You are in a country with an apartheid government in the mid-seventies, you have this plan to open a hotel and a casino but the local laws are restrictive about gambling. What do you do? Well you exploit a loophole to set one up in the then independent territory of Bophuthatswana which existed within South Africa at the time but had no problems with people betting their money away. Thus Sun City was born. Being close enough to Johannesburg and Pretoria meant that it had enough clients coming through. It suffered at the hands of an international artist boycott in a stand against apartheid (the artists recorded a song against the resort). It survived and when democracy finally arrived in South Africa it expanded to include extra hotels. Today Sun City stands out as a premier resort in Africa. Enough with the history lesson and more about the business.
If you have ever stayed there you will appreciate the effort that has gone into the resort. There is a backstory that feeds into the entire theme of the resort. The décor is not just random ‘because it looks nice’ but planned to go with the entire feel. For example, there is an entire ‘rock feature’ that incorporates several animal sculptures at an immense scale. Someone planned it and planned it well. Here is lesson one for the week: Plan based on Vision! If you do not cast the vision clearly and let it provide a road map for clear planning then well you could end up anywhere (probably penniless and looking for another gig).
Second lesson: Get the right people to cover the planning. You may have final say on the output but the right people, with the correct expertise, need to be putting things in place. This sounds so simple, so logical, yet we stuff it up a lot. I was talking to the manager of a décor firm this week. They design and fit corporate and private rooms out. Need a new boardroom; speak to them. Need a new kitchen; they are your people. She was saying one of the big problems they have is getting the designers to understand the materials that they are wanting used in the products they are busy creating. A three metre square black granite table top may look stunning on a delicate aluminium framework when it is conceptualised on your computer screen, it may just not work when you dump the real, heavy, solid granite onto the fast collapsing lattice you envisioned. So get people who what they are doing or people who can figure out what they are doing without making too many expensive errors, people who can find the information.
Get the best advice and information you can afford (now the best advice may not be expensive, but it often can be). I did ballroom dancing for a bit when I was younger. I started out socially but realised pretty quickly that I would enjoy competition work. Now my social teacher was just that, fantastic at giving you steps to get you round a party floor. Come the more technical competition work he was awful. My dance partner and I won our first competition not because we were good, but because everyone else was worse. Soon we came to our senses and moved onto better teachers who made dancing seem effortless in comparison. We became better dancers. Lesson learnt.
A bit of a side track on the ‘best advice’ thing here. Remember that best advice may change over time. When Christopher Columbus was born the best sailing advice was not to go too far because you may fall off the edge of the world (no seriously, that is what people where told based on the science of the day). By the time he died people were trying to get around the globe. The ‘best advice’ had changed. Likewise, the best advice for someone else may not be the best advice for you; in which case it is not the best advice then.
There is a device that is a ‘4D’ rollercoaster ride simulator at Sun City. It is not unique to the resort but if you ever find one take advantage of it. You get strapped into a chair suspended on hydraulics, stare at a ‘3D’ screen, and air is piped past you to simulate wind. You go on a ‘ride’ that seems as though you are hurtling at high speeds yet you never pass 0km/hr. Your mind takes the visual and sensory cues and fills in the blanks for you. Your imagination is that incredible. The founder of Sun City had a problem with starting up in what seemed like an impossible situation but found the solution. Maybe you really want that granite top on a pretty framework, there is a solution somewhere that probably involves a stronger metal than aluminium. You can’t afford the best advice, there is a way of obtaining it. It just takes a little more mental planning, thought and idea creation.
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