I come from a family of highly skilled administrators. My father at the age of 69 still runs a very successful accounting practice and both my brothers are financial directors with great administration skills. Administration does not come easy to me, so I’ve surrounded myself with great administrators as I’ve seen the devastating affects of bad administration.
Henri Fayol, one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management, describes “the 5 elements of administration” , which can definitely be applied to casino administration:
- Planning
- Organizing
- Staffing
- Directing
- Controlling
FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) recently fined a casino $250 000 for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) requirements for casinos. According to FinCEN (my comments in bold), “The casino failed to implement internal controls related to gathering and recording required information for BSA reporting (Controlling). In addition, the casino failed to conduct adequate independent testing and training for employees, among other BSA violations (Staffing, Directing). The casino also failed to develop and implement effective procedures for the preparation, review and filing of BSA reports, resulting in multiple failures to timely and accurately file Currency Transaction Report by casino forms (CTRCs) and Suspicious Activity Report by casino forms (SARCs) (Planning, Organizing).” The lack of casino administration is having costly affects, not to mention the many others.
I never forget my football coach shouting “basics boys!” from the sideline when things were not going well for my team. We had no real stars in our team but we focused on doing the basics well and ended up winning the league in my final year at high school. I have fond memories of that team and all the high five moments. Do the basics well by keeping Fayol’s five elements of casino administration high in your priorities and you’ll have many high five moments.
