Page 82 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 1: DEFINE AND REFINE
with an evolving guest that is moving away from formal service
and a desired sameness of experience, leadership at Ritz-Carlton
sought to determine what, if any, service changes might improve
the guest experience. Diana Oreck, vice president of global learn-
ing and the Leadership Center, says, “Simon Cooper started the
journey into flexibility regarding service delivery in November
2005. He went out on a world tour, speaking to approximately
half of the Ladies and Gentlemen of the company—at that time
approximately 17,000 of 34,000 employees—and conducted ap-
proximately 45 focus groups. Through this process it became
clear that the 20 Basics [discussed in Chapter 2] focused on tasks
like when to answer a phone or how to escort a guest, . . . and
they did not focus on outcomes.
“Our Ladies and Gentlemen suggested that the 20 Basics
were helpful when they were first learning their jobs, but the
more experienced they became, the more they were likely to
modify the way they delivered the 20 Basics as they learned how
to read a guest. Clearly, as leaders, we were less interested in ad-
herence to the 20 Basics and more interested in the outcome of
a happy guest. We wanted our Ladies and Gentlemen to be cre-
ative about producing memorable experiences for the guest as
long as it was through ethical, moral, and legal means.”
Rather than starting with a preconceived notion of how to
revise the 20 Basics, leadership at Ritz-Carlton understood that
a significant cultural change initiative would require the parti-
cipation and involvement of all the Ladies and Gentlemen of the
company. While listening to staff as they crafted the final out-
come of the evolution process, leadership was aware that the de-
sired end state would have to motivate staff to go beyond the 20
Basics to deliver service as the guest wanted to be served. Accom-
plishing that meant the final product (which is referred to as the
“Service Values”) had to rely on observation, intuition, talents,
and the acquired skills of frontline staff.
To achieve the desired outcome, leadership helped craft a set
of guiding principles that focused staff members on what was

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