Unreasonable Hospitality

In Unreasonable Hospitality author Will Guidara expounds on how he took his career from a backroom bookkeeper to the executive in charge of a restaurant empire, and the corresponding journey of Eleven Madison Park from an unheralded gem to the top restaurant in the world.

Guidara’s main techniques, at the end of the day, boiled down to his leadership. He followed several classic leadership principles religiously: praise in public, discipline in private; let the team have a say; give people ownership; and be firm when people are in the wrong or push boundaries.

These leadership principles helped to cultivate a cultural flywheel at EMP that ensured everyone was fully bought in and invested in the restaurant’s success.

Guidara also used the principle of continuous improvement to ensure that the team was always marginally improving the small things. This growth compounded over time to ensure the quality of the customer experience was always increasing.

As a result, Guidara was able to lead his team to become the top restaurant in the world.