A good month deserves the same questions as a bad one

By David Neddam

When a good month gets no questions

The month was good. The schedule was full, revenue is above target, the team is smiling. You say so in the meeting, you thank everyone, and you move on to the next month.

Nobody asks why.

The bad month gets an investigation. You go back over the weeks one by one, look for what changed, and correct it. The good month only gets a “well done.”

What a good result can hide

A good month always has reasons. They are not always the ones you think.

An event in town that filled the neighboring hotels. Good weather. A competitor closed for renovation. One person on the team who carried the month alone. A promotion that brought people in, before anyone knows what it left.

If the reason came from outside, next month will not find it again. If it rested on one person, it leaves with that person. And if it came from a decision you made, you will not know that either: so you will not be able to make it again.

A good result you have not understood is luck. A good result you have understood is a way of working.

What research says

Research has looked at this question. In 2006, Shmuel Ellis, of Tel Aviv University, and two colleagues compared, in a laboratory, several ways of going back over a completed task: reviewing only the mistakes, only the successes, both, or nothing at all.

First result: you can learn from a success, but it all depends on how you examine it. Second result, less expected: after a success, the participants improved most when they looked at what had been done wrong.

This is a laboratory experiment, not the life of a spa. But it says two useful things: a success can be analyzed, and a good month has its mistakes too.

A good month prepares the next one

A good month leaves two things: money and information. Both are for the month that follows.

Money first. What you want to do next month, train someone, launch an offer, replace a piece of equipment, is paid for by what this month left. The good month finances the strategy of the next. If what it left drifts away without a decision, the next month starts empty-handed, and you are back to chasing the number.

Then information. You have just seen what brings your guests in, what they choose, what brings them back. This is the time to prepare next month’s promotion, not the day the schedule empties.

A promotion decided in a slow week is a reaction: you lower the price because the rooms must be filled. A promotion decided during a good month is a choice: you know who it is for, what it should bring and what it costs. The first one rescues a month. The second prepares it.

What to look at after a good month

Change nothing right away. First look, with the same questions you would ask of a bad month.

1. What was different this month, in your business and around it?
2. Does the result come from more guests, from guests who spent more, or from guests who came back?
3. Does it rest on the whole team, or on one or two people?
4. What did you decide in recent weeks that may have contributed?
5. What can you do again next month, and what does not depend on you?
6. What does this month allow you to finance next month, and which offer are you preparing now?

The first answers separate what belongs to you from what happened to you. The last one decides what you do with it.

What it changes

Asking questions of a good month takes nothing away from the pleasure of having had it. The team deserves its “well done.”

But it also deserves to know what it did well, precisely. That is the only way to do it again.

A bad month teaches you what to correct.

A good month teaches you what to keep, and gives you the means to prepare the next.

Sources and research

Ellis, S., Mendel, R. and Nir, M. (2006). Learning from successful and failed experience: The moderating role of kind of after-event review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(3), 669–680. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.3.669