A Menu for Magic: Unreasonable Hospitality in Your People Strategy
At the heart of any great business—be it a three-star restaurant or a technology startup—is not a product, but a promise. The promise of an experience that goes beyond what is expected. This is the essence of Unreasonable Hospitality, and while you might think it’s a concept for fine dining, I’m here to tell you it’s the most powerful principle you can apply to your own team.
Just as a maître d’ ensures every guest feels seen and cared for, you, as a CEO, must make sure every employee feels the same. But here’s the truth: you can’t be in the kitchen and the dining room at the same time. You can’t run a business and give every single person the bespoke attention they deserve.
This is why you need a fractional HR consultant—your new partner in creating Unreasonable Hospitality for your people.
The Two-Dollar Hot Dog of HR
The world-class experience isn’t about the most expensive ingredients; it’s about the gesture that feels personal, unexpected, and truly special. It’s the two-dollar hot dog served in a four-star restaurant to a guest who simply mentioned they’d never had one.
In your business, the equivalent of that hot dog is a “people moment” that shows you are truly listening. It’s a beautifully designed onboarding process that makes a new hire feel like they’ve found their professional home. It’s a performance review system that feels like a conversation about growth, not a judgment. It’s a benefits plan that is truly a gift, not just a line item.
A fractional HR consultant doesn’t just manage forms and policies; they are your “Dreamweaver,” tasked with finding and creating these moments of unreasonable hospitality for your team.
- They Listen to the Subtext: An in-house HR person might hear an employee complaint and think, “This is a problem to be solved.” A fractional HR professional listens for the subtext—the unsaid frustration, the quiet longing for connection or purpose. They use that insight to create a solution that gives more than is expected.
- They Are Obsessed with the Small Stuff: The “white glove service” in HR isn’t just about big gestures; it’s about the details. It’s the clarity in a policy, the kindness in a termination, the intentionality behind every single email. They understand that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, and they ensure every interaction, no matter how small, is handled with care.
- They Make It Cool to Care: For a business to be great, every single person on the team has to be bought in. A fractional HR expert helps you build a culture where employees feel so cared for that they, in turn, feel compelled to care for each other. They create a system where “unreasonable hospitality” becomes the shared language, where people are excited to surprise and delight their colleagues.
The Long-Term Return on Generosity
The reasonable approach to HR is to do the bare minimum—to be efficient, to be compliant, to be “corporate-smart.” But that approach gets you an efficient and compliant team, nothing more.
The unreasonable approach, the one that a fractional HR consultant embodies, is to see people as the most valuable part of your business. It’s to invest in them with the same creative passion you invest in your product.
This isn’t about being wasteful; it’s about being strategic. When you give your team more than they expect, they will give you more than you could ever imagine. They will find the “third option” in a difficult problem. They will go above and beyond for a customer.1 They will create the kind of magic that turns a good business into a legendary one.
Don’t settle for “good enough” HR. Choose to be unreasonable. Choose to give your people more than they expect, and watch them do the same for your customers.
