Blog #6: Unreasonable Hospitality: Lessons in Following the Golden Rule for Business Success

This is the next installment in our series of blogs about how following the Golden Rule—treating people the way they want to be treated—is the surest path to business success and long-term value creation.

The Business Case for Loyalty

As we’ve covered in previous blogs, customer loyalty is a straightforward business equation: less churn (fewer lost customers) plus a steady stream of new business wins means your business grows faster with lower acquisition costs, resulting in greater profitability.

The business case for employee loyalty is less well known, but I believe is absolutely essential to sustainably achieving customer loyalty. In a nutshell, it’s my view that employee job satisfaction, leading to loyalty, is the most significant source of competitive advantage for most businesses. This is based on the belief that:

"The best company to work for is the best company to work with."

Why? Because loyal employees just get it. They understand the business deeply. They represent the company more effectively to customers, are more experienced, knowledgeable, and productive, which means they achieve more, at better quality and lower cost. At Eagle Eye, our staff turnover is around 7%, while some competitors experience rates exceeding 20%. Considering that a new hire may only be 50% as productive as an experienced employee in their first year, this difference in retention translates directly into a 7% productivity advantage for us — before even considering the qualitative impact.

In 2023, Best Companies recognized Eagle Eye as the 7^th Best Company to work for in the UK, and the 5^th Best Technology Company, marking an improvement from the previous year. This was obviously great news, but got me thinking about what’s next. How do we keep improving? How do we go from being #7 to #1? This led me to the book Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. It's the story of how the fine dining restaurant Eleven Madison Park in New York ascended from 50^th place to become the best restaurant in the world by focusing on exceeding expectations through delivering exceptional service and memorable experiences — not just following the Golden Rule, but redefining it for their industry.

If you’re a fan of The Bear or fine dining, I highly recommend this book; it’s an insightful read.

Here are the key takeaways that we’re starting to apply at Eagle Eye:

1. Invert the Pyramid

Create discussion groups and involve everyone in the process. Give every team member a voice, ensuring they feel seen and heard.

2. Set the Expectation/Objective

At Eleven Madison Park, their vision was for special acts of service to become a matter of course so they encouraged, recognized, and celebrated these acts within their teams. As Guidara puts it, "All it takes for extraordinary things to happen is one person with energy and enthusiasm."

3. Break Down Destructive Silos

In the restaurant, this meant fostering a partnership between the kitchen and front-of-house teams. In our context, it’s about ensuring cross-functional collaboration.

4. Be More Miles Davis

The team at Eleven Madison Park liked and drew inspiration from Miles Davis, having group discussions about what it would mean for them to be “more Miles Davis”. They concluded it meant being cool, endlessly reinventing themselves, moving forwards, being fresh, collaborative, spontaneous, vibrant, adventurous and innovative. Quite the list, and very inspiring. As a side note, it was this book that led to me discovering Miles Davis for the first time and can safely say the book was worth the read for that alone.

5. Ownership Program

Identify individuals passionate about specific aspects of your business and empower them to drive improvements. At Eleven Madison Park, this meant acknowledging that other venues did coffee or beer better, and so they identified team members passionate about these things and empowered them to elevate them to being best-in-class.

6. Communicate

Share and leverage external validation to reinforce the mission internally.

7. Recognize

Acknowledge and reward employees who make the biggest difference.

In January, I visited Eleven Madison Park with some colleagues during a trip to New York for NRF. I wrote to them beforehand to explain I was coming, hoping this would tee them up for an act of "unreasonable hospitality." I arrived full of expectation. The dining room is large and austere, our table faced the door, and the menu is entirely vegan. Despite the constraints, the quality of the food and sauces was remarkable — the gluten-free bread surpassed most, and the decaf espresso was excellent. But was the hospitality unreasonable? No, it was what one would expect from a top-tier restaurant, which only goes to show how difficult it is to sustain number-one performance. If that’s still their goal, they might need to put on "Kind of Blue" and go again.

Unreasonable Hospitality is a great book with a valuable list of takeaways, and it has definitely inspired us to go again, pushing forward in our pursuit of being the best company to work for, as well as with.

Join the revolution

Please continue to participate in the #GoldenRule revolution. Leave your comments and share examples of where you've experienced the Golden Rule or been part of a highly effective Team of Teams.