It’s interesting reading a book where I feel like the author is really hinting at the biggest takeaway, but the book never comes out and says it aloud. Maybe that’s a conscious choice, or maybe it’s an oversight, but I find it really interesting.

What is Will’s deal?

Will Guidara grew up in the restaurant business — his dad had executive positions in a large company that ran lots of restaurants. He decided he also wanted to get into the restaurant biz, so he got various jobs with developmental opportunities thanks to his connections. That put him in a position to become GM of a restaurant (Eleven Madison Park or EMP) at 26 years old, which is pretty crazy.

The narrative arc of the book focuses on how they took EMP from a pretty good restaurant and turned it into the number one restaurant in the world, with a four star NYT review and three Michelin stars (the only restaurant in history to jump from 1 to 3 directly).

Will’s point is that they did it by focusing not solely on the food, but on the entire dining experience, and by extending “hospitality” to not just mean creating a standard of service excellence, but also creating unique, individualized experiences for each guest.

One of the incidents that started this was when a group from Europe came in just before hitting the plane and lamented that they’d tried every restaurant in New York they wanted, but they hadn’t gotten a real “dirty water dog” (a hot dog from a vendor). So Will ran to the corner, got a $2 hot dog, and asked his gourmet chef to plate it up for the people at the table (which he did artfully).

From that sprung a whole department (Dreamweavers) dedicated to personalizing each experience for each guest in a similar way.

The book is full of lessons Will learned over decades in the hospitality industry. Some of these lessons are really good, but I think he misses out on something profound — how to apply this thinking to other industries. Maybe because he wanted you to connect the dots yourself, maybe because that’s not the type of book he wanted to write. But I would like to talk about how I think this stuff should get applied to your job.

What Will Leaves Unsaid

When I reviewed the culture code I highlighted one way that I look at books (especially self help or instructional books). I’m going to quote myself like some kind of narcissist, but here I go:

In “Getting Things Done” David Allen talks about how implementing a model is all about “tricks.” As he puts it:

If you’re not sure you’re committed to an all-out implementation of these methods, let me assure that much of the value people get from this material is good tricks. Someones just one good trick can make it worthwhile to range through this information: I’ve had people tell me, for example, that the best thing they got from our seminars was simply the two-minute rule.

This comes after David Allen outlines the model behind Getting Things Done. The model is the logical framework where the rest of the action fits. He then fills in the model with “tricks” — things you can try at every stage to implement the model.

This off-handed remark that Allen spends less than two pages on has been so valuable for me as I’ve reviewed other books! In every book I try to find the “model” and I try to find the “tricks” and I evaluate them separately. Some books have an interesting model and terrible tricks. Some books are all tricks with no model (which is mostly useless, in my opinion) …

Will’s book is all tricks, with no explicit model, HOWEVER, there is an implicit model here — one he doesn’t call out as such —

(again, my gut feeling is that he doesn’t call it out on purpose because he thinks you discovering it will be more valuable, but I’m going to call it out because I think it deserves to be explicit)

In one section Will explains the reasons they call their restaurant company “Make it Nice,” which is a phrase Daniel (the chef) used while his English wasn’t as polished to indicate that they should give extra attention to something. So in honor of that I’m calling Will’s implicit model (which I am making explicit potentially against his wishes) “Make Your Career Nice” because I couldn’t think of anything better in the last 30 seconds and I don’t want to name something myself that isn’t mine.

Make Your Career Nice

Whether you work in the hospitality industry or as a teacher or as an engineer or, as I do, in technology, there is a model you can follow to have a career that is meaningful, satisfying, and where you perform with excellence. Here are the steps.

1. Find the nobility in what you do

Many, if not most, jobs have some facet of them that is noble. By that I mean, you’re bringing genuine value to the lives of others.

Sometimes it’s obvious. Doctors save lives. Dentists create smiles (I mean physically, no one smiles on their way into the dentist office). Teachers mold young minds.

Sometimes it’s less obvious. You could easily view working at a fancy restaurant through a cynical lens — I’m just helping the 1% eat their duck liver or whatever.

I worked at a movie theater for a while, a job I loved. I managed the IT department. It would be easy to be cynical about working at a movie theater. What’s noble about the next Marvel movie?

But as I walked through the theaters I realized how incredibly special they were. You would see couples on first dates rubbing elbows with senior citizens on what was likely their 50th dates. Parents bringing children to share something that they loved as kids. You saw films that people put their heart and soul into. I still remember sitting in the theater after watching “Spotlight,” utterly moved, sitting in silence with total strangers while the credits roled.

And we in IT had a hand in making those nights special! This is something I’ve written about multiple times, but I would talk to the team about how if we do our jobs well then everyone has a good night. They come in, they get their tickets, they get their food, they watch the movie and everything runs smoothly.

But if we didn’t do it well it took what could’ve been a good night and poisoned it. Lines at the box office, cold popcorn, films starting late … all that was on the line for thousands of families every night.

Not only that, but we influenced the type of day our coworkers had! Would they be smiling and handing people their popcorn, or would they be grimacing and explaining for the tenth time that their computer systems were on the fritz so it was taking a long time to print tickets?

Much of Will’s book focuses on how valuable the act of serving someone a meal is. Whatever it is you do, find the nobility in it. Write it down! Remind yourself of the ways that what you do is unique and special.

2. Focus relentlessly on what makes your job noble

Will was a GM for a restaurant. He had unique insight into the financial and practical side of running a business, as well as the “front of house” (or dining room, as he preferred to call it). He knew that a meal isn’t just food on a plate, but that the whole experience creates a memory (or legend, as they came to call it). Everything they did as an organization was centered around the idea of building memories.

There are lots of good books that talk about focusing on what makes your job special, so I’m not going to spend a bunch of time here unpacking it. The Advantage by Lencioni, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Rumelt, The Toyota Way by Liker, Essentialism by McKeown … I could go on. The point is, focusing on what brings your customers value is generally the key to success.

And, ideally, what is noble about your job, and what brings your customers value, overlaps.

Going back to the movie theater, IT wasn’t important because it was what made the experience special — in fact, the best IT systems that we deployed were transparent to the customer. They made their experience better and smoother and more focused on their family and their chosen films without the customer even realizing what was happening.

Take the checkout process for buying tickets. Most of our customers bought tickets through our website, so that was their first interaction with us. The original checkout experience was complicated. It took multiple pages and was prone to errors.

We redesigned it as one page with “accordion” sections that expanded and retracted. It was easier to use, it was quicker, and there were fewer mistakes. Our conversion rate increased pretty dramatically (how many people finished buying tickets after starting the process), but more than that it felt better for our customers to use. It started their family night or date night off on the right foot.

3. Use that core of nobility to motivate yourself (and each other)

I mentioned above how easy it is to be cynical. Will talks a lot about how, when he was in college, it wasn’t cool to “care” and, when he found a friend who made it cool to care, it was a turning point for him. He tried to make the restaurants he ran places where it was cool to care too.

If there is nobility in your job, if it brings value to people, that is the best possible motivator. You shouldn’t waste it.

Will spends a lot of time discussing how he’d interact with his team so that they would catch the same vision he had — so that they would know how important what they do can be.

That’s the model!

The stupidly named “Make Your Career Nice” model is very simple:

1. Find The Nobility in What You Do
2. Focus Relentlessly on what makes your job noble
3. Use that core of nobility to motivate yourself (and each other)

But it’s something a lot of people would benefit from! Also, it takes Will’s book, which is full of tricks, and tacks on a model, which I’m a fan of.

Luckily for Will most people aren’t weird like me and are fine with a good book with some wise words and don’t demand a model to tie everything together.