On a recent project in Japan, I watched a team pause over a gesture that would last no more than two seconds. It took me straight back to my student years there. With debates swirling about Asia’s dominance in the Top 50 hotels, that moment reveals something critical. In the finest Japanese hospitality teams, a micro-gesture is treated with the same strategic weight as a major decision. This is not formality. It is philosophy. And it is an operating system that global leaders
