LinkedIn·Thursday, 20 August 2026·6d ago

Yesterday I was recording an episode with JD Dillon for our podcast #UnsungHeroes, and he told me a story that stuck with me. A hospitality…

Guy Van Neck

Founder at Khova.ai

Yesterday I was recording an episode with JD Dillon for our podcast #UnsungHeroes, and he told me a story that stuck with me. A hospitality executive found out his bacon was ruining the customer experience only because he happened to be in a room where someone finally told him. He ran regular roundtables with frontline staff specifically to hear things like this, and in one session someone asked, "Have you seen the bacon lately?" He hadn't. They explained it had changed, thinner now, falling apart the moment it was cooked. Fine in a sandwich. Crumbs as a side order. Customers had been complaining for weeks. The cause turned out to be a cost-saving decision made on a spreadsheet in a completely different department, with no visibility into what it would look like on a plate three steps down the line. The spreadsheet lived in one place. The complaints lived in a completely different report. Nobody was ever going to connect the two on their own. Nobody made a bad decision here. The systems just weren't built to let anyone see the whole picture at once. If it happened with something as visible as bacon, in a business paying close attention, imagine how many smaller versions of that same story are quietly playing out in yours right now, with nobody in the room to ask.