Cover Story
Rowing together
How Adam Goldstein unifies his senior leaders to promote smooth sailing with Royal Caribbean’s 30,000 employees
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Miami | January 2009
Page 1 of 4
Imagine the complexity of dealing with running a major hotel
chain.
Now imagine if that hotel chain also had all the problems of a
shipping company with more than 30,000 employees from 100 different countries to deal with.
Seems like Adam M. Goldstein’s job could make anyone a little
seasick. But Goldstein, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean
International, the lead brand for $6.15 billion Royal Caribbean
Cruises Ltd., sees the pleasure cruise line business for what it is.
“The main reason why I think I’m here is I understand that it’s not
about me; it’s about the entire team of people extending to the
waiters and the stateroom attendants,” he says. “I’m not on the
ships, I’m not with the guests, and I’m not with the travel agents for
the most part. It’s hard enough for me to even keep up with the
biweekly progress reports, never mind interact with all the people
that are doing the work.”
Look, unless Goldstein wants to rent out Dolphin Stadium and
hire about 30 translators, there will never be an on-site, all-company meeting about Goldstein’s vision for Royal Caribbean. Instead,
he is all about starting the cascading process through his direct
reports and realizing his limitations.
“You have to cascade it downward,” he says. “If you want people
out on the water to believe they work for somebody with integrity, you need to make sure that at each level of management, from
senior level on down, you have people who actually act with
integrity because they are always watching. For me, it was about
how do you get the senior vice presidents to be that way and how
do you get the associate vice presidents and then the vice presidents and the directors and so it goes.”
The process is all about getting his direct reports behind him so
they can begin to push the company vision downward. Goldstein
has found that doing that is about consistently showing integrity,
empowering his people and keeping a constant eye on his own
words to maximize employee involvement.
