1: The thing about Laura?
“She never complains.” Will Guidara writes in his terrific book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect.
Will was about to assume the General Manager role at Eleven Madison Park (also known as EMP). This New York City fine-dining restaurant was part of legendary restaurateur Danny Meyer‘s Union Square Hospitality Group.
One “should never waste an opportunity to gather intel before your first day on the job,” Will writes.
Which is why he was meeting with Laura for cocktails. They had worked together previously, and now Laura was working at Eleven Madison Park. Will knew Laura to be “relentlessly can-do, a brilliant problem-solver, and a tireless advocate for the people who work for her.”
So when Laura told him the state of affairs at EMP was “bad bad,” he knew he was walking into a difficult situation.
2: Eleven Madison Park had opened eight years earlier in 1998 and had received a middling two-star review from The New York Times. After receiving another two-star review in 2006, Danny Meyer set out to remake the restaurant.
His first move was to hire twenty-nine-year-old chef Daniel Humm. Who had earned his first Michelin star at age twenty four.
“His cooking at Campton Place had earned the restaurant four stars from the San Francisco Chronicle in a review that raved about his contemporary take on technique-driven European cuisine,” Will writes.
Will was working at another of Danny’s restaurants. He and Daniel became acquainted, and they learned they both shared a passion for restaurants. Daniel asked Danny if Will could join him as the General Manager at Eleven Madison Park.
The two men quickly put forth a mission statement: “To be the four-star restaurant for the next generation.”
Mission statements are great. But the reality on the ground was far from where they aspired to be.
Chef Daniel had brought aboard managers from prestigious restaurants from all around the country. The “fine dining squad” believed EMP could be exceptional.
“They wanted the staff to be doing things their way—the ‘right’ way—and were constantly irritated everyone wasn’t living up to their exacting standards,” Will explains.
This group clashed with the “old guard,” who had been working at the restaurant for years. “EMP only had two stars in those early years,” Will writes, “but it was a popular, busy restaurant with a ton of devoted regulars, which meant a server could make a healthy living working there. And the style of service had matched the food, which is to say that it was friendly and relaxed, without a lot of focus on precision or finesse. . .
“So the servers and managers who had been running the restaurant for years and were proud of everything they’d created felt unsettled and disrespected, while the fine-dining squad was frustrated by the lack of progress toward excellence.”
The bottom line? “Everyone was pissed off,” Will writes.
Not only that. The customer experience was also subpar.
“A menu that had been more or less static for years was now changing all the time,” Will notes. “But information—and there was a ton of it, including a huge and rapidly evolving wine list—came in on the fly, in an intense barrage nobody could be expected to absorb, especially twenty minutes before they were expected to share the excitement with guests.”
Another challenge was that the restaurant had the same number of tables as before when “EMP had been slinging steak frites,” he relates. “There’s also a reason you don’t see four-star restaurants with a hundred and forty seats, you simply cannot serve that type of food—or deliver that level of service—at brasserie volume. . .
“Guests were waiting past their reservation times and too long for food when they were finally seated. During the worst nights, the whole bar would be packed with people running out of patience.
“One weekend, there was such a disparity between the number of reservations the restaurant was taking and what the kitchen was able to put out, the team began humming the Guns N’ Roses song ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ when they ran into one another at the service station.
“They were supposed to be delivering an elegant, gracious experience, but a dining room manager turned to Laura and said flatly, ‘We might as well be working as Denny’s.'”
The bottom line: “The restaurant was making more people mad than happy,” Will observes.
3: This week, we’ll be looking at some of the strategies Will and Daniel used to transform Eleven Madison Park from a middle-of-the-road restaurant to being crowned the No. 1 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Strategy #1: Leaders listen.
“Some of the best advice I ever got about starting in a new organization is: Don’t cannonball. Ease into the pool,” Will writes. “No matter how talented you are, or how much you have to add, give yourself time to understand the organization before you try to impact it.”
Will began by meeting with every single member of the team and listening to what they had to say.
“One of the hardest parts about being dropped into a new environment is everyone is telling a different story,” he notes. “We have to connect with everybody and accept it might take a minute to determine if that manager really is a horrible person or if his agenda just differs from whoever’s doing the complaining.
“We’re not always going to agree with everything we hear, but we’ve got to start by listening,” Will writes.
At the outset, it’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong, “because nobody is communicating effectively,” he suggests. “The front-line staff weren’t talking to one another because nobody was talking to them, and they weren’t listening to one another because they felt like nobody was listening to them.”
By sitting down with each team member individually, Will was able to gather a wealth of information that would have taken much longer to discern otherwise.
The other benefit? “Sitting down with people shows them we care about what they think and how they feel and makes it that much easier for them to trust that we have their best interests in mind.”
Will also instructed his managers to cease sitting together during the daily pre-meal meeting. “By spreading out, they’d learn, as I had, that the meal is a perfect opportunity to gather ideas and perspectives that might otherwise slip through the cracks.”
Mostly, the team needed to be listened to.
“They needed to feel seen and appreciated,” he observes. “They needed expectations to be clearly laid out and explained. They needed discipline to be consistent. They needed disciple to be consistent. They needed to feel like vital and important parts of an exciting sea change, not obstacles to making it happen.”
The restaurant’s serious disorganization exacerbated the friction between the various factions. “There were plenty of standards in place, but no real systems to communicate them. Unsurprisingly, this led to a lot of inconsistency.”
So, upon joining the restaurant, Will focused on (1) communication and (2) systems, “so everybody would know what they were supposed to be doing and how they were supposed to be doing it.
“It was my hope that both fixes would make the team feel safer—and inspire them to come along on our mission,” he notes. “There was a lot to be done to make the restaurant better, but there would be no point to doing any of it if the people who worked there didn’t love coming to work.
“If I couldn’t succeed in getting hearts and minds on board for the bigger project,” Will observes, “then the grand vision of a push toward excellence would be dead on arrival.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I taking the time to truly listen to every voice on our team, especially before making big changes or passing judgment?
Action: Set up individual conversations with team members—actively listen to their experiences, concerns, and ideas before proposing solutions or new directions.