By Allen Haynes • May 19, 2025 Listen to the podcast. Andy Stanley (00:02): Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, the conversation designed to help leaders go further faster. I’m Andy Stanley, and today I will be your host because today we are talking about creating world class service with my guest, Horst Schultze, which means I get to ask the questions. Thank you so much for joining us today, Horst. It’s great to be here. Well, Horst and I actually have a history that goes back about 20 something years, and I’ll talk about that in just a minute. But for those of you who aren’t aware, hors is the chairman and CEO of the Capella Hotel Group, but he is a legend in the world of customer service. His vision has helped reshape concepts of customer service throughout, and I mean throughout the hospitality and service industries all around the world. He created and ran operations for the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company where we actually met about 23 years ago under his watch, the Ritz Carlton group was awarded the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in both 1992 and 1999. (00:59): And for those of you who aren’t familiar with that, you need to know that that was the first and only hotel company to win that award. Other distinctions include corporate Hoteler of the world by Hotels magazine. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of business administration degree in hospitality management from Johnson and Wales University. And most recently, Horst has been honored as the leader in luxury by Travel Agent Magazine and its sister publication, luxury travel advisor. Now to most of those Horst, none of those things mean anything because we’re not in that industry. But where your life intersects with most of our lives is through what you did at the Ritz Carlton because we’ve either stayed there, wanted to stay there or know people who’ve stayed there. And so our relationship began 23 years ago. And I want to quickly tell this story because I think for me, this brings you or presents you in a context that is most meaningful for many of our listeners. (01:57): 20 something years ago, my leadership team read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And in that book he talked about the Ritz-Carlton within the context of the importance of mission statements. And on our podcast we talk about mission and vision all the time. So when I read that, I thought, and he talked about bellman and maids and busboy having mission statements at the Ritz-Carlton. And I remember thinking, okay, I have a hard time getting my management team to be serious about a mission statement. How in the world do you get people who are in many cases minimum wage first job, maybe not what they wanted to grow up and do in their lives, have a mission statement. So fortunately for me through my parents, I knew Bill and Sandra Johnson and Bill owned pretty much the Ritz-Carlton company at that time and was building those all over the world. (02:48): And so I asked Bill, I said, bill, is this for real bellman and maids and people washing dishes have a mission statement? How do you get people at that level in an organization to that much? And he smiled and he said, you need to meet my friend Horst. So sure enough, 23 years ago I took four or five people and we sat in on two leadership, I guess environments that you had created, one for Belman, dishwashers and maids, and then one for your management team. And what I saw and what I heard in those two interactions between you and your staff really was life changing. And I’m not exaggerating. And what I saw you do with that first group in particular, I want you to talk about a little bit because I think it sets the stage for the rest of our conversation, but you walked in that day in a three piece suit, you look like you had just come off the cover of GQ magazine. You walk into a room full of people who are a minimum wage people, people who were fortunate to have these jobs, and you did something that was magic. You took a group of people and you spoke self-esteem and meaning and value into them. Would you talk just a little bit about your approach? Because again, I think this sets the stage for our entire conversation. Is that enough of a setup? Horst Schultze (04:07): Oh, sure. Well, I appreciate, and the point is in many ways I have to give some background there. First of all, I have done their chops, I have washed dishes and so on. So I started as a busboy when I was 14 and grew through the industry. So I have a feeling and a compassion. I know the pleasure and the pain of that chops. And the one thing that this was Andy Stanley (04:30): In Germany, Right? Horst Schultze (04:32): I worked in Germany and France and Switzerland and Holland, England, and finally in the us yes, wow. Three years in France and two seasons in Switzerland and so on. And it’s very clear. And what becomes very clear then you get hired to fulfill a certain shop, which in itself I believe today is immoral because, so we hire people to wash dishes, to make beds. Wait a minute, with other words, to fulfill a function. Wait a minute, the chairs on which we’re sitting is fulfilling a functions. We talking about human beings in my opinion, should hire them to be part of your organization, to be part of a purpose. People need a purpose and belong. It is a demand that we have as human being generally. And yet, by the way, Adam Smith studied 300 years ago that and came to conclusion, human beings cannot relate to orders and direction, but they can relate to objective and motive without (05:34): Its purpose and motive. So why wouldn’t we give the employees, first of all, motive and objective and tell them you are important, let them know that they’re important. By the way, I opened every rich card in the first 55 myself (05:49): And helped with the training all over the world, all over the world. And whenever I ended the room the first day and with all the employees there sitting there waiting for this guy to show up and kind of this important guy, this important guy to show up, and if there they are and they’re excited about him, and I walked in there, I said, 700 employees maybe or whatever the number, I told them, my name is Chu and I am the CEO and president of this company. I am very important. Of course, they responded with shock, probably thought, where did I end up here? And Anna said, important. No human being can claim importance over the next human being. So as human beings, we are equally important. I would be a fool to think I’m more, I’m not a fool and I’m not more than you as a human being. And what about your chops? If you don’t come to work and you don’t make bets, we have a disaster. If you don’t wash dishes, we have a disaster. If you don’t check people in, we have a disaster. If I don’t come to work, nobody will even know. So in that Andy Stanley (06:55): Moment, you are important. Yeah, in that moment they became more important than their boss. Horst Schultze (06:59): That’s right. You are important. Well, Andy Stanley (07:01): This sets me up for where I want to take you. So we’re sitting in this room with this group of people and you walk in, you take off your coat, and would you just kind of walk us through that initial conversation you have with that group of people? Because again, as you just said, you’ve been there, you’ve washed dishes, you worked hard to work your way up in your first hotel job, so you’ve been there and done that, but you had a little spiel that you did that I just will never forget it because you spoke, you raised the dignity of the people in the room and you did in your words what you just said on our podcast that you spoke to them, that every single person has dignity and it is immoral to simply see people as performing a task as our stools are performing a task by simply holding us up. Tell us about that conversation. Horst Schultze (07:50): Well, I first introduced what we are that we are in service, but we are not servants. We are ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, unless we define ourself as servants by not being good in what we are doing. If we define ourself by being excellent, we define ourself as ladies and gentlemen, just as the guest are. What does that mean? We are nice and so on. With all that, I build it up, of course what we are. I let them know who we are and I ask them not to come to work to us. The purpose of coming to work is to accomplish a mission and a vision together. And I want the vision is clear for the company, here’s the vision, but what’s the mission? The mission is what we do. People confuse mission and vision all the Andy Stanley (08:36): Time. Yes, Horst Schultze (08:37): Vision is where we are going, this future beautiful place that we see in our minds, and I share that vision of the organization and ask them to join me in that dream. Don’t work for me. Join me. Once you join, you want to work. You want what? The work that you do is not for the work itself. It is to accomplish this dream. But every department has a different vision. So I sat down in 50 hotels, 55 in all kind of countries, different cultures with each department including the dishwasher, so the mains or the marketing department, security department, county department, et cetera. And after this initial conversation said, so where do you want to be as a department six months from now or a year from now? What is your department? And mind you, I have talked now for 10, 15 minutes about our excellence, (09:33): And they all answered, at least one of ’em screamed, we want to be the best. So I said, wait a minute, you’re all together in one bus. You go in one direction. Do you want to all go to that destination of being the best, of being best? I did. And to see they screamed, yes, in every country, in every department, we want to be the best. When I then asked them, what is it you? If you’re the best in six months, this says things that you wouldn’t dare to tell a crew of dishwashers or made soil or anybody. We want be efficient, we want be right. We want to clean, we want to be respected. All the things that you possibly said, okay, that’s your mission. And I wrote all the things down and then I asked the manager, stand up of the department. So what’s his role? His role is to help you to get there. The one thing you cannot do is compromise it because of one of you or another. (10:33): So that’s the direction and the purpose of that direction is to create excellence where you will benefit from. Everybody talks about the millenniums today. What do they want? The millenniums want to say? What’s in it for me? Well just tell them. You will be respected if we are respected and if they know it or not, you have to help them to understand that in many ways they’re defined by the reputation of the business. I can assure you that when a hundred people applied for a job somewhere in a hotel and there was one Ritz calling person, they got it chop Andy Stanley (11:07): Because Horst Schultze (11:07): Of the reputation of the company which they have created. Andy Stanley (11:12): Well, one of the things that you said in that first gathering and see if I’m remembering this correctly now, again, this was 20 something years ago and you and I have not talked about that. I want our podcast audience to know this. This is how much this stayed with me. You said to that group of people, and again, I want our audience to picture who’s sitting in that room. These are the people that are invisible in most hotels. These are the people that try to stay out of the way of the guest and yet make the guest experience excellent. And you said to them, you were not hired. You were Horst Schultze (11:38): Selected. Andy Stanley (11:39): That’s right. I will never forget that. And again, it was one of those statements that turned things upside down. I think for the people in that room to say, you are valuable. We could have hired a lot of people, but you were specifically selected. And then going back to what you said because it was so powerful and you said, we are not serving ladies and gentlemen, we are ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen, there is no less value in light of what you do than there is value in the people that you are going we’re serving together. It was so powerful. I really felt like we could see the light come on in the eyes of the men and women around that room. It was so powerful. Horst Schultze (12:19): There are two aspects to creating. There are four aspects in our mind, four processes in our mind to have create employees. Number one is the process of selection. Not just hiring people but very careful about it. We are quite scientific about it to be sure that we have somebody that fits into a certain job category. And the next aspect, which is very important, which is the key in many ways, is the orientation which we were doing at that time of the employee to the culture of the organization. And let’s be sincere about it. And nearly all companies have talked to too many. The new employee comes in and the manager makes the team speech. We are a team here. And then he turns and we are a team here. I mean, I have to laugh about it too, believe me. And then he said, walk the new employee bill walk with Joe over here. He knows the ropes. Now they’re not in the role business, but he knows the ropes and Bill goes around with Joe. And so you turned over the opinion in a very critical moment of this new employee turned it over to another employee. Instead of you giving them, here is who we are, here’s our hearts and our soul, and I invite you to join me and invite you the dreams and so on. (13:45): And here’s who we are. Here’s what we believe and here’s why. Here’s the motive, why we believe in these things. So true orientation to the heart and soul of the organization. Here’s what we believe. If you don’t believe in what I believe in, you wouldn’t be happy here. Andy Stanley (14:01): Go home. And the thing is, the thing that punctuated that I believe watching you those years ago was the fact that you were in the room. In other words, I can’t even imagine how many management levels away you are or you were from the men and women cleaning the rooms and cleaning the kitchens, and yet you ignored the, and we talk about this a lot. You ignored the organizational chart and you walked into the room and for an hour or so, you basically said, here’s how important this is to us. I’m here because I want you to hear this from me, that we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen, and I’m inviting you in on a mission to accomplish something great. Your presence in the room was as I guess as big a statement as anything that you said. And I do think in organizational life we miss that. And it goes to this point of orientation. It’s not just what is said, but who is saying it because who saying it communicates the value and punctuates the value of what’s being said Horst Schultze (14:54): Really in our existing hotels, the general manager has to do it. And the new hotels, I did it. I did in 55 hotels and then stayed on with training, actually spend some time with the waiters, spend some time with dishwashers, which when you do that as CEO of the common president of company has great impact. I remember I went to one dishwasher, the department where we opened new hotel, and I could see that they did a few things a little wrong and so established. I said, wait a minute, here’s how you do it. It took maybe two minutes. Of course the room and the company was that I wash dishes all day long. I worked there two minutes. Andy Stanley (15:37): But that Horst Schultze (15:37): Was the reputation. The whole company said he washed dishes Andy Stanley (15:39): All day long. That’s how you became legendary. It was those, and this is another big topic that was that symbolic leadership to say, I am not too important to do this, and it’s so important to me. I want to see it done right. And those stories reverberate throughout an Horst Schultze (15:54): Organization. But when you watch how hard those people work, not to have a heart for them, you shouldn’t be a leader of an organization if you don’t have a heart for the people that truly sweat working. And so you have to spend time with them and tell ’em again that they have dignity, that if they do it right, did they find themselves as a person of excellence? And you have to help to do that. Nobody tells ’em that it’s an issue of giving dignity. And people talk about aligning what does it mean? It is also the slogan words in our industry and all alignment, what is alignment? If they all understand that we what the customer wants and want to do it because they know the value of doing it. So we are all aligned. Doing the right thing for the guest alignment doesn’t mean they stay behind you. They stay with you Andy Stanley (16:52): For the guest. Well, and in that environment, I saw you invite them in to your personal mission as the CEO of the company. They were joining you in something bigger and grander. Now, the other thing I remember, and again, we haven’t rehearsed this, so you may not even want to talk about this. The other powerful thing, you had a marker board and you explained to them within the context of mission and vision, the problem of stealing from the company. Do you remember this? You actually, and your illustration was on Horst Schultze (17:23): Flip chart. Andy Stanley (17:23): Do what? Horst Schultze (17:24): On the flip chart? On the Andy Stanley (17:25): Flip, it’s flip Horst Schultze (17:25): Chart mean you lose money, you cannot give raises. That’s exactly Andy Stanley (17:28): It. Yeah. Talk about that. Because again, instead of saying Be honest, don’t steal. If you steal, this is what’s going to happen. You presented it within the context of mission and vision. And again, 20 something years later, I still remember it. Horst Schultze (17:39): Oh wow. Wow. You really have a good memory. Andy Stanley (17:42): No, no, no. This was a defining leadership moment for me, Martin. Horst Schultze (17:47): I show him in simplistic way on a flip chart. Okay, if you have a million dollar income, your cost is a million dollars. You break even if you make some money and done. If you have waste, and there’s an issue of waste, a credit company is more sufficient to the guest at the same time, more efficient for the company. And another efficiency is unfortunately translated by many people. But taking away from the guest, (18:13): Taking flowers away, making the towel a little smaller, that’s efficient. That’s not efficiency. Efficiency is to limit all waste, including the waste of pranks, et cetera. So I explained, look here, if you write on the wall, I have to paint it. That costs money. So now should we start losing money? If somebody steals that costs money, we start losing money. So what happens now, the rest of the people, I cannot give a raise anymore. I’m starting to lose money. And if my owner, my owner would, now we manage hotels, we don’t own hotels. If I would say I’m going to give a raise after I lost money in operations, he would laugh at me. But if I will make money with your help, obviously it’s your help. You take care of the guests. And if you don’t have any waste, I will insist that I can give you a raise. So that is kind of the concept that we explained. Andy Stanley (19:10): The thing was it was so positive and it followed this whole idea of here’s who we are. We all have dignity. We’re ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen, we’re on a mission together. Here’s the goal. We want to be the best. And the way that we succeed together is by reducing waste. I mean, the whole thing was so brilliant. But it goes back to my original question that got me into this environment, and that is how do you help people who are not in management think in terms of mission and vision? And that was the brilliance of what you did. And it worked. Bellman at the Ritz-Carlton had personal mission statements. Yeah. Horst Schultze (19:48): Well, at the same time, you give them, again, the dignity and you give them respect. They feel respect that it share those things. What company shares any numbers or thought of numbers? I want to share the thinking of our numbers of managing our finances is kind of what I told them. It tells them, my goodness, I have never ever have anybody told me about finances. But you have to put of course in their terms, but they understand. Andy Stanley (20:16): And that’s what you were so good at. And the next day I came back for another training. And you were with managers. Everybody had on, Horst Schultze (20:23): Oh, that’s a different story. Andy Stanley (20:24): That’s right. And that’s where I wish I had a video because you went from the mild mannered, gentle horse schultze to the, everybody was dressed up, these were the management, these were the super educated people. You took your jacket off, you had three or four flip charts, and you in a very appropriate way, kind of reamed them out and challenged them. You were like a different person. And I sitting there thinking, this is such brilliant leadership because you knew your audience, you knew the different mindset of those two different audiences, but you did the very same thing. You pointed them toward the same mission, same vision. We all succeed together. And if we all succeed together, we all succeed. And it was just powerful. But again, it just reiterated the importance of a clear picture of where we’re going. Everybody’s a part of this. I’m not telling you, you’re part of a team. I’m inviting you to be a part of a team and I’m treating you like you are an actual team member. It was absolutely amazing. Horst Schultze (21:22): Well, obviously you hire management and during the hiring and selection and orientation, you do basically you tell ’em the same thing. You invite them to be part, but then you ask ’em, okay, now I have explained what the part is. Do you accept this part? Because if you, oh yes, absolutely. And now I have to understand you’re now accountable for it. In that moment you’re accountable. And you have to understand, I cannot make compromises for you. That’s impossible. Because if you don’t follow through on your accountability, and I let it happen, I’m now disloyal to the rest of the organization, including the customer, including the employee, including the finance people and so on. I cannot so have to understand. They have to understand in no uncertain terms, they are responsible and cannot make excuses. I can see very clearly looking at before Ritz Scott around 65 hotel, food and beverage operations in the country, and I met my own non-scientific study. What are the leaders? What are the managers? Well, the leaders make excuses. The managers make excuses. And the leaders don’t. The managers. Andy Stanley (22:43): The managers make excuses always. When you say managing leaders, you’re not talking specifically about a position, but a personality. Horst Schultze (22:49): No personality, yeah. The general manager of hotel is either a leader of that hotel or just a manager. The leader aligns people. They all understand. They follow that direction. They want to follow that direction. They understand their benefit from it. And then there’s no excuse. But then once the vision is set, and that had to be true for me, (23:10): I cannot run around and feel sorry for people. The vision is set and the vision has been determined that it’s good for all concerned in that moment. Compromises are not possible anymore. So that is the point there. Understood that and not going compromise. But the managers, when you ask where will you have your hotel in? The hotel is a planned of a hundred million dollars, where will you lead your hotel to? What will it be a year from now? The manager will say things like, well, gee, if I had a bigger ballroom, or if it was closer to the beach, and the leader will, and to statistically tell how the community will love his hotel or whatever. So that’s a difference. But I cannot ask the leader of them all. We cannot wait for it. I have to say clearly here we are. Don’t tell me that the weather was bad. We have to find the occupancy anyway. Don’t tell me you’re too far from the beach. We have to find anyway. And I have to say, make it very clear in all teaching sessions, there is no compromise. There’s no compromise. The vision doesn’t go away. Maybe it moves timewise, but it doesn’t change. We will be the best in each market segment. Andy Stanley (24:27): So Horst, you said there are four components to having excellent employees. You’ve covered two. And the third one is Horst Schultze (24:34): Correct. I mean there is a system (24:40): Consistent. Our four processes to assure that you have the right employees. The first on the selection, the first one is making sure the right people on the bus, if you will, so they have the right person. Be ahead of the competition. If you select right, you are better than competition, that just hire selection. And second one, the second one is orientation. That’s when you align them to the philosophy and the thinking of the organization and make them part of that. The third one is teaching them the function. Obviously that has to be taught. So the fourth one is sustaining it all because if we don’t leave it alone, they will forget. So the orientation, we teach 24 important points. For instance, if a guest asked for direction, you would take them there and don’t point. Andy Stanley (25:29): That’s right. You don’t point. I remember Horst Schultze (25:30): That. So that 24 important points at makes create service. We repeat that from there on every day before Andy Stanley (25:36): Every shift. Wait, wait, wait. So there’s 24 points with every employee or with every Horst Schultze (25:42): Job? No, that is for every job. There are 24 points. Andy Stanley (25:47): Got. Horst Schultze (25:47): And that is the same for every job. Oh, the same for every job, the same for every Andy Stanley (25:50): Job. And you review one of these 24 every day, every day. Horst Schultze (25:53): You cannot go to work, including our office today, we discuss in the office, in every hotel around the world, if you get a complaint, you own it. If you do a waiter and the guest complains about a toilet, it’s yours. So what do you do? You make heaven move heaven earth to not lose that guest. You make sure it gets repaired. You buy the breakfast with a guest, you are empowered up to $2,000 to keep that guest per employee. Per employee. They can do whatever they want. Andy Stanley (26:25): Every employee, every employee at every level, at every level is empowered Up to $2,000 per guest. Bus boy, bus boy balman every $2,000. Horst Schultze (26:34): That’s right. Andy Stanley (26:34): Unbelievable. Horst Schultze (26:35): Yeah. Wait a minute, minute. This’s not just thrown into the air. A lifetime guess is worth about $150,000. So I want to move heaven and earth. Every employee knows it’s their objective. The key objective, not to check the guest then, but convince the guest to come back, not to clean the table, but convince the guest to come back. So creating loyal guests is everybody’s objective. So they will learn those 24 points in 24 days. We repeat this again, and then it goes on and on and on every Andy Stanley (27:09): Day. This is for management. This Horst Schultze (27:11): Is every, everybody, everybody. And who decides, including our office, me Andy Stanley (27:15): And who decides which of the 24, you just sequentially go through this. Horst Schultze (27:18): They goes, they go from one to 24 and start all over again. We back them up, they all stand. We stand together. You see, you cannot put ’em in classrooms because many are high school dropouts. They don’t want to sit in the classroom. We stand in the corner and we discussed at one point, maybe read a letter from a guest that supports that point or complaints about that point not happening. And so we make that point. At the same time, we are creating a brand because the same words are being discussed in every hotel. So people feel pretty soon the same about the organization, Andy Stanley (27:55): About and are using the same language around the Horst Schultze (27:57): Same ideas, language written by us. We send it out Andy Stanley (27:59): And it’s explained Now, are these 24 things memorized or is this just a sustainability? Horst Schultze (28:05): It’s written as sustained. I usually have them in pocket one too. I mean, and everybody has a cart with 24 points that 20, those 24 points we drive home. And then before every shift we had 24 hour business. You cannot go to work unless you went through what we call lineup, Andy Stanley (28:23): Where they talk about one of those Horst Schultze (28:24): Things. That point is explained again. Andy Stanley (28:27): So I’m guessing you would think every organization should have their equivalent of that, whether it’s 12 or 24 or eight, the eight or nine or 24 essential things that if essentially, lemme see if I’m saying this right? If we get these 24 things right, we will succeed. We are a great company. We’re a great company. Well horse, this is fascinating. And to just wrap up, so the process for creating a great employee environment and having great employees is selection process, the orientation, process training, and then sustaining. And this whole idea of having this checklist that everybody thinks through sequentially over the course of days, weeks, or months, is a powerful idea for sustaining. And I would just say to our podcast listeners, I mean there’s so much takeaway from this, but this is something that we’ve done in terms of asking the question, what are the core behaviors that if everybody did these core behaviors, we will succeed. And so every organization can do this. It may not be 24, it may be 12. But again, the repetition driving these specific behaviors home and in your case course, these were not conceptual things. These were very specific things, right? Horst Schultze (29:32): Oh, absolutely. Very Andy Stanley (29:32): Specific. People know whether they have or haven’t done them. Horst Schultze (29:35): That’s right. Andy Stanley (29:36): And I loved too, because we talk about this a lot, storytelling is such a powerful part of vision casting. And so to have an employee standing there with an email or a letter from a customer that said, we got it right or we got it wrong, just punctuates those things. Horst Schultze (29:48): That’s right. Andy Stanley (29:49): Of course. Thanks for sticking around and all of our listeners, thanks so much for joining us. In the meantime, visit our website where you can find our leadership podcast application guide to go with today’s conversation because as you listened, I know what you were thinking. You were thinking what I was thinking, wow, how can I get this content in front of our employees? So we have created an application guide to help you do just that. So be sure to check out Andy stanley.com today. Comments are closed.