147. Stop Decorating Wellness Concepts That Were Never Designed

Who is responsible for designing your wellness offering? 

Really, who? 

As I’ve been researching and writing my second book, I’ve been revisiting some of the thinking that has shaped how I see wellness leadership and business today. One idea I keep coming back to is first who, then what. It’s the idea that you need the right people on the bus and in the right seats. 

But the more I sit with this idea, especially in the context of wellness within hospitality, the clearer it becomes that we’ve skipped a critical step. 

We’ve never actually designed the seats. 

Wellness is still one of the newest departments in the hotel ecosystem. Because it’s complex, specialist, and often poorly understood, we’ve quietly placed the entire weight of the wellness business onto one person. One leader expected to give the brief, design the concept, stress-test the numbers, activate the experience, and operate it, often without the authority, training, or governance needed to do this sustainably. 

To make sense of this, I keep returning to an analogy I know well: buildings. 

In construction, the process is clear. An owner provides a brief. An architect designs the whole. Structural and engineering teams ensure the building can stand. Interior teams make it liveable. Operators then maintain and refine it over time. No role is more important than another but no role is expected to do all of them. 

In wellness, we’ve blurred these roles completely. We’ve asked one person to sit in every seat at once, and then we’re surprised when the entire system collapses the moment they leave. We hire someone new and expect them to reinvent everything all over again. 

This episode is about why wellness doesn’t fail because of people, passion, or effort but because it’s being built without clear design, role clarity, and stewardship. 

Here are the 3 things we cover: 

1.- Why even great wellness leaders struggle to make wellness work 

When roles aren’t defined, capable people end up compensating for structural gaps, and eventually burn out. 

2.- How the building analogy reveals what’s missing in wellness governance 

From the owner’s brief to concept design, to project specialists, to internal leaders and operators, every role matters, but only when each stays in its lane. 

3.- Why wellness succeeds or fails at the level it’s designed, not delivered 

No amount of effort, decoration, or operational excellence can fix a concept that was never properly designed in the first place. 

By the end of this episode you’ll be able to clearly see where wellness concepts break down, and why asking one person to “hold it all” is the fastest way to undermine both performance and longevity.