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Professional practice

Hospitality & service leaders

Welcome, detail, recovery, team coordination, thin margins, customer limits, and invisible service craft.

12 questions, 177 answers on the record, from 136 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

How has a setback or failure set you up for later success?

Wendy Kopp

Founder of Teach For America; chief executive of Teach For All

I applied to one firm in every sector. This was the most half-hearted job search.

Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2013

Whitney Wolfe Herd

Founder and chief executive of Bumble

Don't be scared of the ‘what ifs,’ because the truth is, the only failure is not trying. That's the only way you can fail. Trying and having it not work out isn't failure.

Recorded · CNBC Make It · 2021

Amy Tan

Novelist; author of The Joy Luck Club

I didn’t fear failure. I expected failure. I think I’ve always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1996

Read all 69 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. What small act makes a guest feel genuinely welcomed rather than processed? —
  2. Which detail appears minor to a guest but determines whether the experience works? —
  3. What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
  4. How do you recover after the service has clearly gone wrong? —
  5. What allows a team to coordinate well during the busiest and least forgiving hour? —
  6. Who makes your work possible behind the scenes? 2
  7. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  8. What part of your job would surprise outsiders because it takes up so much of your time? 41
  9. Where can a hospitality business save money safely, and where does economising destroy the experience? —
  10. What makes you want to keep learning? 9
  11. What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
  12. When is the customer not right, and how should a good operator respond? —

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

  • Alice Waters

    Chef, restaurateur and food activist

    2 answers United States b. 1944

  • AW
    August Wilson

    Playwright; two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama

    2 answers United States 1945–2005

  • Barack Obama

    44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008

    3 answers United States b. 1961

  • BJ
    Bong Joon-ho

    Film director and screenwriter

    2 answers South Korea b. 1969

  • Cathy Freeman

    Australian sprinter, 1990–2003

    2 answers Australia b. 1973

  • Charlie Munger

    Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

    2 answers United States b. 1924

  • Chris Hoy

    British track cyclist, 1994–2013

    3 answers United Kingdom b. 1976

  • DS
    Derek Sivers

    Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want

    2 answers United States

  • Desmond Tutu

    Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

    2 answers South Africa 1931–2021

  • Edmund Hillary

    Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953

    2 answers New Zealand 1919–2008

  • Haruki Murakami

    Novelist, short-story writer and translator

    2 answers Japan b. 1949

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