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Earlier this year, I published Tales from the Slot Floor, a collection of edited interviews with casino slot managers, part of a larger project that captured how the discipline of casino management has changed and continues to evolve in the face of ongoing technological and demographic shifts. Based on a series of interviews with veteran slot management professionals, the book presents insights into what defines the best practices in this crucial area of casinos.

Disclaimer: while I’d be thrilled if you bought a copy, I don’t receive royalties from this edited collection, and all earnings go directly into the Center for Gaming Research/UNLV Special Collections and Archives budget, supporting a variety of programming and initiatives around documenting and preserving the history and culture of gaming, gambling, and games.

Slot managers might not have the anecdotes about celebrity high rollers that table game managers do, but the issues they face probably have more in common with other fields. In addition to being in charge of scheduling, discipline, and customer relations, they administer a large budget and enter into partnership agreements with external vendors. This is a job that must be data-driven without losing sight of the people who make the casino a place where patrons enjoy spending time (and money).

One of the questions that I asked all the interviewees was, “What makes good management?” In answering, they drew not only on their own decades of experience as decision-makers, but what they learned from those they had worked for. And, out of their many replies, a few themes emerged, with six main traits that, in their eyes, a good manager needed.

1. Be innovative. This was the first thing that many of the men and women interviewed said. Most obviously, that means finding and selecting new games that customers will respond to. “Staying on top of the games,” is how veteran slot operations manager and consultant Charlie Lombardo succinctly put it. But it does deeper than that. Aaron Rosenthal, currently the vice president and general manager of the Tropicana Las Vegas, said, “I don’t just mean managing the product. I also mean innovative in managing the procedures and the sequences of how they execute their day-to-day operations.” As slot departments get smaller and pressures to grow revenues increase, managers increasingly find themselves having to do more with less. Good managers get by. Great ones find new ways to excel.
2. Listen. A common thread that almost all the men and women who took part in the project was that leaders were, first and foremost, listeners. That means listening to both customers and employees, and not just pausing while they talk. People in both groups have insights that can make a manager’s job much easier, if the manager has the patience and humility to ask…or just listen. As Amber Allan, currently a systems business operations manager with Konami Gaming said, “I like leading by example, managing by walking around, and just listening.” Being both visible and accessible to employees makes leading a much easier task.
3. Focus on the overall experience. Vice President of Slot Operations and Marketing for Wynn Las Vegas Michael DeJong said it best: “What we offer isn’t unique in the product…it’s almost a commodity. A slot machine is a slot machine. So it becomes an experience situation.” Slot managers can compete on price or experience. Competing on price (by lowering hold percentages, offering more lucrative cashback and other rewards) might offer short-term rewards but long-term leads to a race to the bottom that rarely ends well. DeJong described how his team at Wynn put an emphasis on every aspect of the presentation of their games and staff interactions in order to provide a better overall experience that would effectively differentiate their casino from its competitors.
4. Practice servant leadership. This one seems paradoxical. After all, isn’t the big benefit of putting on business attire and getting your own office telling other people what to do? But more than one manager mentioned this as their favored approach. Luxor Vice President of Slot Operations Saul Wesley best articulated what servant leadership means: “always asking employees where they want to go, seeing what they want to do, and growing the people around you. It builds support, it builds camaraderie, and it builds a team. Finding out how your team works helps you determine talent and helps employees loosen up to you and share their talents you may not know about.” Seeking to understand before seeking to direct was an essential skill for slot managers, with obvious applicability in most fields.
5. Be flexible. Veteran casino manager Buddy Frank, who today consults and writes about the industry, offered a number of traits a good manager needed, best summed up as being flexible: “You don’t have to have all the experience in the world, but you have to be bright, you have to be engaging, you have to be open to new ideas, and friendly.” While historically casino managers have a reputation for gruffness (have you ever seen a kind-hearted pit boss depicted in a movie?), the truly exceptional ones transcend that to be warm personally and open to new ideas. Instead of hunkering down behind mathematical models and their own preconceptions, they are open to trying new things.
6. Turn negatives into positives. Robert Ambrose, a long-time slot manager, talked about how excellent leaders need to be able to transform negative experiences into at least partially positive ones. One of the most common points of friction for slot players is a machine malfunction. When coins were in active use, machines might not register a coin fed rapidly into a chute. If a player lined up all the symbols for a progressive jackpot, they would not get the large bonus if all coins weren’t registered. In situations like this, Ambrose stressed first sitting down next to the customer and speaking to them on their physical level, and being as calm and rational as possible. Even if the end result was the player not getting their jackpot paid, they appreciated being listened to (tip #2) and at the very least walked away with a sense that their patronage was valued.

   This April 20, 2018 photo shows a woman playing slot machines at Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)ASSOCIATED PRESS

These six principles, while culled from the experiences of slot managers, have resonance for virtually any leadership position. In the coming year, incorporating one or all of them in your leadership toolkit may lead to better results—both for you and for your team.