Graham Ledger was general manager of Singita, across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, when I spoke with him for The Luxury of Attention. He had built Singita’s portfolio across those three countries and spent four decades in wilderness luxury.
He speaks mainly to hiring and to the first weeks of employment, and he is the one operator in the book who puts a number on it. After interviews and a careful background and reference check, he evaluates a candidate using what he calls the 80/20 rule: eighty percent enthusiasm and cultural fit, twenty percent technical skill, which can be taught and developed over time. The eighty is the door, and if the candidate cannot pass it the twenty does not matter.
He is also specific about what he asks.
“When interviewing candidates, I ask them about family values, their school years, achievements and friendships. I ask whether they’re still in touch with old friends as I believe this shows a commitment to valuing relationships.” Graham Ledger, then general manager, Singita
The questions sound personal until you notice what they test: whether a candidate can keep a relationship going over time, which is the disposition hospitality demands every day. A person who cannot hold a friendship over a decade is unlikely to hold a returning guest over the same span.
Once the hire is made, Ledger takes the discipline into the register of length. A deep orientation is paramount, he says. A poorly inducted staff member will fail spectacularly, and it is unfair to them to be put to work without being properly immersed in the company, its practices and its values. At Singita that introduction runs from three days to more than three weeks, at a wilderness lodge where seasonal pressure might tempt a less rigorous operator to cut it short. His 80/20 rule sits alongside the practices of von Arnim, Kaupp, Orlando and Boer in what I call the People-First model.
In Chapter 8 he gives a quieter example of the human touch, specific to his setting. If a guest regularly orders a gin and tonic, he told me, the lodge acts on it.
“We will add this cocktail to their drink box for their guide to share with them during a game drive, or we may prepare a surprise gin bar during the bush dinner at the boma.” Graham Ledger, then general manager, Singita
The data point is generic. The use of it is specific to the wilderness context, and that specificity is what separates the human touch from templated personalization.
In the book, Graham Ledger appears in Chapter 4, First the Team, on the 80/20 rule and on orientation that runs to three weeks, and in Chapter 8, The Human Touch, on the gin and tonic in the drink box.