Leaders set standards by what they do in front of the team, several times a day, every day. Forbes and Michelin measure the result, but the standard itself is upstream, in the chef fixing a cook's station or the general manager who never walks past a fault.
Ask most people in the industry where the standard comes from and they will point outward: Forbes Five-Star, Michelin, La Liste, The Leading Hotels of the World. The leaders I interviewed treat those external measures as floors. The real standard, the one that governs a Tuesday lunch service or a Thursday afternoon in the lobby, is set by the leader’s own behavior, and there is no other mechanism.
Consider the arithmetic of it. A general manager who walks past an empty coffee cup twice in one week has lowered the property’s standard by a measurable degree, because the team saw it happen. A chef who fixes a cook’s mise every shift for six months has raised the kitchen’s standard by a measurable degree, because the cook now sets up his station the way the chef did. The inspection report and the guide are downstream of these moments. The machine is upstream, in the leader’s body, on the floor, at the pass.
Enrico Crippa of Piazza Duomo in Alba described what that standard feels like from the inside of a three Michelin star restaurant. The guide visits once in a while. The guests arrive every day.
“In my opinion, each table is a single judge. Therefore, in a restaurant like Piazza Duomo, with just 11 tables serving lunch and dinner, we are theoretically judged 22 times each day.” Enrico Crippa, Piazza Duomo, Alba
Twenty two verdicts a day, and the chef’s task is to cook as if each one is being decided on the next plate to leave the pass, because it is. Crippa’s related idea is the daily improvement he asks of himself and the kitchen: better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today. The line absorbs that standard by watching him hold himself to it, in front of them, every service.
In a hotel the standard has to cover more ground, which is why the general manager’s consistency across departments matters so much. Susanne Hatje, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, New York, was explicit that she has to be part of every facet of the business.
“As general manager, I must be a part of every facet of the business: finance, marketing, rooms and beyond.” Susanne Hatje, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, New York
The team calibrates to what it observes. A general manager who is rigorous about rooms and indifferent to the restaurant has told the staff, without a word, which parts of the property are allowed to slip. Hatje’s insistence on presence across finance, marketing and operations is standard setting at the level of the whole operating model.
This is also why the leaders I most respect resist writing the standard down. A document hands the practice to auditors and brand compliance teams and takes it away from the people who carry it: the brigade, the front desk, housekeeping. Standards written on paper calcify. Standards performed daily stay alive, and the team can take an accurate copy home in their heads at the end of every shift. Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy in London, compressed the whole idea into one line when he told me that a general manager who walks by a problem is the problem. The standard is what the leader will tolerate, and the team always knows what that is.
Chapter 3, Leading by Example, builds this argument from the coffee cup in the lobby to the crisis that reveals whether the daily deposits were ever made.