Another month, another read list.
In September, I read one of the most impactful books I’ve come across on leadership and team building: Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara. For weeks, I was on a waitlist to borrow this book written by the former owner of the iconic Eleven Madison Park. I remember being in college and then in my first job in NYC and hearing about EMP. It was one of the restaurants we would take clients for project closing dinners; truly a New York monument of fine dining.
“We got on that 50 Best list by pursuing excellence, the black and white, attending to every detail and getting as close to perfection as we could. But we got to number one by going Technicolor–by offering hospitality so bespoke, so over the top, it can be described only as unreasonable.”
In the book, Will describes the journey he took with EMP all the way to the #1 best restaurant in the world in 2016. So much of the heart and substance of what he and the team did can be applied in any business. The inclination to go above and beyond to serve and delight a customer, he credits as what ultimately differentiated EMP and led to its pretty meteoric rise to the top. And his thesis dovetails with the argument I made in my article on Kaizen and Psychological Moonshots:
“In a world of rapid technological advancement alongside its democratization, it is not technology that will be the differentiator; it is these “other” things – customer empathy in design thinking -> psychological moonshots, and determined, continuous improvement -> kaizen.”
Unreasonable Hospitality is peppered with concepts and stories from Will’s illustrious career in hospitality; lessons on leadership, team culture, and customer service. It is one book I’d want to order copies of and hand out to newly minted managers, it’s that good.
My full September reads were:
- The Diary of a CEO – The 33 Laws of Business & Life – Steven Bartlett
- A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
- It Starts With Us – Colleen Hoover
- Unreasonable Hospitality – Will Guidara
*Surrounded by Idiots – Thomas Erikson (Decided not to finish as did not buy into the book’s thesis; too rigid and limiting a perspective of human personalities…)
Warmly,
Aniekeme
