Interviews from HR Innovator Magazine

The Arte of Vegas HR

Arte Nathan
Senior Vice President/Chief HR Officer
Wynn Resorts
Las Vegas, NV 

Las Vegas, famous for its ever-changing skyline and ever-rising expectations, is not known for understatement on either score. And so, as adept as it may be to wow the tourists and conventioneers, it has a more difficult time turning the heads of Las Vegas insiders. Glitz, shimmering glitter, shimmying body parts and specially stamped tokens that tumble into metal slot machine bowls designed to deliver a loud clatter fail to impress the denizens of Las Vegas. Not only have they seen "the man behind the curtain," they are the man behind the curtain.

For a town that traffics in enticement and illusion, the only thing that can really impress is authentic excellence. This elusive quality of flawless flawlessness was ultimately manifested with the opening of the Bellagio, with its fountains, its pools, its marble-clad bathrooms with soaking tubs, its landmark Chihuly glass sculpture in the lobby, its fine art museum and incredible restaurants, its botanical gardens, even the Vivaldi that plays on its web site. That's a lot to live up to when you're an employee of the Bellagio, and it fell to Arte Nathan to make sure that people statement of the resort matched the Bellagio's overall brand delivery.

Today the Bellagio is history for Nathan. In fact, word is on the street that he can't even set foot on the premises, because the Bellagio's new owners worry he'll spirit its employees away and recruit them to his new property, which at this writing is rising from the raw construction site where the legendary Desert Inn used to be. Still, from his temporary suite of offices in the doomed last bit of the old Inn, he fondly flips through the royal blue velveteen covered "yearbook" that documented the months spent getting the Bellagio ready for opening day. While other such books might have celebrated the contributions of founder Steve Wynn, Las Vegas 's celebrity chief executive, this yearbook celebrates the contributions and experiences of the resort's 10,000 original employees. And within a few weeks of opening day, every single one of those 10,000 employees received their own copy of this enormously expensive yearbook. Wynn and Nathan together knew that even with the Chihuly glass, the soaking tubs, the pools and the art, the Bellagio was nothing without its people.

And now they're going to do it all over again, creating from the Desert Inn footprint the Wynn Las Vegas resort, "dwarfing" the Bellagio, Nathan says. While any reasonable entrepreneur might regard the Bellagio as the ideal to attain, Nathan pish-poshes it, as if it say, "Oh that? Just you wait and see."

Between flights to Macau and Monaco, where Wynn Resorts has other interests and deals going that require Nathan's HR acumen, he is gearing up to put over 8,000 people in place and fully functioning well before opening day, in April 2005. True, he can't personally pinch personnel from the competitors up and down the strip. But he's not worried. He knows that throughout Las Vegas, all eyes are watching the resort emerge from blueprint into reality. He won't have any trouble at all finding the people and their passion to fill his next yearbook.

You have said that you were born to be in HR.

I was born to be in this job working for Steve Wynn.

So it's as important to be in the right company as it is to be in the function?

Yes. A lot of people like HR, and a lot of people feel that it's their calling. Most HR executives toil with less than adequate support. It's frustrating. It's difficult. And in some cases, it's downright horrible. You have these high, lofty goals but you don't have the methods, the means and the money to achieve them. Early in my career, Steve Wynn said "HR isn't a department, it's the department. It's the way we do business. How we deal with one another. We have to make it the most important thing about our company."

When you have that kind of support, you either succeed because you're working hard. Or you fail because you're stupid. But there's no in-between. There's no way to finish a project, have it not achieve its goals, and then turn around and say, "Well I didn't get enough money or the kind of support I needed."

As the HR leader inside a company that really thrives on the culture of engagement and passion, the HR people who work for you also have to be that kind of passionate as well. How do you sustain that kind of environment of deep engagement in the department that's traditionally .

Stuck in its own mud? Every day, every week I challenge my staff not to do things because we've always done them, but to look at what needs to be done. We have a rule around here in that we always have to ask why, no matter what we do. If we have a program, why should we do it? If we have a policy, what's the reason for it? If we give an instruction to someone, they have the right to ask why. And we must be able to explain it. That creates a mindset that you're always re-examining things. You are always trying to understand that underlying basis of whatever it is you're trying to do. If you practice that on a continuing basis, it has the tendency to clear out the plaque. It's too easy to fall into complacency. I hire people who are just a shade crazy. They love this routine. We challenge each other on an ongoing basis. That helps to keep it fresh.

There are different kinds of whys. There is the request for the business argument. There is also the request for the deeper, intrinsic meaning behind the proposition. It can also be perceived as a demand for rationale.

All three of those things go into the answer, for sure. Maybe even more. Once you start asking the question why there is no end in sight.

How do you keep that from being exhausting?

You don't. It is exhausting. It's a challenging process. The results are invigorating. And that's the key. If everyone likes the results, then it sustains itself because people are into it. Not everyone is into it, and not everyone likes that. Those are people who don't tend not to stay here. This is a tough HR department because of that.

How do you keep a sense of enchantment fresh, alive, and well-scrubbed inside the department?

There's no magic to it. It's called leadership. There are no tricks to it. You just have to motivate people. The leader of this group has to be an effective motivator. You have to understand the issues. You have to discern the problems, and then you have to address them one by one and motivate this group to act like a team (or a bunch of superstars, if that's your case). It's your responsibility.

I have to come in here and get through the hearts and into the minds of the people. But I can't get them to want to do things. They better want to on their own.

But then it comes down to how do we communicate? How effectively do we communicate? How effectively do we reinforce day in and day out the values and the processes that we're looking for?

In the recruitment process, is it possible to have as part of the interview the opportunity to get a sense of how freely the HR candidates are willing to talk about their own level of passion and excitement for the profession? With the emphasis on being a strategic partner with a seat at the table, there is hardly any opportunity to talk about really being passionate about one's work. If you're an HR applicant, you're afraid to talk like that because you may come across sounding like, "Oh I'm a people person!"

You don't even ask the question. You say, "Give me an example of something you thought was wrong and you wanted to change it. How did you change it? What did you go through? How did you make it happen?" You don't ask them if they have passion. You have to set them up with a question that gives them a chance to talk about something. When I talk about opening up the Mirage or the paperless system at Bellagio, I'm so effusive about this stuff that people have to run and get a hose.

So you listen for the effusiveness.

And you watch the expression in their eyes. Do they gesture? Are they getting into it? Do you feel something in your belly for what you're talking about? I look for someone to give me an answer that's a little controversial, that might shock me some -- that may even show that they are actually willing to think, try, dream. If you have something of that in a person, then you can mold, and shape and build on it. Passion here is reinforced.

I worked for a large consulting firm for two and a half years before starting this project. And it was deadening for the political correctness and the lack of passion. I'd rather be totally wrong but passionate than right but colorless.

What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Keep it simple. Everyone wants things to be simple, understandable, easy. Clear. Simple. Keep it that way. Don't try to overthink, don't overplan. Get out there and try to fix it if it's not quite right. The analysis paralysis that most of us get locked into is counterproductive, obviously. And we have to guard against that. Most of us in HR are so scared to make a mistake, to expose our ignorance. Sometimes you don't know. So you go with your gut. We're managing people, and we're trying to motivate others to manage people. Going with the gut is as much a part of the decision and the direction as being 100% accurate. And you have to learn how to blend those things.

There really isn't one best piece of advice. That's why they call it a body of knowledge.

What was the moment your career changed forever.

I'm a recovering drug addict and have been for 23 years. I had an industrial accident, seriously injured my back, and became addicted to the pain killers. I thought, okay, if I took enough medications, I'd feel okay, and I might get better. I became horribly addicted to valium and codeine. To go through something like that puts a perspective on things that we talk about superficially in HR. Unless you live through something like that, unless you really are involved in something like that, it doesn't have the same impact. I'd been in HR for seven to eight years at that time. Having to own up and fess up to it was a really big thing. That was one big moment.

Then, in l996, I'd torn an Achilles tendon as I was getting ready to start on the Bellagio project. It was so painful that I clung to these medications to get past the pain. I overdosed on the pain medications, and went into a coma. I was found by my daughter. When I came out of the coma, I was so depressed. I was so overwhelmed that I had fallen off the wagon so completely that I went into a complete depression. I always thought in HR we are obligated to help people. We put in the EAP program, we have to help people in all kinds of ways. We thought alcoholism, drug abuse, marital problems, family problems are big issues.

But the really big issue in life today is depression. If you get hip to it and look around, you see there is more depression than you can ever believe. Once you're sensitized to it, you can help an organization and the people with whom you work to understand and deal with that. I've become very passionate about dealing with depression within myself and helping others to spot it and deal with it in themselves and with others who work with them. It is the biggest thief of time and energy in corporate America. But it's still under the radar screen.

It changed my life once I got a clear focus on depression.

But if anyone asked me the defining moment in my life, I'd still say opening the Mirage. It was personally and professionally the defining moment of my life. Up until the time we began to understand the magnitude of it, we were all just worker bees and cavalier about things, going to work every day. But that showed us: Oh, we'd better think harder. We'd better plan. We were going to be in this big spotlight, and we didn't want to embarrass ourselves. And it changed the way we worked, we thought, we interacted with one another. It created a bond among all the operating people in this company that was extraordinary and showed the value of interaction and integration. It taught us all about the law of large numbers.

What is the best piece of advice to offer those on the way up?

Never give up on your dreams. Always dream. Always try. Don't accept the traditional common wisdom. It won't help you. That's a philosophical bit of advice. If you want a technical bit of advice: Go back to school and learn about computers.

What do up-and-coming HR professionals need now that you didn't need in the early days of your career?

Technology. It's all about technology and using technology to achieve your goals more efficiently and productively. HR people have to understand what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. They can't rely on others in the organizations, whether it's the technology group or other areas to help you get there. I love to figure out ways to do things using technology. I had an Intranet before there were browsers. We were paperless in 1997 before most of the world thought about doing it. It's been a wild ride and I love it.

What is the best thing new entrants can do for themselves?

Network. Talk to everybody. Get to know what's going on. Have a perspective on things. We often get hurt by what we don't know. And we don't know what we don't know. And so you have to continually search and talk to people. For no other reason, go to the SHRM conference and talk to 10,000 people. It's a lot of fun to network.

What is the worst?

Allow themselves to get tied to transactions, to think that this is a transactional business. It's not at all. It's a thinking business. We're here to propose options to people. So you have to be smart, you have to be a good communicator, and a creative thinker. Most people fall back on the transactions because they can do that. There's no problem connecting the dots, but it's the wrong thing to do.

What qualities and characteristics do you look for when hiring HR employees?

The answer is passion; self-confidence in which they talk about their passion, the ease with which they sit back and smile and gesture and talk about thing and not even worry about making a fool of themselves.

What is the biggest risk you took in your career that paid off?

Going into the gaming business back in 1980. I don't even gamble. I had never been in a casino in my life before that. I walked into this place and said "Wow! This is for me!" The sheer numbers! The excitement! It was Steve Wynn, who made the difference for me. He was powerful in his passion for wanting to do the right things.

Then when he asked me to do the Mirage project, it sounded like a simple thing to say yes to. But three days later, when we got a whiff of the magnitude of it, it was the kind of thing that most people would actually say, "Yeah, I'd like to do that." But when they think about it, they realize they don't want to work this hard. They don't want to be creative or strive for these heights. The fall is so much greater.

I don't think HR people, as a group, have a passion for risk. When they slip and fall they want to be on the ground floor, they don't want to be on the 12 th floor. I like being on the 12 th floor. They're scared to death of taking the step off the ledge. I love taking the step off the ledge. I took a risk in telling Steve Wynn that we're going paperless, and that we'll be unique in this. People said, "What are you talking about?" I didn't even know how to define it at that time, I just wanted to get out of the transactions and mountain of paperwork.

Every job is equal in its need for passion -- in its need for perfection, to strive to be as good as they can be. It doesn't matter what we're doing. If we're just stacking things up, or filing or typing, or putting a man on the moon, it's all the same. And if we think there's any difference, shame on us.

We want to treat our employees like guests. Now we want to treat our applicants like guests. It places a value on relationships that we're looking for that tends to resonate with the right kind of people. There are people that this doesn't work for. We've been very fortunate in selecting the kinds of people who fit in our model.

This is a company that is built on a cult, not on a rule (except for one: The Golden Rule). You have to have the right kinds of people who love this. Nothing else is acceptable.

This article originally appeared in the March 2004 issue of HR Innovator magazine. Reprinted with permission.