Breaking Rules and Building a Team

A tradition is worth keeping if it helps the people being served. Its history is not enough reason to keep it if it makes guests uncomfortable or stops staff from connecting with them.

Before joining Eleven Madison Park, Will Guidara did a short training at The Modern. He had little experience with four-star dining, but that became an advantage. He could question familiar routines because he did not assume they were right just because respected restaurants followed them.

Experienced staff can do a task so automatically that they stop asking what it achieves. Their training helps them follow the rules, but it can also stop them from questioning those rules. A practice deserves another look when nobody can explain it beyond saying it has always been done that way.

Some fine-dining staff worried that Guidara’s changes would stop Eleven Madison Park from earning another star from The New York Times. They disagreed about how to serve soufflé, for example. Guidara wanted it served properly, without letting tradition get in the way of caring for guests. He was not suggesting careless service. He also suspected that following customs without questioning them had helped cause some long-established four-star restaurants to close.

The take-home gift showed the same problem. Guests received canelés, French pastries that showed the kitchen’s skill. But after an elaborate meal, another display of skill was unlikely to make their evening better. Guests might eat the pastries in the taxi or leave them untouched until they went stale. The gift showed what the restaurant wanted to make more than what guests wanted to eat.

The restaurant replaced the pastries with coconut and pistachio granola in a jar bearing its four-leaf emblem. Guests could enjoy it with yogurt the next morning. That breakfast often became the final photograph in their Instagram account of the meal.

The restaurant deliberately chose a modest gift. After an evening of luxury, the granola made the farewell feel more like leaving someone’s home. Giving guests something they would enjoy helped them feel closer to the restaurant. Another impressive pastry might have kept that distance between them.

Hire the Person, Not the Resume

To change the guest experience, a restaurant needs people who genuinely enjoy caring for others. Qualifications cannot replace that desire.

Eleven Madison Park looked for people who would chase after a stranger to return a dropped scarf, welcome new neighbors with cookies, or help carry a stroller up subway stairs. These gestures have something in common: the person helps because making someone else’s day better also makes their own day better.

The restaurant could teach wine knowledge and how to pronounce turbot. It cared first about a person’s character and enthusiasm for the work.

Every new hire began as a kitchen server, carrying food from the kitchen to the dining room. This was the lowest dining-room position. Even someone who had been a general manager elsewhere started there. Starting everyone in the same job required humility and helped show whether they belonged on the team. A person’s previous rank did not excuse them from doing the basic work.

Every Hire Sends a Message

A new employee becomes someone the existing staff must rely on, as well as joining a manager’s team. Hiring therefore affects both the guests and the people already serving them.

One enthusiastic colleague can encourage others to care more and work better. One lazy colleague can have the opposite effect. Strong employees must finish that person’s work to keep standards from falling. Because they do their jobs well, they end up with more work.

The book calls the strongest teammates A players. Leaders respect these employees’ effort by hiring others who show a similar commitment. That also helps attract more excellent people. Leaders cannot reasonably expect complete dedication while repeatedly hiring people who do less than their colleagues.

Staff need to trust one another because hospitality sometimes requires someone to step away from their usual duties to help a guest. The book compares this to a soldier relying on others for cover. Staff need to know that their colleagues will keep things running while they respond to someone’s needs.

That is why hiring deserves patience. Filling a vacancy quickly may ease today’s pressure, but the wrong person can harm the team and leave the job empty again three weeks later. Working a few extra shifts while waiting for the right colleague is better than dealing with that disruption.

The hiring test is whether a candidate could eventually become one of the team’s best two or three people. They do not need to arrive with all the skills they will need, but they need that potential.

Guidara also changed how people joined the team. When one position opened, he waited for two more, then hired three people together. One newcomer could struggle to stay excited in a workplace where others discouraged that excitement. Three could support one another and keep their enthusiasm.

These groups became new-hire classes. Like students entering college together, they were encouraged to rely on one another and treat joining the restaurant as a shared experience. Their enthusiasm became harder to wear down because they did not have to defend it alone.

Make it Cool to Care

People enjoy what they love more when they let themselves be curious, enthusiastic, open, and vulnerable. Hiding those feelings to appear detached reduces that enjoyment.

When teammates share those interests, people feel free to take part wholeheartedly. New-hire classes helped create that kind of company. Caring no longer depended on one person resisting the mood of the people around them. Colleagues could encourage one another’s excitement, so nobody needed to hide their love for the work.