EINSTEIN GETS THE TRAINING ROOM. For everything else, we’ ve assembled what may be history’ s most overqualified spa advisory board.

Their credentials span philosophy, psychology, management, poetry, military strategy and cosmetics. Their familiarity with utilization rates, robe inventory and the mysteries of the Saturday schedule is admittedly less impressive.

Still, great ideas travel. So what happens when you take some of history’ s best-known thinking and send it to the spa?

History’ s most overqualified advisory board

NINE ADVISORS. THREE QUESTIONS: How do you lead? How do you serve? How do you grow?

LEAD THE TEAM 1 Confucius

Culture starts at the top. Confucius put enormous emphasis on conduct, relationships and leading by example. In spa terms: Employees pay considerably more attention to what leaders do than to what the employee handbook says they should do.

If managers preach gracious hospitality but communicate impatiently, tolerate gossip or disappear when operations get hectic, the real culture lesson has already been taught. A gracious guest experience is much easier to create inside a gracious workplace.

PUT IT TO WORK: Choose one behavior you expect from employees— warmth, punctuality, listening, teamwork— and ask whether leaders consistently model it first.

No blue book required. Just five questions worth pondering about your spa.

1 Culture: Do your leaders model the behavior they expect from everyone else? 2 Systems: What recurring problem are you still treating as a people problem when it may actually be a process problem? 3 Guest experience: What could you remove— not add— to make a spa visit easier? 4 Strategy: Can you explain exactly what business problem your latest promotion is meant to solve? 5 Revenue: Are guests experiencing your retail products naturally during services— or encountering them for the first time at checkout? ★ EXTRA CREDIT: Pick the question that made you squirm a little. Start there.

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