The uncanny similarity between (seemingly unrelated) businesses
I started listening to the book “Unreasonable Hospitality” and expected to stop within the first few chapters. On the face of it, it is the story of how a fine dining restaurant in New York became the best restaurant in the world (yes, there is apparently such a ranking).
But it is actually a masterclass in team and business building. It made me realize how similar most businesses. Two things that stood out as similarities between restaurant and tech businesses:
1/ Restaurant smart v/s business smart.
Most small restaurants are restaurant smart. They care a lot about pleasing the customer. And they give lots of freedom to their employees (waiters and chefs) to adapt their offering based on the customer’s needs. This sounds a lot like a tech startup trying to find product market fit.
Once a restaurant has established itself (found PMF), it needs to become business smart. A small example of a business smart is negotiating a bulk discount for dishwashing detergent. This is the scaling phase for a tech startup.
Big restaurant chains are business smart. They have systems and metrics in place to monitor the health of their restaurants. If a dish is hurting the restaurant's profits because the cost of ingredients has gone up, they have a way to identify it (daily finances reports) and fix it (by removing the dish from the menu) immediately. This is BigTech.
But systems kill creativity. At one of the business smart restaurants, the author moved a flower vase from one end of the bar to another so that the bartender could make eye contact with the customers. The next day the vase was back at its original place because the design team had not approved the move (despite never having visited the restaurant). Classic BigTech.
The ideal place is a balance between restaurant smart and business smart. It’s tough, but well worth the trouble.
2/ Building a strong team. Ownership, trust, and growth.
When managing his own restaurant, the author realized that their coffee menu was lacking. This was typical of fine dining restaurants because the beverage director was often a wine person. Not surprisingly, most of the focus was on wine. The author introduced a coffee director position and promoted a staff member who was passionate about coffee to that role. Results? The coffee menu improved. The wine menu improved (because the wine person did not have to think about coffee). And the new coffee director felt valued and empowered. Win-win-win. They repeated this process and created positions for beer director and cocktails director. Ownership exemplified at its best.
Giving responsibility to a person who is enthusiastic even if they don’t have the experience shows trust in the team. If leaders expect all the experience before giving someone a job, they will never be able to promote from within. This is opposite of the classic “we don’t promote for potential, we only promote you when you are already the job” trope common in BigTech.
Sure, sometimes this strategy will backfire. Part of trusting is taking risks and failing. It just means you need to find a different, better suited, position for that person.
I highly recommend this book – to managers for advice on how to build and run teams, and to IC for putting into words the intangible things that make them feel valued or not in a team.