get in trouble.
Untrained Managers: Relatively young, inexperienced, and untrained managers became reactive crisis problem solvers rather than proactive problem preventors. Increasingly their time was spent attempting to put out the latest department fire. Departments making procedural changes without awareness or discussion of the new procedure’s impact created many of these fires.
Initially, written procedures and rules that were unnecessary. Now, facing immediate problems, department managers began creating new work procedures on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis. Often the new procedure or rule was not communicated to other departments. Many were not written. Interpretations varied. Many of these procedures conflicted with those of other departments.
Deteriorating Communications: The few sporadic staff meetings consisted of top down, one-way communications. Word of mouth communications was replaced with the rumor of the month, week, day, and in some cases, the rumor of the hour. Confusion and frustration increased.
Inconsistencies: Untrained employees and managers, frequent procedural changes, and deteriorating communications produced performance inconsistencies throughout the casino. Attempts to fix the inconsistencies generated more procedural change, confusion, frustration, AND more inconsistencies.
Low morale: Personal frustration, insecurity, communication by rumor [usually negative], unclear direction, “knee jerk” changes, and inconsistencies combined to lower employee morale.
Turnover: Turnover increased as people became frustrated with the inconsistencies caused by unannounced procedural changes and feeling of not knowing what was going on in the casino. Employees became increasingly insecure about their role and value to the casino. Turnover ran as high as 47 percent, forming a symbiotic relationship with the above symptoms: The above symptoms fueled the high turnover rate, while high turnover fed the symptoms.Customer satisfaction: You can’t win the Super Bowl with untrained and confused rookies using an inconsistent game plan. Likewise, you can’t provide consistent outstanding customer satisfaction with untrained and confused rookies using an inconsistent game plan. Inevitably customer satisfaction slipped.
Despite these symptoms, Feather Falls Casino continued to succeed and produce profits. At its core the casino’s good people were personally motivated to do a good job and persevered despite the challenges. How long they would have continued will forever remain a mystery because the new General Manager decided to take positive action to manage the challenges of these growing pains.
Conclusion:
Feather Falls Casino’s growing pains are not unique. Many readers have successfully struggled through these same growing pains. Other readers are in the midst of most of the same issues. Still others are a year or so away in their growth cycle. The issue is not IF you will face these issues, but HOW you will handle these natural challenges of success and growth.
The next article in this four part series will cover the specific actions Feather Falls Casino is taking to turn its growing pains into great gains. The third article will review the results Feather Falls Casino has created. The final article will cover Feather Falls Casino’s plans and actions to sustain their growth and gains.
This is the first of a four part series on organizational improvement. The four parts will cover:
Background situation - Part 1: Birth, Success, and Growing Pains
Actions taken - Part 2: Actions To Turn Growing Pains Into Great Gains
Results to date – Part 3: Great Gains Results
Future plans - Part 4: Sustaining the Gains
The articles are written by Randy Carter, General Manager of Feather Falls Casino, and Bill Werst, President of Growth Associates, the consulting firm working with Randy and his staff to initiate the process of continuous organizational improvement.
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