Just over Hilton Worldwide area president Rudi Jagersbacher's left shoulder you can see the doubletree by Hilton Jumeirah, Dubai under construction. The hotel is slated to open next year.
Getting in gear
Jagersbacher says he loves being a hotelier, describing it as a “great profession, particularly when you’re running big hotels”. However, after a number of years doing just that, his talents were spotted by Hilton’s corporate team and he was offered the position of vice president for the UK, while maintaining his role as GM at the London Hilton, posing one of the biggest challenges in his career.
“Being VP was actually the biggest challenge because I was still the general manager, which really did not work because firstly, I was sitting in a very busy hotel that needed a dedicated general manager, and then you needed someone who really looks after the other hotels full time, we were developing Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester.
“So eventually we decided I would move to our corporate office. That was difficult for a while because suddenly you don’t have the back up. In a hotel you ring a bell and three people come and bring you this or that, you don’t have that anymore and you have to rely on your own skills with a very small team.”
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Jasgersbacher says the transition “was not easy”: “I took a lot of coaching because I wanted to be successful in my new job and I didn’t want people to say ‘well Rudi, you’re still really a general manager’. I wanted to move on and I needed help,” he admits.
“Managing people from a distance was probably the most challenging aspect because you can’t just walk around and say ‘excuse me can you do X, Y or Z’. You need to learn to focus on your strategy; establishing your strategy, sticking to the strategy, using the right people for the right matters and obviously making sure that you monitor the progress in a concise and strict manner.
You don’t have much room for error because it impacts the business in a much bigger way. That was a challenge, but I had really good mentors that helped me through this.”
Jagersbacher also went back to school to brush up his business skills at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Today one of the key pieces of advice he offers to those looking to follow in his success is to “find a mentor”.
“Secondly, you want to make sure you’re extremely well educated to have the brain power to move up the levels. We want business people running our business, not key holders and greeters,” he says.
One key aspect of the new role Jagersbacher did not struggle with was the people side of dealing with around 12 general managers, plus their 2500 team members.
“What I always managed to do well, and do still today, is sit with our team members. It might be a different story to talking to other people higher up in the hierarchy; you find out if it’s a happy team.”
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