Shake Shack and USHG founder Danny Meyer explains his '51/49 formula' and his contrarian management rule of putting staff ahead of customers.
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Danny Meyer: USHG ranks investors fifth behind employees, guests, community, and suppliers
“The third stakeholder that gets hospitality is the community in which we do business. And the fourth are the suppliers with whom we do business. And fifth, we're actually going to put our investors fifth.”
Insight
Danny Meyer argues leaders must delegate 20% of their work to grow.
“Invariably, 20% of the things I'm doing are things that someone else on our team could do as well or better than I do it. And every time I do that, it's an act of generosity because someone else gets to grow. Every time I don't do it, it's an act of selfishnes…”
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Danny Meyer: Innovation is recombining past discoveries, not inventing from scratch
“Innovation for me is never about inventing something that was never there. It's truly about how many of these discoveries did I store in my taste memory, my heart memory, wherever, and then use that file cabinet and pull out those things and combine them at th…”
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Danny Meyer says founders have a moral obligation to scale beloved concepts.
“If you find that, that people have found a place in their heart for something you're doing, and it's becoming essential, it's becoming part of their lives, you don't have a right to hold it back from people. You don't have a right to, Not employ more people. Y…”
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Danny Meyer argues that great business ideas cannot overcome bad leadership.
“The leadership Is probably even more potent than the idea itself. I think a great leader can pivot and make a decent idea even better, but I've never seen a great idea overcome bad leadership.”
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Danny Meyer: Pursuing perfection is a recipe for unhappiness
“No, I think perfection is a recipe for unhappiness. I really do, and so yeah, I, I'm really all about pursuing excellence, which is, for me, the way I describe it. No, you can have all the perfection you want. I won't have it because I can't, but what I love i…”