Page 59 - The New Gold Standard

Set the Foundation
in every Ritz-Carlton everywhere in the world. In fact, lineup is
a fabulous way to start the day. I love that every day I get kick-
started by the words of statesmen or former presidents. The
quote from today was from an Irish rock musician who said
something like ‘my heroes are the ones who survived doing it
wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.’ In addi-
tion to the sayings, we talk about something that’s going on at
one of our locations in the world, whether it’s the opening of a
new hotel or some employee who did something extraordinary
to help a guest or another employee.” Marguerite adds, “I truly
feel connected to something larger than myself when I realize
that the information we were reading at my sales lineup is being
read by every employee in every Ritz-Carlton all over the world.
It really is my connection to my company, to all of our Ladies
and Gentlemen, and to our guests.”
Ed Staros states that the practice of lineup at Ritz-Carlton
borrows from a tradition in the culinary division of the hospi-
tality industry and it is also an effort to benchmark effective cor-
porate communication strategies. “In the food and beverage
business, an informational type of lineup is very common when
you own a restaurant. If your doors open at six o’clock for
evening service, it’s routine that at around five o’clock you have
a huddle and get the entire waitstaff together. The sous chef
might come out of the kitchen and say, ‘Tonight we have fresh
mahi-mahi that was just flown in. In fact, I’ve prepared one,’ and
there would be 12 forks for the 12 waitstaff to taste it. It’s very
uncommon to do that at the beginning of each shift in a non-
food-and-beverage environment. We took that culinary lineup
to the next level.”
Ed continues, “Horst wondered why we couldn’t take the
lineup to all departments, and it just so happened that I had vis-
ited FedEx to benchmark them. As I observed their office, I
noticed a TV screen that reported information on how the com-
pany was doing with delivery accuracy on that day. When I came
back to our headquarters, I told Horst how FedEx used their

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