Love is good business and the CEO of Aristocrat Gaming has bought into that concept for the benefit of his gaming company.
Hector Fernandez talked about the company’s philosophy during a G2E session on leadership with award-winning author and executive coach Steve Farber, whose bestselling book is titled Love is Just Damn Good Business.
The premise behind Farber’s principle is “do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.” For the last year, Aristocrat has been working with Farber to successfully implement this philosophy.
Cassie Stratford, senior vice president of legal operations and regulatory compliance for Boyd Gaming Corporation who moderated the discussion, said she “loves’ that a panel discussion at G2E is about an authentic company culture.
Farber quoted one of the books paradigms: “Leadership is not about your position or title. It’s about who you are — how you live and your ability to influence others to change things for the better at work and beyond,” Stratford said.
“That struck me as an impactful statement.” Hector leads with authority, strategy, brilliance, but also kindness. Every time we’ve met, he’s smiling. He’s so welcoming and warm. He has an incredible story to share and that comes through in the authenticity that he brings to his leadership style.”
Farber said he met Fernandez through his book released in 2019. He’d heard Fernandez had read the book and connected with him on LinkedIn.
“Hector was a confirmation for me of something that I’ve learned in 35 years of doing this work,” Farber said. “That is, I’m not in the business of convincing anybody of anything. I’m in the confirmation business. Lots of people in this room already have this impulse that love and business aren’t mutually exclusive ideas and that love has a place in business as a strategic advantage. That’s what this guy represents.”
Farber said Fernandez was already putting into practice “things I’ve observed and written about. My role with Aristocrat has been to take the impulse and instinct and things that were already happening and just help to shine some light on them, so the company could become more intentional and strategic about amplifying what was already there.”
Fernandez said that Aristocrat learned during COVID that they were always a people-friendly organization. There was no playbook during COVID and they had no concept of what they needed to do.
“We dug deep and said communication is really important and we focused on that concept. So during the COVID period, once a week we had office hours where it was an open environment for anyone to ask questions without not screening,” Fernandez said. “A lot of times, it was saying we don’t know. And we discovered a magical thing during this journey: transparency and honesty. A lot of people think senior executives have all the answers, but the reality is we don’t. Nowhere in my business-school background did I learn how to deal with a global pandemic. But what I did learn as a child was how to be a good person. That was what my mom taught me. In this space of uncertainty, we said we’ll just be who we are. We transitioned from being a people-friendly organization to being a people-first organization. That means for every decision we made through COVID and beyond, we started off with what was right for our people.”
Fernandez said they coined the phrase internally “our people, our customer, our business in that order” and that made decision-making much easier.
“Most companies say the customer is always right and the customer is always first, but the reality is, if you’re not treating your people the right way and creating this organic culture, they’re the ones who have the most exposure to your customer,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez likes the subtitle of the book: “Do What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do.” I wake up every single morning and that’s the motto.”
Fernandez said the key was how to make it sustainable. The fear at Aristocrat fear was that, with turnover, they’d lose “the magical company culture that has created this massive competitive advantage” for the business.
Farber said they’re not talking about love as a sentiment, but as a practice and discipline. The question that it comes down to is what love should look like in the way people do business.
“It’s not about putting it up on the wall and printing the banners and buttons that we love our customers,” Farber said. “That’s easy. It’s about asking ourselves, if that’s really true, how do we do business differently?”
According to Farber, Aristocrat’s competitive advantage comes from customers loving what the company does for them. Anything short of that and the company has no advantage.
“If they’re satisfied and think it’s okay and have a decent experience, no loyalty comes from that. The loyalty comes from, ‘I love the experiences you created for me, whether it’s a product or a service or combination of the two.”
The question then is how to make that experience happen for customers in a meaningful and sustainable way over time, Farber said.
“It’s about creating a culture that people love working in. If I don’t love working here, it’s very difficult to create that experience for customers. I can’t as a leader contribute to that type of a culture unless I have it in myself first. If I don’t love this business, the people I work with, and customers that we serve, then my only option is to fake it.”
