"May you live in interesting times," is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse. Well, in my 40 plus years in business, I do not recall any time that was not interesting. Business is always changing, perhaps more rapidly now than at other times.

If change is the nature of business, than why fight the inevitable? Your company and your career demand that you plan for change. Actually, success in your career probably demands that you plan for change.

Hotels are big businesses; the new governmental definition of a small business is one employing fewer than 500 employees. By extension, that means that a great many hotels are big businesses. Certainly, one would be hard pressed to find a hotel chain that would qualify as a small business under this definition. So, like any big business, we need to plan for the inevitable, the turnover of key employees.

In our personal careers, we should be planning either lateral moves; like going from F+B Director at a four star hotel to a five star one. Many of us plan to move up, into the hotel general manager's position of even higher. Either career move requires both professionally and strategically that you leave your current ...