Essays

Inocencio (Elvis) Helena - 2005
My report to your organization of the summer of the year 2005, when you granted me a scholarship to Cornell University. I attended two courses over the summer, the first was Leadership & Motivation given by Robert Perry and the second was Restaurant Revenue Management given by Sheryl Kimes.

Leadership & Motivation
We were assigned to different discussion situations. In each situation we were looking for essential problems, and what would be our approach to save or solving it. We saw and read different things about leadership and how they motivated the staff. The difference between leaders and managers, and how to be a leader or a manager.  We saw dvd's of the worlds biggest leaders, from former Presidents of the US like George Washington and Jimmy Carter who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela former President of South Africa. Jack Welch former General Electric CEO is considered one of the best leaders of all time, he took GE from the bottom to the top.  He was very inspirational in the way he did it. I am now trying to see and learn much more about different leaders, our time was too short. We had a wonderful time with Robert Perry, he showed us lots of dvd's and I think he's very good in his way of giving the course and he has a lot of information. We were assigned different home work in teams or by ourselves, the next day we went through it with the Professor.

In that classroom we were 35 participants from different parts of the world; we all got on well and shared and exchanged experiences. We spent almost the whole day with each other from 8am to late in the evening.

Restaurant Revenue Management
The second course was given by Sherry Kimes on Restaurant Revenue Management. The principals of this course was how you apply the revenue of a restaurant, given that the restaurant unit of sale is the time it takes for a complete meal cycle, rather than just eh meal itself, from seat to greet till departure to bussed. Here we learn how to measure the make restaurant successful, the optimal table mix for a restaurant, we learn about the Revpash, Average Checks, Manage Duration, Menu engineering and seat occupancy. Here we had different homework to do also. One of them had the name Eat Out and Nerd Out. We were assigned into different groups and each one of us had a task and by the end  of the course we had to put it all together so we could do an evaluation of the restaurant, how well it performed, how badly it performed and how it could improve. Our group went to a Thai Restaurant, the food was good but we were kept waiting a long time before we sat at our table, almost 10mins after they first saw us. It was 15mins before our first drinks came and our food took at least 1/2hr. If they speeded up they could do a lot better and we discussed the key issues of a restaurants success or failure.

Both were high level courses, and I am ready to put into practice what I learnt, by making new connections within the organizations and a new relationship within the work force. I am going to do things other people have not done or don't do, make new things, make old things new or put them together in a different way. Challenges the status quo. I hope to lead through a vision, improve revenue through process controls, seek to improve customer service and develop a framework for such theories that can work in practice.

I had a wonderful time at Cornell and I hope one day to return. On behalf of mine report I would like to thank everyone for this opportunity, Avila Beach Hotel, Caribbean Hotel Association and the Caribbean Hotel Foundation.

Elvis Helena

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