Danny Meyer (Part 2)
Founder & Executive Chairman, Union Square Hospitality Group
“Culture is the sum of all the wanted behaviors that you celebrate, minus all the unwanted behaviors that you tolerate.”
Summary
Danny Meyer has spent his career proving that the way you treat people is not a soft complement to a business—it is the business.
Danny was one of our first guests on the show years ago, and it was a joy to welcome him back for a conversation on hospitality, leadership, the power of positivity, and his new book, What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture. It arrives two decades after Danny first shared his philosophy of “enlightened hospitality” in his earlier book, Setting the Table, and was written to answer the question that his first book left open: how can an organization maintain a thriving culture through growth and change?
We discussed how Danny’s experience managing a team of volunteers as a 22-year-old campaign staffer shaped his thinking on culture; how asking “what could possibly go right?” led to the creation of Shake Shack; and the lessons he’s learned over his extraordinary career about how to hire the right people and build successful, enduring cultures.
It is a conversation about optimism as a discipline rather than a temperament, and about why, in an age of automation, the most human skills and qualities are turning out to be the most valuable.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Danny Meyer is the founder and executive chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group and the founder and chairman of the board of Shake Shack. He opened his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe, in 1985 at the age of 27, and has since built a portfolio of restaurants and hospitality businesses that have collectively earned an unprecedented 28 James Beard Awards. A native of St. Louis and a graduate of Trinity College, where he later served as a trustee, he is the author of Setting the Table and What Could Possibly Go Right?