Last week in our leadership class, we read the C&S Wholesale Grocers case from Harvard. It’s a warehousing company, not exactly the kind of setting you’d normally compare to hotels—but the issues they were facing felt familiar. Too many new hires. Slipping morale. Quality taking a hit. And an operation that was moving fast but fraying inside.
Their fix was bold: small teams that owned the entire flow—from receiving to shipping. No layers. No blaming upstream. Each team knew what done well looked like, and they delivered it. Quality improved. Mistakes dropped. People started caring again.
That got me thinking—not about copying their system, but about something deeper: what do teams that actually work have in common, whether they’re in a warehouse, a hotel, or a lab?
So I started pulling threads. I read an article by Ron Friedman on what strong teams do differently. That led me to work on psychological safety, trust, role clarity, feedback, and motivation. Some studies came from psychology. Others from operations or HR. But they were all circling the same ideas.
Here are five of those recurring patterns. And what they might mean for us in hotels.
They’re clear on what matters
In the C&S case, teams worked toward a shared metric—number of cases per shift. Everyone understood what quality looked like. There was no confusion around success.
In other team settings, progress usually came when the group paused long enough to ask: are we aligned on what we’re aiming for?
In hotels, that question can get buried. One team chases speed. Another chases personalization. A third is measured on cost. Without a shared picture, we confuse activity with progress.
What are we really trying to get right—for this guest, this shift? Is it a fast check-in? A quiet room? A warm interaction that resets a tough day? In hotels, that clarity doesn’t always trickle down. One team is rushing to meet turn-down times, another’s chasing upsells, and someone else is watching budget. Everyone’s working hard, but not necessarily in sync. When teams don’t share the same picture of success, we confuse motion with progress—and the guest feels it. Clarity is about alignment in the moment: what matters most right now, for this person, in this situation? Without that, we deliver pieces of service. But not the full experience.
Someone owns the outcome
One thing that stood out in the warehouse story: before the redesign, many hands touched the work but no one owned the result. After they reorganized into tighter teams with clear responsibility, quality went up and rework went down.
Everyone knew what they were responsible for. When something slipped, they didn’t wait to assign blame. They got together, sorted it out, and kept going. The work belonged to them, start to finish.
That principle carries over. In hotels, we often slice the guest experience into parts—check-in here, amenities there, room setup somewhere else. But guests don’t experience departments. They experience gaps. A missing note, a late crib, an allergy flagged too late—these slip-ups usually happen not because no one cared, but because no one saw the whole picture.
The best hotel teams I’ve seen aren’t just completing tasks. They’re watching the story unfold. They track details not because someone told them to, but because they feel responsible for what the guest walks away with. And when they sense something off, they step in—even if it’s not technically their part. That’s the shift: from doing the job to owning the result.
They talk—honestly
In every strong team I’ve worked with—or read about—there’s one thing you always find: people say what needs to be said. Not just updates. Not just polite check-ins. They bring things up, especially when something doesn’t feel right.
This kind of honesty isn’t about being blunt or combative. It’s knowing your input matters, and that raising a concern isn’t seen as rocking the boat—it’s seen as helping steer it straight.
I’ve seen Front Office teams flag room readiness issues before they become a problem, not because they were asked, but because they felt the guest wouldn’t be happy with a rush clean. I’ve seen Housekeeping push back on impossible timelines and suggest smarter turn-down routes. I’ve seen Banquet servers stop the service flow to check if the vegetarian plates were plated correctly—not out of doubt, but because the room felt off.
None of those things happen in teams where people are afraid of stepping on toes.
The best teams I’ve seen—whether in hotels or elsewhere—disagree often. Not to win arguments, but to get to better outcomes. They ask, “Why are we doing it this way?” or “Are we sure this works for the guest?” And because there’s trust, those questions aren’t taken personally. They’re taken seriously.
When that’s the norm, service feels smoother. Recovery is faster. And small issues stay small—because someone had the courage to speak up early.
They notice each other
In the strongest teams I’ve worked with, feedback isn’t something formal. It happens in real time, often in passing. A nod after a smooth handover. A quick “good eye” when someone catches a potential miss. You hear it at the desk, on the floor, behind the scenes.
And it doesn’t just come from leaders. It flows sideways, even upward. A line cook telling the steward, “Thanks for the quick reset.” A concierge appreciating the bellman for noticing a guest struggling with bags. A GSM acknowledging a front desk agent after a tough check-in.
This isn’t praise as performance. It’s acknowledgment as habit.
In teams that struggle, this is usually what’s missing. People do their part but feel invisible. No one says anything unless it’s a correction. And over time, that silence becomes weight. People pull back. They do the job, but they stop noticing the moments around them.
But when teams make feedback part of the rhythm—short, honest, human—it shifts everything. People step up more. They recover faster. And they don’t need a monthly ceremony to feel seen.
In hotels, where the pace is constant and the work is public, that kind of recognition matters. Not because people are fragile, but because the work is personal. We’re not just running checklists—we’re managing energy, emotion, timing, tone. That’s hard to sustain in silence.
Do we hear someone say, “Nice recovery,” or “That saved us,” before lunch service starts? Or does it all just blend into the shift?
The teams that last are the ones who remember to look up, notice, and say something when it counts.
They know how each other work
In the C&S case, one of the surprising things that worked was letting teams choose their members. It wasn’t about favoritism—it was about trust. They picked people they knew would follow through. People they could read with just a glance. When the work got intense, they didn’t need to double-check or explain. The rhythm was already there.
Hotels don’t usually let teams self-select, and that’s fine. But the takeaway still holds: when people understand how their teammates operate—not just what they do, but how they think, what they watch for, how they respond under pressure—it changes the way they collaborate. There’s less second-guessing. Less friction. More flow.
Think of a front desk shift where one agent quietly absorbs the irate guests while the other handles the line. They don’t need to say much. They just know who handles what. Or think of an engineering team where one guy prefers to do the repair while another explains it to the guest. That’s not hierarchy—it’s chemistry.
You don’t get that from an org chart. You get it from time. From watching each other work. From asking questions that don’t always get asked: “What throws you off?” “How do you like to start your day?” “What makes a shift feel good to you?”
You don’t need a retreat or a team-building session. Sometimes you just need five minutes after shift to talk, or a slow walk to the timeclock.
The better teams I’ve seen in hotels don’t just work next to each other. They adjust for each other. And that only happens when they’ve taken the time to understand what makes the person beside them tick.
Not every lesson needs a framework. But when I put all the reading together, a pattern held.
The best teams don’t work harder because of pressure. They work smoother because of clarity, care, and rhythm. They don’t need to be reminded what matters. It shows up in how they move.
In hotels, we see it instantly. The tone at the front desk. The air behind the pass. The energy at morning briefing. Long and short of it, it’s about trust.
Let’s build more of that.
References
- DeLong, T. J., Mody, T., & Ager, D. (2003). C&S Wholesale Grocers: Self-Managed Teams. HBS Case 404-025.
- Friedman, R. (2021). 5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently. Harvard Business Review.
- Delizonna, L. (2017). High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Harvard Business Review.
- Hakanen, M., Häkkinen, M., & Soudunsaari, A. (2015). Trust in Building High-Performing Teams. EJBO, 20(2), 43–53.
- Bakke, A. L., & Johansen, A. (2024). How Do Teams Become High-Performing Teams? Procedia Computer Science, 239, 659–666.
- Lunenburg, F. C., & Lunenburg, M. R. (2015). Developing High Performance Teams. IJOBE, 3(1), 1–17.
- Herzberg, F. (2003). One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? Harvard Business Review (Reprint R0301F).
Original LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-warehouses-lobbies-what-makes-teams-across-chris-licvc/?trackingId=u88SP02aSgi8ThCb9BCsaA%3D%3D
