I’ve seen

1) Don’t dismiss the impact stakeholders

CEOs without DMO experience often dismiss the impact of stakeholders. Strong leaders are used to making decisions independently and push things along internally. These are good and necessary qualities in a leader.

But before you start making decisions and push things along, take the time to understand the stakeholder landscape. You need to consider tourism businesses, consider politicians or administrators, upward and downward DMOs. Understand the players, their agendas and influence. Most are supportive, some have an agenda and there’s always baggage. Like it or not, about half to 90% of your job will be managing external politics so you better know what you’re in for.

One of the first things a new CEO should do it map out the stakeholder landscape. This doesn’t have to take long by the way. Your staff already knows. Conduct a stakeholder mapping exercise to document what you’re dealing with. Do this in your first week. It should take a day and there are methods to streamline this process.

It might seem like a waste of time or a distraction. But believe me you cannot ignore this. You will get burned. A tourism board is a visible entity and directly or indirectly, most DMOs manage public funds. Without your industry and political stakeholders on your side, it’s going to be a tough road ahead.

2) Review existing strategies before adding your own ideas

New CEOs bring their own ideas. That’s logical. You want to make a mark, show people that under your leadership, things will be better than before. During the interview process with the board probably shared where the challenges are and you shared some of your ideas already. Let’s get it done right?

I’ve seen many DMOs move to implement great strategies, only to see years of work blow up because a new leader didn’t take the time to understand the strategy and moved to implement their own based on their assumptions going in. They often realize later they were wrong.

Blowing a fresh wind through an organization is often a good thing, and sometimes very necessary. But before you start opening windows to let the breeze in, offer your management team the opportunity to present the current strategies and processes. Go into these meetings open minded, curious and without assumptions. Give each VP a week to put a presentation of their strategy and processes together. Ask why a lot in these meetings.

Now we’re at the end of week two and you have a pretty decent understanding of current state.

3) Build consultation into everything you do

Hopefully you’ve done #1 and #2. There are probably opportunities to make things better. There always are. When making these changes, strategically and tactical, the most overlooked and ignored aspect of destination marketing is stakeholder consultation. Because it can be time consuming, frustrating and lead to bad decisions or mediocre programs and campaigns. Yes, all true. But not when you do it right.

Here’s the little secret I’ve known for about a decade. Having people involved in the process is more than half the battle. Give people a voice and listen. You might be surprised what you’ll learn and you’ll build allies who will be there when you need them.

4) Create a culture of innovation

Taking the the first two first two pieces of advice to heart can easily create another big risk a DMO leader faces. Management by consensus, risk aversion and inertia.

That’s where real leadership part comes in. Leadership for a DMO CEO means understanding the full scope of your destination and stakeholders, take it all in and develop a shared vision for the destination and rally people behind that vision.

5) Think twice before going retail

6) Stand behind your staff

THE CHALLENGE: A DMO has an incredible lineup of stakeholders. Most are supportive, some have an agenda and there’s always baggage. You need to consider tourism businesses. You need to consider politicians and administrators. You need to consider DMO’s who manage a destination within yours, or manage a destination yours is part of. You cannot underestimate this. You cannot ignore this. A tourism board is a visible entity. It’s part of your destination’s identify. And directly or indirectly, most DMOs manage public funds. That means the press is always ready to find a juicy controversy.

The mistake DMO leaders often make it to play it safe. This manifests itself

THE SOLUTION: Your stakeholders need to buy into your strategies. That means you need to have an inclusive and collaborative approach. But it’s a fine balance. Too little and there’s no buy-in, too much and things get bogged down. Sometimes you need to push, sometimes you need to take the foot off the gas. Strong leadership is crucial.

As a leader, our #1 priority should be your staff. Make sure they have the right skills and motivation. Create a culture of trust and learning from mistakes.

4) 

Often

4)