A Chapter That Restisted For Weeks

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Series: Recruiting, AI & HR in Hospitality · Article #29 of 90

A Chapter That Restisted For Weeks

There are chapters that write themselves. And then there are chapters that resist. One of them occupied me for more than four weeks. I discarded it completely three times. Not because the facts were wrong. But because for a long time, I did not know whom I might hurt by writing it.

The Point Where Honesty Becomes Uncomfortable

It is about responsibility. More precisely, about the difference between being responsible and being empowered to make decisions. I know that difference from more than three decades in hospitality – from reception to the lecture hall, from consulting to headquarters, from operations to strategy. And I know the look on people’s faces when you put a name to it. To that difference.

You are held responsible for the outcome. You are not authorised to determine the path to get there.

It sounds banal when you read it like this. It is anything but banal when you are the person caught in the middle of it.

The Attempt to Find a Solution

In the first two versions, I tried to offer a solution. I wanted to describe how responsibility and decision-making authority could be brought back together. What leadership would have to look like for this imbalance to disappear. Both versions failed. And the longer I worked on them, the clearer it became why. I cannot tell anyone how they should take responsibility for themselves or for their own leadership style. That is not for me to decide. Nor is it my place to question the competence of investors or brand owners, or to challenge their pursuit of profit. They operate within their own logic, and that logic has its own legitimacy. Who am I to tell someone how to act when I do not live their reality? There are always good reasons for one decision or another. Does everyone need to understand those reasons? I have an opinion on that, too. But even that is not the point here.

So I discarded the chapter for a third time.And this time, I did not rewrite it.I rethought it.

The Question That Remained

What remained was not a solution. It was a bigger question. At first, the question had been: Who is held responsible here without having the authority to make the decisions? The new direction was: What actually drives us when we make decisions, regardless of where we stand within the organisation? General Managers who are accountable for the numbers. HR professionals who do – or do not – have a say in salary structures. Investors who expect returns. Brand owners who set standards. Team leaders who are there when guests complain. Every one of these positions involves decisions driven by its own motivations – based on the best knowledge available, within a defined scope of authority, and shaped by experience. The real question is not who is allowed to decide how much. The real question is what our decisions are based on. Short-term pressure to deliver results? A genuine understanding of the people who ultimately have to live with the consequences? Numbers that no longer reflect the reality from which they originated? The experience mentioned above? Is it really experience,  or is it something entirely different that we simply label as experience?

What is the foundation on which we make our decisions? And would we still make and stand by that decision if we ourselves were working at the front desk? If we were working in housekeeping? If we were serving behind the bar in the evening? If we were speaking to the people who might one day become part of our team?

What the Chapter Became

A chapter that began as an exploration of responsibility without decision-making authority became a chapter about the foundation on which we make decisions.

The manuscript, as you know, is now finished. Every chapter is in place, and the editing process is underway. But this particular chapter taught me just how much a question can change when you are honest with yourself instead of rushing to provide an answer. It also taught me that the wider context changes with it. Of course, I had to adapt the chapters I had already written. Of course, I had to change the concept, because the chapters that followed no longer fitted – at least not 1:1 – with what I had originally planned. 

So I did not write a ready-made answer.

I sharpened a question that I consider more important than any answer I could have provided.

I created a framework for thinking.

What drives you when you make decisions, and would the foundation of those decisions withstand a night’s sleep and a critical look from the outside?