Early in my career, while working as a young manager for a luxury hotel chain, there was one subject that I recall inspiring universal dread for staff and managers alike.

Standards.

From standards training, to standards meetings, to standards testing, to standards coaching, the perpetual emphasis on standards seemed all-consuming and perhaps raised as many questions as it answered. Was this rudimentary list of checkboxes the key to the sophisticated art of genuine hospitality? Exactly how many times could we inquire if a guest needed further assistance before sounding scripted and robotic? Where was the allowance for personalization and authenticity that might actually inspire a guest to return?

I was sure that this was not what our illustrious founder had in mind.

"We're in the business of perfection," my hotel manager would quip, repeating the mantra of needing to execute flawlessly every time to be successful both individually and as a hotel. In essence, if we constantly trained, tested, and reinforced the 30 or so "steps" that needed to occur in every guest interaction, they would become second-nature in our daily routine and we wouldn't have to consciously think about them anymore. Guess what? He was right: our hotel performed well on anonymous quality assurance inspections and we continuously received five-star/five-diamond recognition due to our ability to consistently execute on pre-defined standards.

"So what?" a certain fledgling manager would think to himself. "Now we have a small army of people that answers the phone within three rings, uses the guest's name, offers further assistance, and thanks the guest upon departure. That's not exactly hospitality. In fact, that could be interpreted as the opposite of hospitality—we're turning a dynamic, two-way experience into a rigid, one-way process." And, to a certain extent, I can still empathize with my perspective. In hindsight, however, I think I was missing the bigger picture.

The crux of my internal conflict seemed to come down to one question: How can a guest experience maintain the consistency that is defined by strict internal processes without sacrificing the "in the moment" panache that makes it unexpected and memorable? The service industry is already ridiculously hard; it's the only industry where the end-product (an experience) is co-produced by both the employee and the customer in real-time. Both stakeholders have a hand in its success and both can change its course on a dime, so anything can happen. With that in mind, how can one possibly get personality and process to symbiotically co-exist when it's difficult enough to excel in just one of those areas?

As a young hotelier, I was able to recognize how my hotel was able to attain success in the process part through its continuous communication, accountability, and overall rigor around the flawless execution of standards: we were never given the opportunity to drift into a lull of complacency. What I didn't realize was how that practice of constant process reinforcement may have actually been the catalyst for allowing the personality part of the equation to flourish, as well.

We're all familiar with the phrase, practice makes perfect (or more recently, Vince Lombardi's perfect practice makes perfect). In essence, it comes down to forming habits to the point where they become instinctive. And from the example above, that seemed to hold true in the hotel world. We practiced a pre-defined list of behaviors and procedures over and over again to the point where we could instinctively meet a guest's basic needs/expectations during each type of service encounter. Offering a towel and water after a guest returned from a jog, proactively providing a map when a guest asked for directions, escorting a guest to a desired location, pouring the first cup of coffee during a room service delivery, etc. etc. All were things that guests had come to expect in a luxury setting, and all, in my opinion, served as the cost of entry for service excellence. In essence, if we weren't getting the basics right, the personal and emotional part of an interaction never even had the chance to make an impact.

So how does the repetition of procedural fundamentals actually promote the injection of personality and customization into a service experience? Well, the interesting thing about the practice makes perfect idiom may not be what it declares but more so what it enables. Perhaps once individuals are able to execute on a set of requirements essentially without thinking, they are able to shift their focus to the bigger picture.

Consider Michael Jordan shooting a basketball. I'm sure he was not consciously thinking about the torque of his wrist while releasing a game-winning 15-footer with a defender in his face. Instead, he was relying on the instincts that he gained through incessant practice to rise above the mechanics of the jump shot, allowing his creative side to take over on a much grander scale.

The same logic can be applied to our industry. If the fundamentals are so well ingrained that your employees are able to shift their focus from putting one step in front of the other, they become free to expend that energy on creating truly captivating experiences. This shift yields the heightened awareness necessary to pick up on non-verbal cues, understand the intricacies of a situation, and eventually anticipate needs. The real kicker to this model, however, is the fact that the personality side of the interaction takes practice, too—you have to know what to look for and where to look for it. Unfortunately, this stage is inherently less structured in the sense that you can't provide a straightforward list of step-by-step instructions (i.e., standards) to walk someone through the process … because personality is not a process. It's more about providing the tools, exposure, and reinforcement so that the employees can create something memorable on their own, letting their natural gifts shine. (Assuming they have them—finding folks with personality is important, too.)

Process and personality need not be mutually exclusive; in fact, they need to coexist seamlessly. Human beings, however, can only concentrate on a finite number of things at once, so the challenge remains to establish an environment where process is instinctive, freeing up the "bandwidth" for personality take over. And that, as we all know, is where the true art of hospitality ultimately resides.

Feedback? Email Rick Reilly at [email protected] with permission from