Joie de Vivre Hospitality CEO Chip Conley’s third book is set to hit the shelves in September. In Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow (Jossey-Bass, US$28), Conley explains how he turned to famed psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to guide his boutique hotel company through the difficult post-9/11 travel industry. The book explores how Conley applied Maslow’s theories to create a Relationship Truths Pyramid as it applies to managing employees, customers and investors. “It is a combination of these three relationships held together by a unique operating model, like the service-profit chain, that helps create peak performance,” Conley writes.

The 297-page book is part memoir, part theory and part application, explaining to readers how to bring about similar changes in their work and personal lives. Maslow believed that peak experiences lead to self-actualization, and as such, “Peak” examines the motivations of employees, customers, employers and investors and how to use that understanding to foster better relationships and build a profitable corporate culture. Above all else, Conley concludes, great businesses thrive on leaders who create transformative experiences, for themselves and everyone around them.