Chip Conley founded Joie de Vivre Hotels in 1987 at age 26. Applying concepts from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he transformed the company into one focused on employee happiness and fulfillment. During recessions in 2001-2008, Conley had Joie de Vivre measure employee meaning, resulting in increased revenues. His vision is for Joie de Vivre to be the largest boutique hotel operator through creating joy for employees, customers, and investors.
2. Chip Conley
• Founder, executive chairman &
chief creating officer of Joie de
Vivre Hospitality, which is a chain
of hotel/boutiques on the west
coast US.
• He founded it in 1987 at the age
of 26.
• He is a well-known businessman
that graduated from Stanford
University with a BA and MBA.
• He has written multiple books
such as “Peak: how great
companies get their mojo from
Maslow.
• Chip Conley founded his
company Joie De Vivre (joy of
living) in a mission of creating a
company based on ethics and
goals.
3. Background
• He went to Stanford
University and
graduated at 23
• At the age of 26, he
formed the company
Joie de Vivre, currently
the United States
second largest and
California’s largest
independent boutique
hotel collection.
• Conley wanted to
create a company
based on the joy of life,
hence the company
name
4. • His leadership practices have
been featured in several
popular media outlets including
TIME, USA Today, and the Wall
Street Journal.
• In addition to owning a highly
successful company, he gives
back to those in need by setting
up events where he and his
employees volunteer for causes
such as AIDS, and he even gives
a percentage of hotel stay
revenues to certain
organizations and foundations
in need around areas where his
hotels are located
5. About Joie De Vivre hotel
-According to him, he wanted his customers to experience a sort
of “identity refreshment” in their home away from home
-He designed each individual hotel with a special theme, and that
is partly what attracts so many stakeholders apart from his
innovative management style.
-His hotels cater to all segments of the market, from people who
want an affordable, leisure vacation, to high-end business
travelers.
6. • In 2001, in the midst of the dot.com bust and 9/11 attacks in New
York City, the hospitality industry underwent a major loss in business
• Americans were boycotting anything that sounded French because of
the Iraq war at the time the French pulled their troops, which made
Americans feel like they were abandoned.
• People in America started calling fries freedom fries and basically
started boycotting all things French
• The name of his hotel was joie de vivre and it was a huge hit on his
company.
• Went to self help and stumbled upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Facing economic and political issues
7. MASLOW and CONLEY
• From this book he found a new confidence in himself that he
could re-model his company to follow Maslow’s pyramid.
• He credits this find as the reason why, even in the middle of an
economic crisis, his company’s annual revenues began to
increase significantly
• Between the years of 2001 and 2008, Joie de Vivre tripled it’s
annual revenues during the dot.com bust and french boycots
Being proficient in both psychology and business is the
smartest means of being successful as a 21st century leader”
8.
9. • “I believe that meaning at work is far more important than
meaning in work. When employees believe in the work of the
company, the whole Hierarchy of Needs is satisfied. “
• -Chip Conley (Getting More Mojo from Maslow)
• One of the most profound decisions I made during the depth
of that last downturn was to start managing the business
based on meaning and to start measuring meaning in various
ways, from asking questions on biannual work-climate surveys
to querying line workers in monthly staff meetings, “What’s
the best experience you’ve had in the past month here at
work?”
• -Chip Conley (Getting More Mojo from Maslow)
10.
11. Conley’s hierarchy of needs
• • Survival (psychological and safety)
• • Success (social and self-esteem), and
• • Transformation (self-actualization).
• By having more employees who feel that they have reached
the self- actualizing stage, he believes the
employees, customers, and investors will have a better feeling
of self-actualization, and in turn the company’s objectives will
be reached in a more effective and efficient manner.
12.
13. INTANGIBLES
• He also began to talk to other companies and their leaders
and asking them what they focus on (pertaining to Maslow’s
pyramid). He found that many of the companies were focusing
on the lower levels of the pyramid, as opposed to the self-
actualization portion, the intangible .
• Even though more than 90% of the leaders said they believe
intangibles are important, less than 7% of them had a process
to measure it (Partridge).
• This finding was inspiring to Conley because he realized that
he needed to focus more on the people to create this said
“Joie de Vivre” image; specifically employees, customers, and
investors.
14. Maslow model & Mission / Vision
• Using Maslow’s model, he began setting new company
objectives and plans in order to become a better company as
a whole. Even though he is concerned with Joie de Vivre’s
success, he cares more about the people involved in making
the success possible.
• He began by planning ways to improve relationships with
everyone his company was involved with, including the three
stakeholders he believes to be the most important in a
company: customers, employees, and investors
15.
16. Vision of Joie De Vivre by
Conley
• His vision for Joie de Vivre is • Beginning as an
to become the largest
operator and creator of entrepreneur with little
boutique hotels in the United experience, he was still
States. confident that his long-
term vision would one
• “We distilled our credo into a day become true, and it
two-word mantra, “Create
Joy,” which is stamped into is not far off now being
the blue rubber bracelets that that Joie de Vivre is
all new employees receive
during orientation and that currently the second
many veteran staffers largest boutique hotel
routinely wear.” collection in the
17. Mission
• His mission is “Creating Opportunities to Celebrate the
Joy of Life”.
• This corresponds with his belief that his employees
and customers should truly feel happy.
• He is more concerned with the people rather than
making a profit, and with this mission, it shows his
employees that he is a compassionate manager.
18.
19. Implementing & effects
• He began to ask all of his employees if they knew the mission of Joie
de Vivre, which is “Creating Opportunities to Celebrate the Joy of
Life”
• Conley came to realize that many of his employees did not know
the mission or what they wanted out of their work experience, so he
began to implement changes so that everyone was on the same
page
• He began conducting annual questionnaires between each hotel
manager and their employees, as well as a questionnaire for recent
or recurring guests, about what they wanted out of Joie de Vivre
• After several times doing this, he found not only did the
employees, including managers, begin to give him better responses
about why they were working for his company or what they wanted
to see happen within it, but he started getting more recurring
customers
20. Even though Joie de Vivre’s singular goal is to “create
landmark destinations full of soul and personality” (Joie
GOALS de Vivre), Conley set several other goals in order to live
up to the meaning of Joie de Vivre.
• Manage his employees to have a true sense of happiness
and self-fulfillment in the workplace so not only would this
happiness produce good quality work, but they would
reach the top level of Maslow’s pyramid even if they
weren’t managers;
• Create a company that is not only known for their one of a
kind hotels, but a company that is dedicated to it’s
community and environment.
21. Employees
• The employees of Joie de Vivre have actual relationships with
customers aside from catering to their needs. One of the ongoing goals
of Conley is to increase the relationship between his employees and
customers.
• He wants his employees to feel that they are making a difference in
people’s lives, even if it is as small as giving them a clean and
comfortable place to sleep.
• Conley, mostly involved with the planning and leading aspects of
management, does add some influence to the organizing aspect of Joie
de Vivre.
• To begin, he helps in organizing the employee roles. Since his company
has three chains to it-
• • Hotels
• • Spas
• • Restaurants-
22. • Conley has to come up with different things he’d like each of the
different employee roles to entail. He wants the hotel staff to be
more than just a maid service, but to be “host families” instead.
• Helps to build actual relationships between employees and
customers
23. Decision process
• Conley is a manager who is all about taking the opinions and
suggestions of his employees and actually using them in
practice.
• He values the input of his employees because they are the
people who are on the job each day, so at times they may
have better suggestions than he for a certain situation.
24. Theme of hotel and Chips role
• Takes the time to pick great locations for each one, he helps
pick out the theme, and he sets the vision for how he wants
customers to feel when they come to each specific venue.
• To him, organizing the facilities is a lot of fun and a challenge
because he is always striving to be more innovative each time
he opens up a new facility.
25. Leading
• He encourages people to complete their tasks in such different
ways that makes them feel like they are not just working, but
making a difference.
• Encourages people of all different backgrounds, whether it is
cultural, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation, to compete
with others to obtain better opportunities, such as being
promoted to a manager position
• Makes his company a place of diversity where his employees
do not have to feel like they are being cheated out of
opportunities, and this motivates his employees even more
because they feel respected and are able to look up to him for
that.
26. Recruitment & Joie de Vivre
heart
• Conley developed a “Joie de Vivre Heart” that each new
employee is introduced to. The heart has four values of the
company that he wants all employees to know, which are:
• • Creating a unique corporate culture
• • Building an enthusiastic staff
• • Developing strong customer loyalty
• • Maintaining a profitable and sustainable business
• He introduces this heart to his new employees before they
start training so that they get a sense of what he wants all
employees to be apart of, no matter which job they are being
hired for.
27. ETHICS
• Conley was a man very inspired by ethics, which is also one of
the reasons he named his company Joie de Vivre. He always
made sure that his employees and customers had full
satisfaction and that no one was ever bothered by something.
• He even did studies on the Gross National Happiness index
and wrote an equation for it. He has put his ideals of life into
his company, which led to a greater success rate.
• Joie de Vivre has implemented Conley’s ethical beliefs into
their company moto and vision, they simply do not want to
sell sleep but want to create dreams.
28. Ethical work Chip has initiated
• Joie de Vivre this year alone has donated over 1.3 million
dollars to local organizations where they are established.
• They have partnered with the Surfrider foundation for over
five years to help clean beaches on the Californian coast
where their hotels are located.
• Wherever Joie de Vivre has a hotel they think it is very
important to get involved with the community. It is so
important that it is one of the main criteria’s the general
managers are evaluated on.
• They take 75 homeless people and provide them with a really
good day .
• Also during the holidays they partner up with Glide kitchen to
help provide 2000 meals each day, their employees work the
breakfast shift.
29. • Joie de Vivre has been blessed with the ability to give back to
the community and through Conley’s beliefs of ethics they do
everything that they can do give to those who are just starting
or those who need help.
30. Success
• Conley is nothing short of an inspirational man, he has
changed the course of the business world by his thoughts of
what people need and how to treat them and not to mention
his business is well-known because of the time and effort he
put into making it something spectacular.
• Joie de Vivre is famous because of Chip, because of his
thoughts on how employee satisfaction is a main drive in how
a Company should be run. He makes life seem simple and easy
in a world where it is not, and you have to give him credit for
that.
31. Reference
• http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/and-now-the-
good-news/getting-more-mojo-from-maslow.html
• Getting More Mojo from Maslow
• In order to survive the struggles of the economic
recession, we need to reframe difficult business experiences
as opportunities to find meaning in our work.
• By Chip Conley