When I spoke with Brian Gullbrants, he was president of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore in Las Vegas. The book notes that he has since become Chief Operating Officer for North America at Wynn Resorts.
Gullbrants speaks to three things in The Luxury of Attention. The first is what a mentor’s gesture can mean. His story is about John Toner at The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua in Hawaii. After an incredibly busy stretch, Toner summoned him to his office, where airline tickets were sitting on the desk, and told him to go home, pack up with his wife and daughter, and disappear for a few days. The tickets were for three nights at a nearby resort, with a bonus check for spending money. The second is the bar a leader sets. Gullbrants frames the move with characteristic directness: ask for excellence and you get a job well done; demand perfection and you get excellence. Those who demand more get more, and a team that is stretched and encouraged will surprise you with what it can reach. The third is the future, where he told me, before it was obvious, that smartphone and mobile technology had to be part of the service experience. It is now so basic nobody writes it down.
“If you ask for excellence, you’ll get a job well done. But if you demand perfection, you’ll achieve excellence.” Brian Gullbrants, then president, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore
In the book, Brian Gullbrants appears in Chapter 2, The Apprenticeship, where the airline tickets on Toner’s desk stand among the mentor portraits as a gesture worth keeping in mind; in Chapter 7, In Pursuit of Perfection, where his rule about demanding perfection explains why aiming at excellence produces, over time, a team that performs adequately, while aiming higher pulls actual output above where it would otherwise have been; and in Chapter 14, The Future of Luxury and Craft, where his early forecast on mobile technology is one of the predictions from these interviews that proved exactly right about the channel and said nothing about the substance of the work changing, because it has not.
On Toner, he was plain about what the gesture told him.
“Here was someone who believed in me, invested in me, and undoubtedly appreciated my contributions.” Brian Gullbrants, then president, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore