BOOK EXCERPT – These are the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1 of the new Lean Global Network book about applying Lean Thinking in a resort hotel.

Words: Oriol Cuatrecasas, Roberto Priolo, Lalis Fontcuberta and Cristina Fontcuberta

The engines rumbled as the airplane gently ascended into the sky. Alex loved a window seat. As much as everyone told him that sitting by the aisle is always better because it means you’ll get off the aircraft sooner, Alex saw those extra few seconds of wait as a very modest price to pay for the views that a window seat awards.

On that bright and crisp morning in mid-January, the view from above seemed to bear a stronger meaning than usual. As Alex watched Barcelona get smaller and smaller on the horizon, his head pressed against the window, it occurred to him that he wasn’t sure when he would be back. He would be returning semi-regularly to see his kids – Nina and Bruno, of 21 and 19 respectively – but he knew he probably wouldn’t be calling Barcelona home again.

The decision to leave had come so quickly that only now was he realizing the magnitude of the change he was undertaking. Then again, as much as he would miss Nina and Bruno, he knew he was doing the right thing. Ever since his divorce a few months before, he had felt like a change was in order – no matter how scary it seemed now that the plane was jetting down the Spanish coast headed for the Canary Islands.

Most people find change scary. Some, even terrifying. Alex was normally very open to it – in fact, he never considered it something to be afraid of. But things seemed different this time around, and the fact that he had just left his kids, his job, his entire life to settle in Tenerife at the age of 51 seemed pretty reckless. Or downright insane, if one took into account the fact that he would live in close proximity to his parents. These thoughts kept swirling in Alex’s mind, making him increasingly nervous. As the rational person that he is, however, he managed to calm himself down by thinking about the dinner he had with his kids just the night before. Nina and Bruno had dealt with the divorce surprisingly well (in many ways better than he had), but it wasn’t until that last dinner before his move that Alex realized how supportive they were of his choice.

“You have to go, dad. You have looked so happy since uncle Antonio called. You’re like a new person,” Nina told him at one point. He was so proud of the young woman she had become and was very moved by her words. Bruno was slightly more indirect in his response, but somehow just as understanding. “Does that mean I can come spend the summer with you in Tenerife? I hear the surfing there is awesome,” he asked with a smirk.

Had his brother’s phone call been a godsend? Maybe. His job running the Hospital Mediterrania, which had always filled him with pride, had started to bore him and he had been feeling increasingly restless. “Maybe I need a change of air, a new challenge,” he had told his colleague and friend Rosa just a couple of days before his brother telephoned. Alex saw that call as a sign.

Antonio, who was eight years his junior, ran a big hotel of 400 rooms near the world-famous Playa de las Americas, in Tenerife. His wife Olga had inherited it from her grandmother a couple of decades earlier. Alex knew that the hotel hadn’t been doing too well for quite some time, but Antonio sounded more worried than usual when he called in early December. His fourth General Manager in six years had just left, and he didn’t know what to do.

Alex knew that his brother would only turn to him if things got desperate enough to convince him to swallow his pride. Something had to have gone really wrong with the hotel. This seemed almost impossible for Alex to believe, because he had lovely memories of that place ― cocktails by the pool, amazing service, great food ― even though, granted, he hadn’t been there in years. When Antonio reached out to him, Alex thought he could help the ailing business, tapping into the knowledge he had gathered while working on lean transformations in the healthcare sector for nearly twenty years.

In his experience, Lean ― an alternative approach to management inspired by the culture and practices of Japanese carmaker Toyota ― was an incredibly powerful enabler of change. At the Hospital Mediterrania, where he stayed for over a decade, he and his team were able to streamline and then completely turn around their internal processes. As a result, teams became empowered, the quality of care improved (it was recognized with many awards), and the organization set off on a path of continuous improvement.

Lean had turned the hospital into a model organization, and Alex didn’t see why a hotel would be any different. When he told Antonio, his brother replied: “Of course it’s the same! Why do you think I’m calling?! I know you can help. And don’t you think it is about time you put that fancy MBA of yours to good use?”

Backhanded compliments were Antonio’s specialty, and most of their conversations revolved around this sort of brotherly banter. But this time, things seemed far too serious for jokes.

“You know, Antonio, between the divorce and everything else, I feel like I need a bit of a change,” Alex had told his brother over the phone, implicitly accepting his offer to become the new General Manager of the hotel.

“Well, it’s settled, then. Leave the cold already and come join us in the sunshine!”

‘Incredible,’ Alex thought. ‘There is no bad situation that could stop Antonio from making jokes.’

“Cold?! I live in Barcelona, Toni, not Norway!”

“You know what I mean,” Antonio said with a chuckle, before finally turning serious and saying: “We can really use your help.”

As he observed the barren, lunar landscape of the island from his taxi, Alex couldn’t help but to feel happy to be home. He had always loved the contrast between the light brown of Tenerife’s mountains and the dark blue of the Atlantic all around. He wasn’t sure how he would feel about being back, but, for the moment, it was exhilarating. He was particularly happy he hadn’t told anyone in the family that he was coming that early. They were all expecting him on Monday. The memories of his parents’ visit to Barcelona for Christmas were still too fresh in his mind, and he wasn’t sure he could have survived an entire weekend of his mother telling him he was too skinny and that he clearly wasn’t eating enough, and his father yelling at her for not leaving him alone. Even Antonio was gone for a couple of days, visiting his daughter in Gran Canaria. ‘I will have the most relaxing weekend,’ Alex thought, as the taxi reached the sprawling community developing around Playa de las Americas.

But it wouldn’t be all poolside cocktails and sunbathing. Alex was also planning to use the weekend without relatives or distractions to start to get a sense of the situation at the hotel. He always believed that lean begins with observation: he didn’t want Antonio to start providing so-called “solutions” to problems he didn’t fully understand yet. He didn’t want people to jump to conclusions on the reasons behind the hotel’s poor performance. He wanted to have a chance to see for himself, without any of the noise that people often produce when they are emotionally too close to a situation. He knew he, too, would soon start to feel attached to the hotel (like he did to every project he took on), so he wanted his first impressions at least to be as close as possible to those of a regular customer. Not to mention the special treatment he would surely get if people knew the new boss had arrived!

Alex decided to start his investigation into the current state of the hotel by spending the weekend there incognito. He wouldn’t tell anyone who he was for a couple of days. He wanted to be just another guest, and so long as the receptionist didn’t recognize his surname (provided people working in the hotel even knew who his brother Antonio was), he would be just fine.

Upon entering the hall of the hotel, Alex realized it would be a while before he would find out whether his plan to stay anonymous would work. A huge line extended from the reception desk almost all the way to the revolving doors at the entrance and, judging by the annoyed expressions on many of the guests’ faces, the wait to check in wouldn’t be a short one either. There must have been 12 people in line, and two receptionists manning the desk: the girls looked very stressed, barely making eye contact with the guests. Alex looked out to the street and saw the cause of the bottleneck: a large bus vomiting a seemingly endless number of tourists. Ten minutes in, with the line only four people shorter, Alex started to listen into the conversations his fellow visitors were having. Most of them appeared to be British and, considering the horrible blizzard that had just hit the UK, Alex wasn’t surprised the lot was eager to drop their bags off and hit the pool.

“This is ridiculous,” an older man behind him hissed to his wife.

“I know, darling. This place seems to get worse every year,” she answered, before theatrically snapping her fan open and waving it in front of her face.

Another couple appeared to be in the middle of a discussion. “I told you that coming here would be a mistake. This hotel is not what it used to be,” the woman barked at her husband, without worrying too much about any bystanders overhearing their conversation.

“Come on, Sally! It’s only been a few minutes,” the man replied.

“This is the exact same thing that happened last year, remember? It took us more than 20 minutes to check in. Hardly what one wants to endure after a five-hour flight from Bristol,” she continued.

Determined to calm her down, the man smiled and said: “The poor girls are trying their best. These things happen everywhere.” A few minutes later, however, he gave up and left his wife in line to go sit down and give his tired legs a break.

Alex thought that it was very unfair to have customers wait in line that long, especially when the majority of them were older people who were surely exhausted from their trip. He immediately made a note in his notepad – “Slow check-in”.

Twenty minutes after he had walked into the hotel, Alex finally reached the desk. The girls looked exhausted, nervously asking each other questions and struggling to keep up with the work. Alex turned around nonchalantly, and noticed the line was even longer than before. Seen from there, the rhythmic waving of the fans three or four women in the line were using resembled the swinging of metronomes, which surely must have added to the pressure the receptionists were feeling.

“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to Hotel Taknara,” one of them said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Hi there. Thank you! I have a booking for two nights. The surname is Chines,” he said with a smile, handing his ID.

As he suspected, the girl didn’t look at his surname twice. “Ah, yes. There you are. A room with a view of the sea for two nights, correct?”

“That’s the one.”

“I am very sorry, sir, but the room is not ready just yet. We have a lot of people coming and going today, and we are running a little late,” she said apologetically. “It shouldn’t be more than an hour. I am very sorry.”

Alex looked at the clock behind the desk. It was 2.40 PM, which meant that the room would be ready almost an hour after the advertised check-in time. Even though he found this completely unacceptable, Alex made an effort not to show his annoyance. He told the receptionist he wouldn’t want to do the whole line again, and she said to just show up at the front. “I have everything ready here,” she assured. “May I suggest you wait by the pool? Here’s a towel for you.”

Somehow unconvinced, Alex pushed his luggage to the side of the desk, rummaged through it for a few minutes until he could fish out his bathing suit. He then handed the suitcase to the receptionist and headed for the restroom to get changed. He would have liked a shower, but he didn’t want to make a fuss. A few minutes later, he emerged from one of the bathroom stalls, all his belongings and clothes stuffed in a backpack that was so full that it looked about to explode. He awkwardly made his way across the hall, trying to ignore the squeaky sound his flip-flops produced at every step and the faces of the guests still in line, which betrayed a mixture of amusement and envy. He sighed and walked down the stairs to the pool. A swim and a bit of sunshine would sure make up for the horrible check-in experience, he thought.

But the universe seemed to have other plans for him. The moment he stepped outside, he found himself surrounded by more people than he thought could fit on the whole island of Tenerife. Children were running and yelling all around, a group of women on a seniors’ bachelorette party were talking and laughing loudly (the several empty cocktail glasses were a hint) and, what’s worse, there didn’t seem to be a free sunbed in sight. At first, it looked like there were many sunbeds available around the pool. On closer inspection, however, Alex realized that the chairs that weren’t occupied by guests had a towel thrown or spread on them to prevent other people from taking them. This is a common problem in hotels: people “book” their spots in the sun by strategically placing their towels on the best sunbeds and often disappear for hours on end.

Alex scanned the whole of the pool area, until he spotted, among hordes of oiled-up sunbathing guests, a free sunbed. It was around 30 meters from him, halfway down the length of the swimming pool. He decisively made his way down the narrow path lined with sunbeds, nearly falling into the water when a kid came out of nowhere and bumped into him. He smiled through clenched teeth and set his eye back on the goal. He then noticed a man standing in front of him, around 10 meters away. He was sporting a pair of sandals one size too big, a polo shirt one size too small, blue shorts, a straw hat, and what looked like a third-degree sunburn. He was clearly eyeing the same prized sunbed. Standing completely still, the two stared each other down in a scene that resembled the seconds leading up to a cowboy fast-draw duel in a Western movie. After a few seconds, Alex sighed and stood down, smiling to what was now one of his own customers. The man smiled back at him.

Alex headed to the pool bar and sat at the counter, hoping that a magnanimous pool boy would take away the towels illicitly occupying beds. In the meantime, he thought he would order an ice-cold beer. Needless to say, there were a lot of people waiting to be served at the bar, and the faces of two bartenders reminded Alex of those of the receptionists – they bore the same frustrated and tired expression. After 10 minutes, it was finally his turn.

“Sorry for the wait. There is not enough of us today,” one of the bartenders told Alex, who thought that two people manning a small bar like that seemed like an okay number.

“I can tell,” he replied with a chuckle. “Looks like you have a lot of work.”

“Tell me about it!” the bartender said, cracking the first smile Alex had seen on his face. “What can I get you?”

“A beer, please.”

Sipping his drink, Alex started looking around. The hotel was just as beautiful as he remembered. The U-shaped building wrapped around a huge pool lined with cabanas and palm trees. All interior rooms overlooked the pool and had their own little balcony. Despite the wait to check in and the busy pool area, Alex couldn’t help but wonder how things could not go well in such a pretty hotel.

An hour later, he finally stepped into his room. He was dying to take a shower and relax on the balcony. Maybe even take a siesta before dinner. The room was spacious and welcoming, despite the slightly old furniture and run-down look of the fixtures. After a much-needed shower, Alex laid down on the bed. He wanted to sleep for a couple of hours before heading down for dinner. He could hear the faint sound of children playing around the pool, which took him on a pleasant stroll down memory lane (in fact, he was pretty sure he and his ex-wife had taken Bruno and Nina to the hotel when they were little).

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_THE AUTHORS