Book Buzz: Unreasonable Hospitality
I went out on a limb and read Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. It's a captivating book about the transformative power of hospitality in the restaurant industry. Guidara, co-founder of Eleven Madison Park, writes about creating extraordinary dining experiences and building a culture of hospitality around them.
You might ask why I read a restaurant book. Honestly, the title made me want to see whether there was a small business application for us and for our clients.
We are still living in a world where 51% of people are actively looking for a new job, according to Gallup. So every company has to be thinking about two things:
What am I doing to make my current employees want to stay?
What am I doing to entice candidates to come work here?
That's why "unreasonable hospitality" intrigued me. What if we did unreasonable things for our employees to make these great places to work? What if our people talked about how good it is to work for us at the neighborhood pool this summer — and when a recruiter calls, they don't even listen to the opportunity?
That would be something.
Lines Worth Sitting With
A few quotes I keep coming back to:
"Two things happen when the best leaders walk into a room. The people that work for them straighten up a little, making sure that everything's perfect — and they smile, too."
"I have since come to realize that a 'cult' is what people who work for companies that haven't invested enough in their cultures tend to call the companies that have."
On a leader reacting in rage to an honest mistake: "The memory of the shame and rage I felt that day will always be on my shoulder when I'm handling a mistake made by an employee."
"Giving the team more responsibility than they expected had an amazing impact — the more responsibility we entrusted them with, the more responsible they became."
"Even if we're proud of the way we do something — that doesn't mean we couldn't be doing it better."
The Cognac Story
Here's the one that unlocked it for me. At the end of a meal, the restaurant would drop the check along with an entire bottle of cognac: please, help yourself to as much as you like, with our compliments.
They took the worst part of the meal — paying — and turned it into the best.
So take that one idea and dream a little. Some starting points:
Schedule someone's annual review for 8am, then give them the rest of the day off to do whatever they want.
Your team has to stay late to get something out for a client. Instead of pizza, bring in a genuinely good dinner and take twenty minutes to eat it at a table together.
Your accounting group always works 60 hours the second week of the month. Send a nice dinner home to their families once during that week.
Surprise the team with a noon meeting on Friday — and the rest of the day off, plus a $100 gift card to a favorite restaurant nearby.
As the CEO, take your most junior employees to a good restaurant, two at a time. "Why don't you tell me about your life for fifteen minutes, and I'll tell you about mine." No questions about work. People are craving that time with you.
The Push
Gallup estimates that low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion, about 9% of global GDP. What does it cost your company? Probably more than you know.
I recommend this book for thinking outside the box. It's a good one for your management team to read together — then have lunch and talk about what you could do to build an insanely good employee culture. I'm guessing the time you invest comes back tenfold.
Want a hand turning those ideas into something real? Grab a free 30-minute session with one of our HR experts.