The Last Sentence Has Been Written

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Series: Recruitment, AI & HR in Hospitality · Article #28 of 90

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The Last Sentence Has Been Written

There is this one moment. A good feeling, accompanied at the very same time by scepticism, hesitation and uncertainty, even though only moments before you had been so certain that this was it. But was it really? I experienced that moment a few days ago. A manuscript. My first book. Finished. Sent off. No turning back. You might think that would feel like arriving somewhere. And in a way, it does. But it is an arrival at a place where you do not know what lies ahead, or whether going there was the right decision in the first place. On the one hand, it feels like the end of a sometimes arduous journey. On the other, it feels much more like the beginning of something else.

For years, decades even, I have been designing systems and writing about them from time to time. About guest journeys that fall apart at departmental boundaries. About candidate journeys that show exactly the same cracks, only in a different part of the organisation. I write about KPIs that reveal less than they conceal. About the strengths of an industry that has always been close to my heart, and that has also demanded a great deal of that heart in return. Because one of the hospitality industry's greatest strengths is, at the same time, one of its greatest systemic weaknesses. And when hospitality is your passion, you cannot help but try – at least try – to compensate for it.

Arriving in hospitality as an apprentice, a career changer or someone returning to the industry means arriving in the unknown. And all too often, that arrival is followed by serious doubts after only a short time. Doubts about whether taking that step was the right decision. A step into a system that does not always develop in the right direction, neither for guests nor for team members, regardless of their position.

What I had not considered when I started writing my manuscript – nor during the writing process itself – but came to recognise and reflect on increasingly intensely towards the end, was this: Writing itself is a system.

Every sentence depends on what came before it. Every chapter changes the meaning of what follows. You cannot look at a single word in isolation, just as you cannot look at a hotel reception in isolation from the kitchen, or a General Manager in isolation from the requirements of the corporate office. Nor can you consider a task, a role or an outcome in isolation from the consequences it creates at the many interfaces within a system.

What Months of Writing Taught Me About Leadership

There were weeks when I got stuck on a single thought. Weeks in which I revised chapters I had considered finished, only to discard the revision and return to the original text, making only a few small changes and additions. It was exhausting. Somehow exciting, too. And then, at some point, simply draining. A situation I recognised from my own professional experience, but also from countless conversations with General Managers. You develop strategies over weeks and months. You position yourself in local and regional markets towards different target groups, stakeholders and, not least, your own team. And then the corporate office, head office, a new owner, existing owners or senior management can overturn everything – literally everything – with a single sentence.

Writing and leadership share the same blind spot: We believe we control the outcome, when in reality we control little more than the next step. You start over more than once.

There were jobs where, at some point, I had eight or more concepts sitting in my digital drawers, ready to be pulled out depending on the mood of the owners or the state of the market. There were projects where I eventually had five or more project plans in view at the same time. Not because I was managing that many projects simultaneously.But because, in the course of a project – despite clear indications of the consequences – the client's objectives changed. Or the market and the legislator suddenly arrived with expectations or ideas that, in our worst nightmares, we would never have believed could become reality. And sometimes you can see solutions clearly. They are within reach. They appear to be the only viable way forward. And then you receive a clear instruction to take an entirely different direction. Because it is profitable. Because it is economically necessary. Because, apparently, it is the only thing that can be done.

Over the coming weeks, I will share a little more about this process – one aspect here, another there. Primarily about the process of writing, but also about the many parallels it reveals with the day-to-day reality of hospitality: operations, strategy and, above all, leadership at many different levels.

Why do I want to share my experience of writing a book? Not because an idea has meanwhile become a manuscript and will soon become a printed book or an e-book. But because the journey towards it tells us just as much about our industry as what will eventually be printed on its pages. What occupied me most was not the industry itself. It was the question of how we talk about it, how we perceive it, and how we perceive ourselves. How often do we confuse symptoms with causes? How often do we praise a department for a solution that merely shifts the problem somewhere else? How often do we lose ourselves in asset-light solutions – just today I read once again that the growing shortage of skilled workers can be addressed by reducing the range of services offered if a hotel is to remain economically viable – instead of rethinking some of the traditional, or perhaps simply outdated, elements of hospitality?

Thinking is actually a good keyword here. During the writing process, I moved quite far away from my original path. Initially, I had intended to present solutions. Different approaches to recruitment, training, on-the-job development, the candidate journey, job advertisements and much more. But at some point, I realised that doing so would risk turning what appeared to be departmental problems into even larger systemic problems. So instead, I built a framework for thinking.

And over the coming weeks, I will take you on that journey of thought with me.