Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge and Selection

For several years I worked at a small luxury hotel in Vermont. It was a castle like hotel where  people got the chance to spend the night in very elegant rooms and then go to skiing in a near  center. As I was working, I realized that people did not have breakfast at the hotel. The dining  room was beautiful, the space, the tables, the windows with trees outside, it all seemed perfect  but for some reason people did not stay and have breakfast there. The service (we thought) was  ok. Coffee, some pancakes, pastries, yogurt, cereals, fruits, eggs, all served in this huge room but  with no guests to eat or drink them. Of course, we needed to improve this service in order to  make the stay of our guests even better.

After doing this course I realized we used the learning launch tool without knowing that was its  name. We got together with the team and drafted our hypothesis: the guests do not find our  breakfast appealing and they rather have breakfast elsewhere.

Application

For our first learning launch, we focused on the price of the breakfast. We issued some discounts  and coupons for free breakfasts. We wanted to see if the fact that the room had some clients  would attract others. If you see the room empty you think the service is bad, even if you never  tried it. But if you see people having eating and chatting and having a good time, you might  consider staying and have breakfast there too. This was a very small change but we were able  to see its effect very fast. After the first week of discounts and coupons the breakfast room had  more clients than before.

For our second learning launch, we focused on the food and beverages we were offering. We  realized that the pastries (for example) were baked twice or three times a week and some times  they did not look good and appealing. So, we started to bake some pastries every morning.  Smaller amounts of croissants and danishes but of course, they were fresh every morning. This  was a small change with great impact. The food was delicious and the fact that we baked them  early in the morning make the whole room smell good. The smell of just baked pastries attracted  many customers. They wanted to know and taste what smelled so good. People started eating  more and the room was full of guests and delicious things to eat and enjoy.

Insight

By applying the learning launch tool, we learnt our hypothesis was correct. We also learnt that  small changes can mean big changes and you can go one step at a time more quickly than if you  expect to change everything without even having in mind the client or final user. This was a  collaborative work, the waitresses, the chef, the from desk worker, we all work together to  achieve this goal. We also realize that if you have a happy client you work happier. If you trust  your work and your idea as a part of the group that organized the whole process, you feel better.  It is very different for a person to receive an order than to feel he or she is part of the idea.

Approach

Thanks to this course I have learnt very powerful tools and see things differently. Now I have  more clear ideas regarding design thinking.

Continuing with the hotel story, after the success of the changes I mentioned, the General  Manager talked to me and we applied the same tool to other areas of the hotel that needed  improvements.

For the future, I believe we should have track of everything we do, write down more ideas and  discussed them with the team. As Karl Hartmann said on the video, one idea might not be useful now  but it can be perfect for another time so put it in a shelf that can be useful in the future.

