"We don't treat our employees like children"

Heidi and I don't get out very often, so when my parents offered to take our daughters for the weekend, we had some important decisions to make. We wanted to go out for a nice dinner in Boston. So do we go to an old favorite, a place where we knew that we were likely to have a good experience? Or do we get adventurous and try something new? Since we had two evenings to cover, we decided to do both.

Friday night, we went to a new (for us) place. The food was really quite good (the chef is world famous), but the service was indifferent. We kept overhearing waitstaff complaining about coworkers — "I'm not working with Aziz again!" The overall experience was meh.

On Saturday, we blew off adventurous and returned to our favorite Boston restaurant: Sorellina. (BTW: The website starts playing music, which I'm usually not a fan of. But it's really cool Italian ambience music, so it works for me.)

What a difference. The food, as always, was excellent. But it was the service that makes it stand out.

We arrived very early — 5:30 — so that we'd have to time for a movie afterward. They had just opened for the day, and the management and staff were having their daily premeal meeting. Now many high-quality restaurants have a daily meeting like this, but this got me thinking: maybe companies in other industries would benefit from having a daily "premeal" meeting.

Every person we dealt with was gracious, polite, genuine, eye-sparkly (to borrow from Tom Peters), and warm: the hostess, the bartenders, the waitstaff, the busboys, and the general manager. They did things without being asked, like splitting the (fantastic) tuna tartare appetizer into two beautiful dishes so that we could share it, or bringing Heidi an extra wineglass so that she could try a sip of my Shiraz. We never felt rushed, nor did we ever feel ignored. It was a terrific team performance.

Our waitress, Katrina, was bright, charming, and knowledgeable, with an arch sense of humor. (It took great restraint for me not to ask whether people comment on her name. Hurricane? Too soon. "Walking on Sunshine"? Also too soon.) She told us that she had been working there for three and a half years. She also pointed out that many of the servers had been there as long or longer.

During the meal, the general manager, Dominick Minots, came over to chat with us. No particular reason — even though we've been there a bunch of times over the years and even had the Shepherd Law Group holiday party there in 2007, we weren't exactly regulars. He asked how we were enjoying our meal in a way that showed that he actually cared about the answer. I asked him about the long tenure of their staff, mentioning that it was unusual in the restaurant industry. His answers resonated.

"We don't treat our employees like children," he said. Everyone was accountable to each other, to the restaurant, and to the guests. For them, team was the key concept. Not in a there's-no-I-in-team sense, but in a sense that the team worked together to make the guests' experiences as enjoyable as they can be. And it showed.

How many companies can honestly say that they don't treat their employees like children? Too many worry about policies and rules and personnel manuals. How can an employer expect someone to feel accountable and have a sense of responsibility when it legislates all aspects of the employees' conduct?

If you want your workplace to provide world-class results like Sorellina, start by treating your employees like grown-ups.