Unreasonable Hospitality
I’m not much for resolutions, but I do listen when people with sense make recommendations.
Most of the time.
When a friend suggested “Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect,” by Will Guidara, I paused. How could this book about working at Eleven Madison Park (among other places) resonate so strongly with someone who works in media, not hospitality? I don’t run a restaurant, though my company does handle public relations for a few.
I eventually dismissed my misgivings — which were legion — and added the book to my Kindle.*
But first, a bit of perspective: Every time there’s a new buzzy book about how to improve your life or your work, I snatch it up, assuring myself this time, it’ll be different. I’ll read this book and come out better on the other side. But more times than I can count, I never get past the first page. My bookshelves are crowded with tons of personal development books that have tight, uncracked spines.
So many, in fact, I recently dropped a Trader Joe’s bag packed with 19 books at a used book store, and they took all but four. I blessed and released those unread leadership tomes to more receptive unknown friends and gladly collected store credit.
“Unreasonable Hospitality” was different right out of the gate. I couldn’t put it down, and highlighted it 57 times.* It’s incredibly well-written and the sneakiest leadership book I’ve ever read.
I was struck by the commonality of hospitality across industries. Sure, the book is about working in a restaurant and the service industry as whole, but as Guidara writes “the human desire to be taken care of never goes away.” And it’s nearly universal.
He points out that for most of our country’s history, we were a manufacturing economy, but now we’re service based — more than 75% of our GDP comes from service industries, including public relations/marketing/communications.
“You have an incredible opportunity to be just as intentional and creative — as unreasonable — about pursuing hospitality as you are about every other aspect of your business. Because, whether a company has made the choice to put their team and their customers at the center of every decision will be what separates the great ones from the pack.”
Right? Right!
It’s not rocket science, but it’s important, impactful and a fantastic place to start 2025.
Let’s get to it.
🩷 Rachel
* I fought a battle with myself about e-readers for so many years. A former journalist who still nerds out over printed broadsheet newspapers, I was solidly in the physical-hardcopy-books-only camp. But when I embraced my Kindle, I stopped making things more difficult for myself. Being able to highlight and download (as a PDF and excel doc) the highlights? A game-changer.