On the Road: A Website Offers Help Finding a Hotel Where You Can Light Up

Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International New York Times.

Don't have an account yet?
Create an account »

Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more »

Corner Office: Francisco D’Souza of Cognizant, on Finding Company Heroes

Q. What were some early lessons for you?

A. I was very fortunate in my upbringing. My father was a diplomat, and so, until I was 18, we traveled to a new country every three years. After finishing high school in the Caribbean, I wound up in Hong Kong when I was 18. We realized that there were few universities that taught in English, and so I went to one in Macau that focused on working professionals. I went to school at night and on weekends.

My days were free, and I got a job as a bank teller. It was a small bank, and they still used a punch-card system. I had taught myself as a teenager how to program. I went to the branch manager and told him he ought to consider new technology. He said: “Fine. Help me figure it out.” We bought a computer. We wrote the software, and I wound up supervising a couple of people when I was 19.

Q. I can imagine that some kids would resent moving to a new country every three years.

A. I was somewhat indifferent to it because I expected it, and I knew nothing else. In hindsight, I wouldn’t do it any other way. It really did shape who I am today.

Q. In what sense?

A. We learned how to love the world. There’s this great richness of diversity, yet people are far more similar than they are different. You’re not as likely to learn that when you grow up in one town, in one environment, in one culture or in one country.

The second thing is that it was an environment of scarcity in many ways, because my parents weren’t particularly affluent. You learn how to find opportunities where they don’t exist and capitalize on them. You have to find ways to make the most of everything, from the littlest things to the biggest.

Q. What are some leadership lessons you’ve learned during your career?

A. We started Cognizant in 1994, and there was a period early on when I personally knew everyone in the company. Now we have 160,000 employees, and there were several personal and rapid transitions over that time.

The lesson I learned is that when you have to evolve that quickly as a person, you need to be aware of two things. One is personal blind spots and the other is personal comfort zones. Those two things can be real gotchas.

It’s very hard to see your blind spots, by definition, and it’s very easy to fall into comfort zones, because people like patterns and a sense of familiarity. I’ve tried consciously to say, “What are the tools I can use to identify these blind spots and push through comfort zones?” And I always tell myself that if I wake up in the morning and feel comfortable, I’m probably not pushing myself hard enough.

Q. And what are the tools to help you see your blind spots?

A. One is just talking to other leaders. The conversations with them help me because they are, in a sense, a mirror — I can assess what I think they’re doing well, and where I think their blind spots are. It’s easier to see someone else’s blind spots than it is to see your own, of course, and you can use that to reflect on what your own blind spots are.

I also learned a lot from the people who work for me. Before I took over as C.E.O. in 2007, the board gave me the benefit of some time. I worked with a coach for a while, and he talked to about 20 people who worked for me, above me and around me, and to my board. It was difficult feedback, but very enlightening. That helped me identify a couple of my blind spots.

Q. Can you share one?

A. There was a lot of feedback from my team that people had confidence in my ability, but they also said that when I criticize something they’ve done, the weight of that is very pronounced and significant. It made me understand that the weight of my words was a lot heavier than I gave myself credit for, and it led me to be much more thoughtful and measured in how I give feedback.

Q. What’s unusual about your culture?

A. We’ve organized the company in a way to make sure that we continuously delegate and empower people on the front lines. As we got bigger, we would take larger units and break them down into smaller units and give individuals a sense of ownership, creating very clear success metrics around those individuals.

But when you decentralize and empower, you have to make sure you don’t wind up with lots of microcultures, because every leader, every manager, puts his or her stamp on the culture. Culture gets passed along not by writing it down, but through the rituals you have in the organization, the legends you refer to, and the heroes of the organization. So we institutionalized a set of things to create rituals, heroes and legends.

For example, we have a tradition of naming the associate of the year — we use a process in each region to find the single associate who contributed well above and beyond and, through his or her actions, exhibited the traits of the culture that we thought were important. We similarly institutionalized a ritual that we called the project of the year. And we rent stadiums around the world and bring all the employees and their families for a celebration, with entertainment and awards.

Q. How do you hire?

A. I’m looking for passion. The person I’m hiring needs to have passion for what they’re doing, and they need to understand where that passion comes from. They need to be in touch with that. You need to know what drives you.

And you need somebody who’s got just raw smarts and talent and an innate ability to learn. Because the thing about functional expertise is that unless you’re in some very specific area, almost everything that we need to do our job becomes obsolete quickly, and the half-life of knowledge is becoming shorter and shorter. So do you have the personal agility to continuously renew those skills, to reinvent yourself?

DealBook: William Heinecke, an Early Entrepreneur in Asia, Is Still Finding Success

William Ellwood Heinecke, the billionaire chairman of Minor International.

William Ellwood Heinecke has always followed his instincts.

He started his first businesses, cleaning offices and selling advertising, as an expatriate high school student in Bangkok. He was a millionaire before he reached voting age.

Defying conventional wisdom at the time about overseas appetites, he introduced pizza to Asians in the early 1980s, the start of an empire of retailers, restaurants and resorts built around classic brands like Pizza Hut, Sizzler, Marriott and Esprit. It encompasses more than 10,000 rooms and 1,400 restaurants across 22 countries. He has moved up the value chain, developing his own successful brands.

Now Mr. Heinecke, the billionaire chairman of Minor International, has aggressively steered expansion into the Middle East, Africa, Australia and emerging markets across Asia, flying around the region in corporate jets, swooping in on huge deals.

Maintaining the spirit of American entrepreneurship, Mr. Heinecke has kept his mantra the same: find a gap and fill it.

“The stakes are bigger perhaps,” he said. “Now we’re dealing with a bigger playing field. It’s a more complex world. But the skills of being an entrepreneur haven’t changed, and probably won’t change.”

Mr. Heinecke has long stood out as an entrepreneur here, and not just because of his unusual upbringing and appearance — he is six feet tall and has worn a beard since he started his first businesses as a teenager.

Asia is among the world’s biggest source of new billionaires, but most expand or refocus family wealth. Outside of mushrooming markets like technology and real estate, few are self-made successes like Mr. Heinecke.

Fewer still are Western-born. “You can probably put him among a handful of expats in Asia,” says Kevin Whitcraft, another American businessman raised in Thailand, who has franchised one of Mr. Heinecke’s companies in frontier markets like Laos and Cambodia.

“What really stands out about Bill is that he could have made it anywhere in the world,” Mr. Whitcraft added. “He’s always been a great salesman. He’s just a born businessman and entrepreneur.”

Mr. Heinecke, 64, grew up in Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. His father, Roy, was a United States diplomat in Asia. His mother, Constance, worked for for American magazines. The family moved to Bangkok 50 years ago.

He always seemed in a hurry. Starting with go-carts as a boy, he geared up to the racetrack, then rallies on dirt roads through the jungles. He set many Asian records, and survived several near-fatal crashes. He keeps a collection of vintage cars including a 1963 Shelby Cobra worth $3 million, and a Ferrari that once belonged to Clint Eastwood.

He says he believes he was in the right place at the right time, before the Asian boom. Yet he was not only driven, he had an innate sense of direction. As fellow students traveled West to attend college, Mr. Heinecke stayed in Thailand. “I always knew what I wanted to do, and where to do it. I just saw so much opportunity here,” he explained.

In 1980, he introduced pizza to Asians. Experts predicted that they would never take to Western fare, but he added local ingredients and quickly became Asia’s pizza king. He initially franchised for Pizza Hut, but when the parent company tried to restrict his other restaurant efforts, a battle ensued, and Mr. Heinecke boldly started his own Pizza Company, instantly becoming the regional giant.

He spied a related opportunity and moved into dairy production, churning out cheese to top all those pies. He melts 1,000 tons of mozzarella annually, just in his Thailand pizza parlors.

Mr. Heinecke expanded into hotels, running properties under the Marriot, Sheraton and Four Seasons banners. His hotels typically feature an array of retail shops and dining, mainly from the Minor portfolio. Call it old-fashioned synergy.

Some point to construction of the Four Seasons Tented Camp in the Golden Triangle, where Thailand borders Laos and Myanmar, as a transformational project in Mr. Heinecke’s career. Jason Friedman worked closely with Mr. Heinecke a decade ago on the small collection of luxury tents in an elephant sanctuary financed by Mr. Heinecke. Many thought it a vanity project — contrasting Mr. Heinecke’s reputation for frugality.

“Bill is quite well known for being conservative, almost formulaic, by the numbers,” said Mr. Friedman, former manager at the camp, but now the manager of the Siam, an upscale boutique lodge in Bangkok. “The tented camp was really a passion for him. He was involved in all the details, right down to the number of animals in the park.

“I saw a very different side of Bill than many see, and the project really put him out there not only as an entrepreneur but also an innovator.”

The camp became a global sensation, generating more publicity than any previous Four Seasons opening, he said. Minor later started Anantara, which has become one of the fastest-growing Asia-based resort chains. Much of that growth has been in the Middle East, China and the Maldives.

“Now, we are recognized for our expertise, our own intellectual property,” Mr. Heinecke said. Anantara is like a franchiser. Owners finance the projects and pay Minor management fees. “This allows us to grow the brand much faster.” Revenue for the company’s hotel division was up 80 percent in 2012 over the previous year.

Mr. Heinecke has also expanded Minor by canny acquisition. His takeover of Oaks Hotels and Resorts in Australia doubled hospitality operations in 2011. While he had ample success with his own Pizza Company, he bought Australia’s Coffee Club to take prominence in another market many said would never gain traction in Asia.

Minor is now ideally positioned just as coffee consumption soars across the increasingly affluent region.

Yet there have been missteps, as Mr. Heinecke is the first to recount. “You don’t succeed without stumbling,” he said.

Mr. Heinecke was probably the first to bring fast food to China — too early, as it turned out. He was also a pioneer with hotels in Vietnam, building in the 1980s, before the boom. That first hotel in Vietnam, he conceded, still has not turned a profit. Several other properties in Vietnam are doing well, however. He chalked that up to lessons learned and diligence, something he stresses in every aspect of his operation. Before he signed on the Oaks deal, he said, he visited most of the hotels, staying in many.

Outside forces have also buffeted his operations. Mr. Heinecke was nearly crushed by the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. The 2004 tsunami wiped out an entire hotel. Coups, flooding and SARS have also hit his businesses hard, particularly those heavily dependent on tourism.

Through it all, Mr. Heinecke remains focused on the next deal, and improving efficiency. “He’s constantly on the move, doing business all the time,” said Joe Cummings, a Bangkok author who is writing a book about the Anantara hotels and destinations. “He’s like a shark, very opportunistic. And he really knows every detail about his businesses, right down to the price of a candy bar in the minibar.”

You're the Boss Blog: Finding Alternatives to Building a Web Site

Generating revenue along with the buzz.

Over my last two columns, I’ve discussed how not to hire a Web developer and how to build a Website you love. But for some small businesses, there are other options — alternatives to building or refreshing a Web site.

One option is a one-page site. This is a specialty of Carbonsquare, a design shop that builds business sites of up to 10 pages using customized templates on the Weebly platform. One of Carbonsquare’s clients is a fashion-accessories retailer, Debra Wood, who has a mobile fashion boutique, DebiFashion. Ms. Wood decided a one-page site worked best for her side business. “It was so much work to constantly change my shopping-cart Web site, so for a $249 investment, I can make the changes I want and not break the bank,” she said.

For a basic 10-page site, Carbonsquare charges $549 plus a monthly hosting and maintenance fee that runs about $30. “We decided to use the Weebly system because it’s a simple drag-and-drop system,” said Christopher Rippie, founder of Carbonsquare. “We want to help our customers understand smart design. Too many people over-design their Web sites. We did not use the WordPress platform, because it takes more time to build a Web site, which drives the cost up. We are trying to eliminate the sticker shock in Web site design and give people something they can manage themselves after we build it.”

Carbonsquare does have some drawbacks. WordPress plug-ins won’t work with the Weebly platform, search-engine optimization functionality is not built in the way it is with WordPress, and if you are blogging heavily, the system has limitations. Mr. Rippie suggests building a blog in WordPress and integrating it with the Weebly Web site.

Another option is to use Tumblr, a very easy-to-use blogging platform, as your Web site. With more than 100 million bloggers, Tumblr has an active community of users who search for content based on keyword tags. This can make it easier to build an audience quickly. It allows users to post text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from a desktop or phone and from a  browser or through e-mail. A Tumblr page works best for visual businesses, such as retail, design, food, or fashion. Some small businesses use Tumblr in addition to a WordPress blog. Tumblr allows owners to link back to e-commerce sites with coupon codes, QR codes and links to other social media accounts. Its templates are easy to use and there’s nothing to download to get started.

Diane Souter of Absolutely Fabulous Unique Gifts and Décor in Huntington Beach, Calif., uses a Tumblr page to highlight her latest products and attract a younger audience. “Tumblr is so easy to do that I could do it,” she said. “I’m able to take a photo with my iPhone and upload it to Tumblr with the hashtags and keywords, within seconds literally, and it links to my Web site.”

Ms. Souter said that while the traffic from Tumblr leads to some sales, it mainly drives buzz. “It would be great if people could click on the picture and the price comes up with the ability to make a purchase through Tumblr,” she said. That might be a way Yahoo will attempt to monetize the site, now that it has bought it for more than $1 billion.

Three months ago, Innate Family Chiropractic, based in Pasadena, Calif., started using RebelMouse to host its Web site. RebelMouse allows companies to display the latest updates on their social media accounts on the company home page; in fact, those updates can be the homepage or they can an embedded addition. Users can customize a RebelMouse site or choose from previously designed theme pages. They can also post a full-text blog post directly to RebelMouse and then add an image or a video. And they can add RSS feeds from their own blog or from other blogs they read frequently.

Paul Berry, former chief technology officer of Huffington Post, says he created RebelMouse to save small-business owners time and frustration. “We just so saw so many people struggle with their Web site almost to the point of giving up,” he said. “We knew there was a simple solution that didn’t involve developers or designers. We wanted to make people’s content shine and amplify their social media efforts.” The service costs $10 a month and integrates seamlessly with MailChimp, the e-mail service.

Innate Family Chiropractic picked RebelMouse to save time with its Web marketing and because it wanted a central place to share content on pediatric chiropractic care. The three-year-old family wellness and chiropractic center uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest to share and generate health-related tips and articles. “I used to spend so much time educating clients and putting our content on all our social media accounts,” said Christopher Vargas, a chiropractor and owner of Innate Family. “Plugging everything into RebelMouse just made things easier.” The company pays $19.99 a month to use the service on two Web sites.

Melinda Emerson is founder and chief executive of Quintessence Multimedia, a social media strategy and content development company. You can follow her on Twitter.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 7, 2013

A previous version of this post referred incorrectly to the Web platform Weebly.

Advertising: Finding a Documentary Audience, for a Cause

The director and backers of “Girl Rising,” a documentary that is a cornerstone of a media campaign about educating girls around the world, hope to change that. To promote the new film, and demonstrate the impact that documentaries can have on audiences, they will rely on technologies often used by more traditional advertisers, including personalized ads for employees of companies viewing them online.

“If what you are after is engagement and connection to a cause,” said Richard E. Robbins, the director, “how you use the tools that are available to you is very different than if you are trying to market ‘Batman.’ ”

Money donated by consumers seeing the film will be funneled to a nonprofit group, 10x10, which will then distribute the funds to various nonprofits helping to educate girls.

Many documentary filmmakers have trouble quantifying the social and financial impact their films can have, Mr. Robbins said. And many are confronted with “a dearth of evidence to support the idea that documentary films affect change.”

But using highly targeted advertising can help filmmakers learn who is donating, how much they are donating, how much interest there is in a film and whether there is enough interest to warrant a screening in a city, he said. Having that information might also help persuade future investors to support documentaries connected to causes.

“Girl Rising,” which will be released in March, is being financed in part by 10x10, which supports educating girls around the world through film and social media advocacy.

Ads promoting “Girl Rising” will be shown to employees of 57 companies that the filmmakers selected in hopes they will support efforts to educate girls in developing countries. Those companies include Apple, Bank of America, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Disney and Procter & Gamble.

“Those companies are deeply invested in vibrant economies overseas, healthy supply chains, diversity, attracting and retaining and identifying new employees, skilled employees,” said Holly Gordon, executive director at 10x10. “We thought that they would be advocates for these issues of gender diversity and global education.”

Employees at the companies will see ads on their computers at work, customized to use the company name. For example, an Oracle employee will see an ad that says “Oracle employees can change the world,” with a link to see a trailer for the film and donate to the cause.

A group of former ABC News journalists, known as the Documentary Group, and Vulcan Productions announced the creation of 10x10 and its media campaign at the United Nation’s first International Day of the Girl in October. Additional funds for organization came from Intel, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Nike Foundation, the Skoll Foundation and the Fledgling Fund.

“Girl Rising,” the first film backed by the group, features stories inspired by nine girls in countries like Haiti, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Afghanistan. Some of the segments are narrated by celebrities like Meryl Streep, Selena Gomez and Kerry Washington.

Well-known writers from each of the countries, including Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American author, and Edwidge Danticat of Haiti helped to write the stories of each of the girls to whom they were paired. Each story will be presented differently; some will be animated while others will be live action.

Chris Golec, the chief executive of Demandbase, the company behind the ads, said technology that aimed at the Internet addresses at the companies would be used to find the right users for each ad.

“Targeting people at work is four times more likely to drive engagement than somebody coming from a residential I.P. address,” said Mr. Golec, referring to the Internet addresses of home viewers. “If you personalize the ad with the company name that they work for you get a three times higher click through rate on the ad.”

Using such digital advertising also helps the filmmakers and producers in another way, said Mr. Robbins. “It’s infinitely more trackable, there’s so much more data,” he said. “We can measure conversion rates, who our audience is — its not just anonymous people buying tickets.”

Distribution of “Girl Rising” will be in phases, beginning in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where one chapter will be shown. It will make its official debut in March for International Women’s Day at an event in New York City, and with a smaller event in Los Angeles. CNN will show the film in June as part of the network’s new film division.

Organizers are also using technology to get viewers to book a screening of the film in the city of their choice. Supporters of 10x10 will receive an e-mail asking them to go to a Web site, Gathr.us, which will keep track of the number of screening requests from various cities.

One Lawyer's Path to Finding Meaning in His Career

Last month on my way out of a CLE at the federal courthouse that was very well-attended by young lawyers, I looked at an empty fishbowl that was intended to be a drawing for a gift card to iTunes, courtesy of the event's sponsors. I dropped my business card into the fishbowl. There lay my card, all by itself. I expected to be a guaranteed winner.

It was only a few years ago at around this usually delightful time of the year that I contemplated leaving the profession altogether. I did not know what I wanted to do next, but I knew it was not what I was doing at the time. I wanted to do anything else. Anything.

I was a frustrated lawyer. I was frustrated with the work I was doing -- work that I felt no attachment in performing, and work that I felt no accomplishment in completing.

I also was frustrated with the amount of money that three years of law school cost me. It did not appear to be giving back to me anything close to what I had hoped for, both financially and emotionally. That was depressing.

The questions I pondered at night were not whether I could assist this client who needs my help, or what my next career step as a lawyer would be. Instead, my mind was filled with what appeared to be never-ending doubt. I asked myself, "How did I get myself into this situation?" "Am I ever going to be able to recover?" and "Was going to law school the worst decision of my life?"

All of this had nothing to do with my job at the time. I liked my job, and was performing well in certain capacities. Every day, I went to work. Every so often, I made some clients happy. Once in a while, I made my bosses happy.

I also received a paycheck every two weeks. While by no means was I able to save money because of my student loan debt, the income was enough so that I could take my wife out to dinner and to see a movie once in a while. At the same time, I had enough money to pay the bills every month.

Things could have been a lot worse, too. I recognize that life was, overall, pretty good. But life professionally was not great, or at least as good as it could have been. The fact that I did not know what, or whether, I could do anything about it frustrated me.

Something about my path was not sitting well with me. I was being led by a random series of events and choices I made based upon whatever options were presented to me at the time. And as a result, I was not performing to my potential. I knew that, and it left me puzzled.

I needed to take control of my life professionally, so that when choices needed to be made regarding my future, the options presented to me were a direct result of my efforts and more consistent with my wishes and desires, not just a bunch of job opportunities that happened to present themselves at the time I happened to be seeking something new.

Subscribe to The Legal Intelligencer

You must be signed in to comment on an article

Sign In or Subscribe
">

Original Intent Indispensable for Finding Meaning of Law, Scalia Says

The era of your dictionary should match the era of the text you're reading, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said plainly to a Philadelphia audience Monday evening.