Borrowing a literary technique from my colleague Frank Legato, here’s a list of 10 operational tips that may be useful to make 2019 more productive. I have used everything outlined below successfully and with excellent results. I’d like to proudly say that I consistently followed my own advice each year, but that would be true fake news; my day job often got in the way of my most inspirational goals. With that caveat, here are my thoughts:
1 Be Competitive
– The only way to be competitive is to see and visit the competition. If you’re not dropping by your local competitors at least once a month, you’re not going to be your best. You should be able to spot changes on your competitors’ floors: just like you, there’s usually a good reason they’ve made a change or a move. Can you determine why? A competitive review is also in order whenever you travel. The NIGA, G2E and ICE shows are wonderful on their own, but try to also set aside some time in San Diego, Las Vegas and/or London to see what the locals are doing. There’s no reason to re-invent the wheel when you can just steal good ideas from down the street or across the globe. Sharing what you’ve observed with your teammates, both in your department and throughout your organization, in an email or a memo will also be a big boost to your personal reputation. If you’re lucky enough to not have a competitor next door, across town or even in the same county, you still need to make time and dedicate resources to do competitive visits. Travel for competitive surveys should be a regular line item in your Ops budget.
2 Talk to Your Vendors
– You’re probably thinking about how to shut them up, instead of having them tell you about more things they think you need to buy. But your vendors are one of the best sources of information about our industry. Even if you’re religious about tip #1, your vendors, if they are halfway decent, will know more about what’s going on locally than you do (after all, that’s their day job). Ask them who’s doing things best, or better than you. Ask them about other vendors’ products. A good salesperson won’t throw his or her competitor under the bus, but they will point out legitimate issues. A great vendor will also tell you what’s not working in their own line. They are also an excellent source of information about recalls, updates, tech bulletins, casino crimes and executive movement. Pop some questions like “Who do you think has the best floor layout?”, “What’s the hottest machine out there?”, or “What are you hearing these days about xxxxx?” You’ll be amazed what you learn. Over time, when the vendors realize that you can be a two-way communication source for them as well, they’ll share more and more.
3 Keep Informed
– Information can be golden. CDC Gaming Reports (where you might be reading this) is excellent: not only do they clip relevant gaming stories worldwide, they have a staff of writers generating original content on a daily/weekly basis. CDC does require a paid subscription, although you can get some stories for free on their site: cdcgamingreports.com . If you end up working someplace that doesn’t have a CDC subscription, first try to convince them to sign up. If they won’t budge, google www.pechanga.net. It’s run by consultant Victor Rocha (not the Pechanga Casino), it’s free, and, while it has no original reporting, it’s still pretty good. I read it regularly. From these sources, you can learn about casino crimes, new products, legislation and trends, both domestic and international. Even though your whole company may have access to CDC or Pechanga.net, many folks don’t read it regularly. They should. And if you spot interesting stuff, as above, share it with your colleagues.
4 Team Member Events
– Our industry is highly regulated and demands strict compliance, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun. Set up a consistent, ongoing schedule of wacky team events. I’m sure there are countless activities you can create with a little forethought and a commitment to making them happen. Some of my past successes included senior executives washing select team members’ cars (we had a random drawing to determine who’d get a wash.) Golf putting contests are also big hits, and if you make the hole about 100 feet away on a meeting room carpet, it will totally negate any advantage from real golfers. Again, there are hundreds of potential ideas: trivia contests, team craft fairs, bake sales, photo contests, tug o’wars, air guitar playoffs, hula hoop contests, things like that. The key is to make these events happen on a regular basis, month after month, and generally individualized by shift. If the position’s stress levels are high, the more events, the better.
5 Title 31 and Harassment
– From my perspective, the annual Title 31 training and testing sometimes seems like its own form of harassment. However, it’s always a good idea to prioritize those things that can get you fired. In recent years, violations of Title 31 and accusations of sexual harassment committed by your team members are definitely things you don’t want on your resume. Slot attendants face Title 31 filing issues nearly every day, so you need to emphasize informal training, ideally on a monthly basis. SARCs (Suspicious Activity Reports–Casino) are also a pain, but after several years of trying to minimize this reporting, I’ve come to the realization that the opposite approach is a far better strategy. There is virtually no downside to submitting as many SARCs as possible, even if they’re weak or questionable. They are completely confidential, and unless your player is a major crime boss or on the president’s enemies list, no customer will ever notice anything. In a prime example of government ridiculousness, many FINCEN audit flags are based on quotas of quantity, not quality. In other words, you could get fined for not having filed enough SARCs, regardless of whether you needed to file them or not. So file, file and file some more. Attending a strong national seminar, like Casino Essentials’ National AML Conference in Las Vegas, is also an excellent way to keep up on the latest guidelines.Unfortunately, sexual harassment is a much more difficult topic. I have little advice other than to recommend training, and then more training. I’ve sadly had team members attend a morning anti-harassment course only to commit a blatant act of “quid pro quo” that same afternoon. It is my hope that the current #MeToo movement, and the associated news reports (Steve Wynn, anyone?) has done something to wake up those morons. Hopefully, someone’s making sure these national and local stories of abusers going down are noted in your team’s newsletters. On the down side, many jurisdictions have lengthened the statute of limitations on harassment charges. That’s excellent news for victims – and our society – but it also means you could still have some ticking time bombs on your team.
6 Review your software
– Do you use all your software? It sounds illogical, but I’ve often seen organizations totally neglect software that’s been purchased and that’s subject to monthly maintenance fees. There are lots of reasons for this, from your power-user leaving to the product being out of date. Continuing to use version 1.12 when the vendor’s latest release is version 6.82 is not a good idea. Keep current and, most importantly, demand ongoing training. If something’s not being used, it may not be worth keeping. Just make sure that you’ve given it a fair shot at success before you dump it.
7 Be aware of your mid-tier performers
– I’ve written a lot lately about the need to be disciplined enough to do strong and consistent slot analytics. However, human nature always seeks the best return for the least amount of work. In other words: get rid of the dogs, add more of the stars. That’s absolutely what you should do first. But every quarter, try to take a long look at those games in the 1.00 to 1.50 indexes. I’ll bet the majority of you ignore these games most of the time. Moving a 1.2 game to a 1.8 game is just as good as buying a new platform doing 1.6. These examinations can provide substantial capital budget savings. Changes in min/max bet, denomination, progressive contribution, theme or location are all worth exploring on average and slightly above average products.
8 Celebrate Jackpots
– Hopefully you’re not one of those operators who think your customers are there because they like the pool, the buffet and the oxygen bar. Ask yourself: how would our spa or restaurant do if it wasn’t located in the casino? Unless you’re working in Las Vegas, your guests are really there because they like gambling, period. And they naturally enjoy themselves the most when they win. Most of them lose, of course; it’s the chance of winning that makes our industry unique. Do you have strategies in place to celebrate winning? I have found that marketing folks easily get bored by just doing winners’ stories and posting their photos, but this technique, ancient though it might be, still works, although you do need to constantly remind them to keep it fresh. However, a far simpler and more effective method within your own department is to encourage your slot floor team to promote winning daily. There’s not a slot attendant that hasn’t paid jackpots. In fact, they’ve all likely paid dozens and dozens just today. Encourage them to tell these stories. If a service light is overdue, explain to the guest that the team has been busy paying jackpots. Don’t be afraid to relate a really juicy story, like the one about your last Megajackpot winner or the one about the player who hit back-to-back Four-of-a-Kinds or even Royal Flushes (it happens). You’ll probably get some cranky replies like, “it never happens to me.” However, since these tales are true (we do pay lots and lots of jackpots each month), it leaves a powerful subliminal message with the players and subtly reinforces one of the main reasons that casinos took in almost $80 billion last year.
9 Be mindful of your cyber security
– When I was working for Pechanga Resort & Casino, they had one of the country’s strongest IT teams. So it was surprising to me when the VP of IT, John Kenefick, hired an outside firm to do a clandestine test of our hardware and software vulnerabilities. “It’s not if we’re going to get hacked, it’s when,” John always said. A good rule of thumb. Surprisingly, the first audit the firm ran revealed that our actual hardware and software were not bad, but we flunked the audit because of one weak component: human beings. The outside firm didn’t play fair (of course, hackers won’t, either): for example, they called various team members saying they were Bob or Joanne from the IT Help Desk and were “trying to fix your slow computer” (an easy in, since doesn’t everyone think their machine should be faster?) About half of our folks gave up their passwords without a fight. These guys also sent out a fake email, purportedly from the Human Resources department, saying that the first 200 employees who clicked on the attached link would receive a $100 VISA gift card. HR was a little miffed that they had dozens and dozens of team members showing up asking for their gift card. Instead, we had to inform them they’d all clicked on a malicious link that allowed a Trojan Horse into our system. Fortunately, this horse was from our own stable, but the lesson was scary. If you haven’t done so yet, start cyber security training for all your team members – and your family at home – ASAP. If you don’t have good in-house resources, there are several good video courses geared to casinos available for purchase.
10 Utilize Horizontal Networking
– When I would tell my fellow VPs that one of my team members was excellent and deserving of a promotion/praise/raise/bonus or what have you, I usually got a healthy degree of cynicism in response. That’s because every department head says their people are great. The most credible comments were those from another department. The best way to achieve those accolades is to make sure that everyone on your team is utilizing horizontal networking. In other words, your slot managers and supervisors should maintain an active, positive and consistent dialogue with managers and supervisors in other departments. Sadly, I’ve observed that slots, table games, F&B, security, facilities, hotel, housekeeping, cage and others don’t always communicate as much as they should, and sometimes not at all. The HR buzz term today for such isolation is building silos. Whatever the name, it’s bad. Most problems can be resolved long before they get to your level if leads, supervisors and managers work closely together. The best practice is to install policies that mandate that your folks regularly talk with peers on their level across your organization.
This list most certainly could be a lot longer. But there are two common threads that could also make it shorter:
- keep informed, and
- maintain good communications.
Hopefully your day job won’t get in the way of those two simple ideals.
