Profile Leader Networking Feature

MENTOR FIGURE

He started the Savoy Society Mentoring Scheme to help groom future leaders and stem the exodus of young talent from a skills starved industry. Stuart Johnson, once the youngest hotel manager in the history of The Savoy, says it’s time to give something back. Leader listens.

Ask employees of Brown’s Hotel what they think of their general manager, and you’ll probably hear an echo or two of Geraldine McDonald’s cheery appraisal. Of her boss, the HR Director of the Rocco Forte Collection’s London flagship has many fine things to say. However, one line in particular takes hold: ‘You wouldn’t get staid with that man.’

That man is Stuart Johnson, whom Sir Rocco pinched from the publisher’s chair of Conde Nast Johansens to run Brown’s Hotel in 2004, half a year before it re-opened following a £24 million refurbishment. Since then, Johnson has gone to great lengths to recapture the essence and character of the hotel originally founded by James Brown, Lord Byron’s butler, for the service and well-being of the nobility.

The results are anything but staid, not with Olga Polizzi’s chic turn on English style. But Johnson has taken the family company’s accent on individuality even further, introducing ‘Brown’s Speak’, the hotel’s very own vocabulary. So you won’t find a conference and banqueting department, it’s meetings and special events. No duty managers, but house managers. Not a basement, but a lower ground floor. Lounge? It’s an English Tea Room. Never ‘Bear with me’ but ‘One moment please’ on the telephone. Little things like that.

According to McDonald, it’s all a manner of preserving what’s inimitably Brown’s, even as staff may come and go. When adding to the list, people ask themselves, ‘How would Mr Johnson say it?’

The road to influence

Which proves the sturdy influence of Johnson on his team. The secret of his spell? ‘He gives people the freedom to achieve,’ McDonald says automatically.

It’s that simple, although respect for Johnson’s impressive trajectory must help too. It’s the ideal mentor’s CV. He whose ‘humble upbringing’ and love of horses made him aspire to be a mounted policeman turned into The Savoy Hotel’s youngest ever hotel manager by the age of thirty-two.

Tipped off by his mother about a job at the prestigious Savoy Group, at seventeen Johnson moved to London where his first role at The Savoy was as an apprentice under Silvino Trompetto, The Savoy’s first ever British head chef. It was a classic apprenticeship, and Johnson completed his City & Guilds 706/1 and 706/2, spending thirty-six weeks at Westminster College in Battersea and the rest of the time in the work place.

Call of the wild

Soon a colleague was convincing him that his true calling was in management, and to Trompetto’s dismay Johnson quit the kitchens to join the company’s fabled management trainee programme. It led to an assistant banqueting manager’s job at Claridge’s, at the tender age of twenty-one.

A brief stint at a small, three-star hotel in Surrey ensued, followed by a return to the Savoy Group via personnel and purchasing for The Connaught. Thereafter it was luxury hotels all the way. He helped to create and run historic Cliveden, arguably Britain’s greatest stately home hotel, as number two to John Sinclair (now Lord Thurso) before the aforementioned hotel manager posting at The Savoy. After four years he was offered the number one slot at Cliveden, returning to the property as Director and General Manager and presiding over a golden period of multiple awards, including Conde Nast Traveller’s third highest rated hotel in the world in 1997. When Cliveden was sold, he was named publishing director of Conde Nast Johansens, the bible of luxury hotels and restaurants. Finally, Brown’s beckoned. And he is still, relative to his experience and achievements, a young man.

O lucky man!

‘I think I’ve been extremely lucky in my life and career, being in the right place at the right time,’ Johnson muses. ‘But of course people say you make your own luck. It was also sheer hard work, and I had to be conscientious and consistent.’ He professes to be quite a determined character. Two words you won’t find in ‘Brown’s Speak’ are no and mediocrity.

You’d be hard pressed to find a better champion for The Savoy Society Mentoring scheme. McDonald is confident. ‘Stuart has the gravitas, charisma and profile to make it work,’ she says, ‘and he’s fanatical about standards.’

Peerless society

The Savoy Society was set up in 1990 by the late Sir Hugh Wontner, the venerated Savoy hotelier, as a social and knowledge hub for all former employees of The Savoy Group of Hotels and Restaurants. Today, of course, the group no longer exists; since 2005 The Savoy has been operated by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, while Claridge’s, The Berkeley and The Connaught now form the Maybourne Hotel Group.

However, the Savoy Society lives on and in 2008, Johnson, as Chairman of the society, led the planning, development and launch of a scheme that would enable members to provide long-term mentoring support to university students studying towards a hospitality management degree.

The institutions involved form the beating heart of hospitality higher education in the UK, among them Westminster and Kingsway College – celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and James Martin’s alma mater -- Bournemouth University, Oxford Brookes University and the University of Surrey.

The scheme is helping to fulfil a goal that Johnson had set for himself as Chairman. ‘My goal then, and now, is for members of the society to be able to put back something in the industry commensurate to that which has been given to us. Our challenge today is that too high a percentage of people who take up a hospitality management degree fall out half way through or, having qualified, choose not to come into the industry.’

The received wisdom is that the perception of long hours and poor pay is enough to put off talent. Another culprit is the industrial placement gone wrong. In whatever case, the UK hospitality industry now suffers from a chronic skills vacuum, particularly at management level. ‘The more we can invest in our industry’s future leaders, the better,’ says Johnson.

An unbiased view

Johnson believes that having a mentor is one of the most valuable gifts a young person can have during those crucial university years, and will make a world of difference to one at the threshold of entering the hospitality industry.

‘As a student, it’s priceless to be twinned with an experienced and successful person in the industry. This individual will be your sounding board and leader, effectively, so that when you have questions or issues, you can gain from completely unbiased guidance.’

For him, the core of good mentoring is the lack of bias.

He says he learned the hard way, recalling a not quite so unbiased mentor whose advice was more reflective of short term gain than interest in Johnson’s future career

‘So now I tell those who ask me, this is my own opinion and I am not telling you to do this or that,’ he says. ‘You have to put in perspective the different things in your life when making a decision. Always make sure you form a valid view before taking a snap decision. Today, I would go so far as to tell my son he doesn’t have to take the very first management job he’s offered. Do not run before you can walk, and make sure you gain the relevant experience.’

Match-making

The Savoy Society Mentoring Scheme has ended its first year gracefully, with mentees paired with their mentors. These include the likes of David Broadhead, Secretary of The Travellers Club in Pall Mall.

To qualify, potential mentees had to undergo a competitive process that included a written exercise followed by a day of 10-minute interviews with their prospective mentors. In the end, mentors identified the successful candidates and, of these, the three individuals they believed they could mentor best. For their part, mentees were asked to name who they thought could best mentor them.

Johnson is convinced that this rigorous process of distilling, evaluating and eventually selecting works perfectly. Both mentors and mentees have now undergone training and are encouraged to meet or speak at intervals desirable to both sides, although ideally at least once every couple of months.

A network is forever

Mentors have committed themselves for at least two years, but Johnson is certain the arrangement will lead to a lifelong relationship unless for some reason the chemistry doesn’t work out. ‘I truly expect the trust and rapport between mentor and mentee to continue throughout the mentee’s career.’ What the scheme is not, however, is an automatic avenue to a job.

‘Absolutely not,’ claims Johnson, ‘but clearly, mentees will have access to a network they wouldn’t necessarily have had. There are a number of mentors who are not only part of the Savoy Society, but also St Julian Scholars and some are Master Inn holders, the profession’s most eminent hoteliers. They work in properties that are part of consortia such as Leading Hotels of the World. Mentees step into a huge world that they can utilise at any point in time, if they so wish.’

A reliable organiser

To organise the scheme, Johnson engaged Springboard, the careers organisation led by Anne Pierce MBE (see Leader 3 - Looking After Tomorrow) Why Springboard?

‘Because of their credibility and commitment to supporting our industry,’ says Johnson. ‘They have the expertise, and we needed an organisation that had the relationships and trust with the universities we wished to target. That was a helpful conduit. Springboard has done a sterling job in orchestrating it all.’

Dee Smith, Springboard’s touch point for the scheme, says, ‘Enabling career progression and development is a central focus of the Springboard Charitable Trust’s work and The Savoy Society Mentoring Scheme complements our aims and ethos well. It’s a privilege to work closely with such a prestigious industry organisation.’

The scheme also benefits from the generosity of financial backers, Profile being one of them. Mark Norris, CEO of Profile, is an ex-Savoy Group man, having worked for the company in London and Paris. ‘We simply couldn’t continue without the financial and pro bono support of our sponsors,’ says Johnson emphatically.

Full circle

Johnson has never been an official mentor himself, but he suspects he may have positively influenced some lives and careers. It helps that he’s hired so many people in the first place.

In terms of unconditional giving, which mentoring essentially is, what goes round comes around. ‘What’s amazing is that my son, who is now about to start at Oxford Brookes to do International Hospitality Management, had work experience throughout last summer here at Brown’s and I introduced him to some very senior people in our industry, at the age of eighteen, to people who knew me when I was eighteen. It’s come full circle.’

And if the man who collects clocks for a hobby were asked what he would do if he could turn back time? Johnson’s answer is precise.

‘I’m a firm believer that we’re still an industry that allows people to blossom without academic credentials. But I’m also a firm believer that today, if you have the opportunity to get a good academic grounding, then you should.

‘I’ve had to learn a lot on the hoof and to work at achieving that much more and that much harder. But sitting in a classroom, learning about P&L and sales and marketing is great because that knowledge is very useful. If you have to learn these things along the way without that initial theoretical grounding, it can be tough. Qualifications, a degree or diploma, are important. To take just one example, the world of a GM is different now from what it was years ago. We’re seen as running a good size business and we’re expected to be that much more financially astute.’

In other words, if having a good mentor and some qualifications under your belt can make your journey to the top of a rewarding career that much easier, cherish what you’re given.

Now is that how Mr Johnson would say it?

Stuart Johnson has been a Master Innholder since 1995. He received a Master Innholder’s scholarship to attend the Business Leaders Course at Cranfield University in 2007. He is also a St Julian Scholar. To learn more about The Savoy Society Mentoring Scheme and if you would care to be involved as a sponsor, visit www.savoysociety.org. You can contact Stuart Johnson on sjohnson@roccofortecollection.com