I think the book 'The One Thing' by Gary W. Keller & Jay Papasan is a wonderful life philosophy to live by. The core is simple, focus on one thing.

Some other insights become available once this one seeps in:

• Once you know the 1 thing that is most important, do it repeatedly, with excellence & deliberate practice.

• Once you have reached the high point in that 1 thing, 10X it. Do it more, do it faster, do it cheaper, do it with lesser constraints or find new ways to do it or just do it a lot.

• Once the 10X is achieved, add to it. This is something like habit stacking. Once the 1 thing becomes second nature, add another 1 thing to the stack.

• Repeat the entire process. Success is built sequentially.

Why is it relevant to the Hospitality & Service Industries?

There is so much that can go wrong that a large part of the industry tends to try and do everything from the notion of 'no complaints'. As long as no complaints are coming, everyone seems to think they are doing a great job. While this may be true in non-delight sectors, delight requires more.

Strengthening everything takes time though. If you can isolate a task, a process, that creates a large difference in delight, then you can bring about the change faster. Once that change occurs, it stays for life to be used across more and more processes or tasks. Once you start to see what matters, you are changed for life.

Actionable Insights

The ShowRoom Process

Let's start with something small, yet powerful. Every day, across hotels, someone is showing a room to a prospective buyer/client/guest. Usually, this is the Sales or Front Office.

In most cases, the room that is clean and available (i.e. not blocked for an arrival) is shown. The logic is, all rooms should be in a good enough condition to show to guests.

We think, there is a better way. This is the process we prescribe

**Process Name | Showroom Process**

Reason for Process: To ensure the hotel is showcased to all prospective guests/customers to the highest standards. To ensure no arriving guests get a room that has been shown to a prospective customer but not refreshed.

 **Process Detail**

• Every day 1 room in each category (based on availability) will be termed a showroom. The showroom will be ready by 0900 hrs in all aspects. The showrooms will be made OS (out-of-service) on the system.

• The showroom will be prepared to the highest standards with all amenities & goodies.

• The Showroom keys are to be made (in case of automated ones) and kept ready at the front desk.

• The Service Manager will check all the showrooms.

• All Walk-In guests or guests that come to visit or inspect the property will be shown the showrooms.

• The Sales / Ops team showing the room will make a note of anything that could be improved or is not as per standards. This will be relayed to Housekeeping.

• HouseKeeping will refresh the room after each show visit.

• The showrooms will be taken back into the inventory at 1800 hrs or if occupancy demands it.

• A report will be generated for the number of showings in a day, details of the visit and follow up required.

• This can be done for each room category in the hotel.

Once the hotel has mastered the ShowRoom concept, it is time for 10X. All rooms should be then made to ShowRoom standard and Sales should be allowed to take any room for viewing.  

You can also 10X this by adding recognition or awards for the teams that create zero-error ShowRooms.

You can do this for other departments & processes too. For example, use the same template to do a ShowRoom Table in your restaurant. Make sure one table every day, is perfect in every regard. Once that is achieved, 10X it. IRD, Kitchen, Laundry, Car Service, you name it, you can do this.

Want to make this WOW? 

You can use the same concept of 1 thing, for skill or even things like grooming. Get your team members, to focus on 1 key skill, something that can make everything else better and get them to improve on just that skill.

For example, if email management is the skill that will make everything in Reservations or Sales better (more time, peace of mind, no missing details etc), then focus only on that 1 thing.

In Banquet Operations, for example, if you can make your Function Sheet better and better, you will find it makes everyone's life easier. 

Reward progress. Reward someone 10Xing it. Acknowledge that this will take time but the effort is worth it. 

Something you can do right now is to make a list of 3 things / 3 skills that if you improve, you will improve everything or make everything else at work easier. Then choose the No 1 in that and go after it with a vengeance. 

Send me that 1 thing and let me coach you in first getting it to world-class levels and then 10Xing it. I am p.bedi@eclathospitality.com