Book Summary: “Unreasonable Hospitality”

Selected Quotes & Ideas from the Book

• Unreasonable Hospitality
  • Guidara wondered, "What would happen if we approached hospitality with the same passion, attention to detail, and rigor that we bring to our food?"
  • "We had a radical idea of what the guest experience could be, and our vision was unlike any other out there. 'You're not being realistic,' someone would invariably tell us, every time we contemplated one of our reinventions. 'You're being unreasonable.' That word 'unreasonable' was meant to shut us down—to end the conversation, as it so often does. Instead, it started one, and became our call to arms. Because no one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable. Serena Williams. Walt Disney. Steve Jobs. Martin Scorsese. Prince. Look across every discipline, in every arena—sports, entertainment, design, technology, finance—you need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn't yet exist."
• Questions to ask yourself:
  • "How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued?"
  • "How do you give them a sense of belonging?"
  • "How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves?"
  • "How do you make them feel welcome?"
• Guidara "recognized that if he wanted his frontline teams to obsess about how they made their customers feel, he had to obsess about how he made his employees feel."
• "People will forget what you do; they'll forget what you said. But they'll never forget how you made them feel." -Attributed to Maya Angelou
• "Language creates culture."
• "Let your energy impact the people you're talking to, as opposed to the other way around."
• "Make the charitable assumption." -Danny Meyer
• "Former navy captain David Marquet says that in too many organizations, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority."
• "This is what I would later call the Rule of 95/5: Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent 'foolishly.' It sounds irresponsible; in fact, it's anything but. Because that last 5 percent has an outsize impact on the guest experience, it's some of the smartest money you'll ever spend."
• "Some of the best advice I ever got about starting in a new organization is: Don't cannonball. Ease into the pool."
• "A leader's responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be."
• "Every manager lives with the fantasy that their team can read their mind. But in reality, you have to make your expectations clear. And your team can't be excellent if you're not holding them accountable to the standards you've set. You normalize these corrections by making them swiftly, whenever they're needed."
• "A good manager makes sure everyone knows what they have to do, then makes sure they've done it—that's the black-and-white part of being a leader."
• "Serving other human beings can feel demeaning, unless you first stop and acknowledge the importance of the work and the impact you can have on others when you're doing it."
• He's spent many hours dining in other successful fine-dining restaurants, trying to learn from them. "What were they doing better than what we were doing? What could we learn? What could we borrow and make our own?"
• Trust your people
  • "Often, the perfect moment to give someone more responsibility is before they're ready. Take a chance, and that person will almost always work extra hard to prove you right."
  • "Nobody knows what they're doing before they do it. When you're trying to level up, it's easy to psych yourself out by focusing on everything you don't know. But you've got to have faith in your ability to figure it out."
  • Steve Ells (founder of Chipotle) "discovered that when he gave the teams responsibility, they became more responsible; elevated by his trust in them, they stepped into the role."
• "The first time someone comes to you with an idea, listen closely, because how you handle it will dictate how they choose to contribute in the future. Dismiss them that first time, and you'll extinguish a flame that's difficult to rekindle."
• The little things matter. "People can feel perfection." -Walt Disney
• "If you've corrected a guest because you don't want them to think you've made a mistake, you've made a much bigger mistake."
  • "Being right is irrelevant." -Danny Meyer
  • "Their perception is our reality."
• "There is no better way to show someone you care than being willing to offer them a correction; it's the purest expression of putting someone else's needs above your own, which is what hospitality is all about. Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment."
• "The secret to happiness is always having something to look forward to." -Will's dad
• "A leader's role isn't only to motivate and uplift; sometimes it's to earn the trust of your team by being human with them."
• "Informality is something you earn."
• "There is, by the way, no better way for a leader to figure out why an idea isn't working—or how it can work better—than to walk a mile in the shoes of the people you've charged with implementing that idea...Not ceremonially, either—do the job. I bet you'll be surprised by what you learn; I always was."
• "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." -Maya Angelou
• "Too many people approach creative brainstorming by taking what's practical into consideration way too early in the process...Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what's realistic or sustainable. Or, as I like to say, don't ruin a story with the facts."