My favorite brand of hospitality is learning something special about someone, storing it away, then resurfacing it weeks or months later through a meaningful gesture or moment.
I’d like to think that’s what restaurateur and hospitality pro Will Guidara was getting at when he said: “Service is black and white; hospitality is color.”
In his book Unreasonable Hospitality, he writes: “Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service. But genuinely engaging with the person you’re serving, so you can make an authentic connection—that’s hospitality.”
This is easy to do in restaurants. Creating authentic connection is how restaurants build loyalty and “regulars.” I spent years working in restaurants and delighted in the tiny cues that helped me deliver the unexpected. This requires human interaction, and in the restaurant industry, it’s not changing (at least not yet). But I’ve found myself wondering: Is great hospitality at risk?
AI feels like the ultimate busybody, popping in everywhere to summarize my emails, help me write, and answer questions before I even think to ask them. These tools are finding their way, sometimes helpfully, into more and more of our work. We’d be wise to experiment with and use them.
But increasingly, AI tools are offering to listen, analyze, and create synthesis out of thin air. And from my perch as a studio manager, in which I’m responsible for gathering and tracking expectations between colleagues and clients, I’m feeling protective of hospitality.
Don’t outsource listening
Listening and capturing what we hear is a big part of how studio managers interact with clients. This may sound simple, but the work of excellent note-taking should capture conversations and critique, which are naturally steeped in human expression, inflection, and behavior.
I was struck by how Anu Atluru talks about the role humans play in the workplace in her recent article “The Relationship Is the Job.” She argues that relational labor makes us “valuable to each other beyond any single trait or skill” and, even more, isn’t something measurable but rather woven into the fabric of “trust, morale, and momentum” between one another. Studio managers are the bearers of client relationships from beginning to end, uniquely positioned to create the conditions for excellent creative work, for both our partners and our teams.
This all begins with our conversations: the building blocks of relationships. When I’m listening and note-taking, there’s nodding, squinting in concentration or confusion, and likely a gaze at the floor to listen more deeply. When something decisive comes out—a notable idea, a dislike, or a subtle piece of feedback—it gets written down. Thoughts are often returned to, contradicted, thrown out, tied to an idea from a previous meeting, or clarified much later. I jump around accordingly, trying to nail down intent, and most importantly, seeking the right places for emphasis. Time with the client ends, and I read those notes again, making sense of anything that wasn’t clear, and writing it into a final version: Lock it in.
Knowing, holding, and remembering are essential. There’s a lot said in an hour or two with a client. Good listening is like running everything through the colander and hanging on to what’s important and useful. You sift out the chaff and store what you might need later. There’s a lot of gold to catch. You could convince me that sometimes an AI-generated transcript is necessary, but I think we need to be scanning for color. I don’t need to write it all down. Listen well, and you’ll probably wind up with less noise.
Stay free to dream
When a group of people are really, truly engaged in listening, great things happen. Ideas float around, and everyone starts to help morph and sharpen them into new concepts and solutions. Why would I dare check out of that?
A room full of people in conversation isn’t so different from the open format of daydreaming. In Christine Rosen’s recent article “On the Death of Daydreaming,” she says that a lack of daydreaming degrades “many habits of mind that require time and patience to form, such as empathy, awareness, and emotional regulation.” These are the building blocks of hospitality. Are these opportunities for synthesis lost when AI is doing all the work?
Similarly, the design process requires us to think in a non-linear fashion, following loose threads of creativity and then somehow making sense of it. During our recent Journey Group retreat to Vienna, when visiting remarkable designers and makers, we heard these sentiments over and over again:
“Embrace contradiction.”
“No quiet design.”
“Flexible until the end.”
“It should stay a sketch.”
“Avoid perfection.”
When we’re doing our best work with clients, we go wide and free first. AI is programmed to simplify and summarize; it reduces wild ideas to often unhelpfully plain concepts. We should preserve the kind of spontaneous, free, and even messy exploration that is innately human.
Read better than a robot
Meaningful client engagement is threatened when we let AI read for us too.
When I recently asked ChatGPT to analyze website traffic data, it returned slick, organized notes. I skimmed its summary, and my brain promptly checked out. Just the luxurious thought of AI doing this analysis for me granted me permission to be less curious and accept a polished list of bullet points.
I decided, however, to go back through its analysis and was astounded to find that ChatGPT missed the most interesting and important things about the data. Perhaps with a few more rounds of back and forth, it would have succeeded. But I saw what was missing after just one careful read.
For a studio manager, note-taking and thoughtful comprehension are all pursuits of hospitality. They may seem small and incremental, and often quiet, but these are valuable ways to remind our clients: “I know you care about this, and I do too.”
Hospitality is human
Will Guidara and his team are dedicated to never missing a dropped hint, detail, or overheard conversation that could create a memorable opportunity for “unreasonable hospitality.” If we follow his lead, we will see that the openings for genuine, human-centered hospitality are everywhere.
In our studio, I don’t ever want to leave my team feeling unprepared. That random color reference? A thoughtful aside from six months ago? Obscure inspiration my colleague referenced? I heard it. Here it is!
When a colleague sits down to start a project, I want to have listened to the client all along, helped foster critical collaborative work, and positioned my team for success. It gives me hives to think I could have outsourced that intimate, relational work to a machine.
I believe this has a circular effect, reminding the client that we get them. Over the weeks, months, and often years we work with our partners, the relationship grows and knowledge accumulates. You begin to understand their tastes and curiosities and then can produce work that acknowledges that built intimacy. Every interaction is an opportunity to deepen our familiarity, but this work requires all of our attention.
I’m convinced this practice of hospitality should start on day one. Our clients’ ideas shouldn’t gather dust in a beautifully formatted but impersonal 10-page summary. My records and plans should be authentic—and clearly made by a human. And then those notes should be interpreted and reinterpreted and held up to critique until the best and truest version is woven into our work.
I fear this margin is slim. What we lose when we accept dense transcripts and shallow analysis is not easy to quantify.
The optimist in me acknowledges that there’s likely a way through that I can’t see yet: one where AI can help in meaningful ways while letting humans do human work. I was delighted when the colorful and creative Viennese architect Gregor Eichinger (who showered us with hospitality) said AI “has this global stupidity” but “it will help us.” I enjoy letting AI help me. It’s great at making sure my often terrible grammar doesn’t slip into emails, organizing complicated ideas, or helping me wiggle out of technology challenges.
But my line is a bright one. AI can help sharpen my thinking, but I don’t want it to do my work for me. In the holistic pursuit of hospitality, you’ll always find me.