What Could Possibly Go Right?

The founder of one of the world's most successful hospitality groups, also renowned for his conscious leadership and the enduring culture his organisation lives by, distils the rules of a successful culture and how to lead businesses that provide enduring value to all.

'I've been waiting two decades for this book, and it was worth it' - Adam Grant

'A master class from one of the great culture builders of our time' - Daniel Coyle

Restaurateur, entrepreneur, and bestselling author Danny Meyer reveals the secrets of his widely-admired leadership philosophy and the tools he uses to build an energised, cohesive, and motivated culture.

In 2006, Danny Meyer owned eleven restaurants, was nurturing a single parkside burger kiosk called Shake Shack, and had just written a bestselling book, Setting the Table, about his company's unique culture of Enlightened Hospitality. On the first page of that book, Danny proudly declared that in twenty-five years he had never closed a restaurant. But just a few years later, he shuttered his beloved Tabla, a decision that filled him with shame—but sparked a reckoning within him about what it means to be a leader.

Danny realised that his fear of failure wasn't just misguided: it was also an impediment to his innate entrepreneurial spirit, and that clinging to the past was holding his company back. In What Could Possibly Go Right?, he takes the reader along on his journey to learn how he's delivered a winning culture of excellence at scale. Businesses and organisations have long understood how to scale systems of production. But it's a much trickier challenge to scale uplifting human relationships, particularly in a fluid, growing organisation—one that has now spawned 700 businesses spread across twenty-four countries. As Danny writes, 'Along the way, I've tripped and scraped my knee more times than I can count, and yet the general trajectory has been upward and to the right.'

What Could Possibly Go Right? offers fascinating, lively stories from the last twenty years of Danny's career, along with plenty of his trademark mantras (D.F.S—Don't F'ing Settle; Change Your Grip; and Think Like a Winemaker) and leadership concepts (the Hospitality Quotient; the Rule of Two; and the Four Gears of Leadership). Together, they offer an insightful, practical, and transformative roadmap for success, yes, but more important: for making things that matter and endure. Danny believes that culture is an aspiration, not a destination. When you get your culture on the right path in any field, your missteps end up mattering far less than the innumerable lives you'll have changed for the better.