Why Danny Meyer’s New Book Deserves a Place on Your Reading List
We spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about what could go wrong. We anticipate problems, prepare for setbacks, evaluate risks, and develop contingency plans. Whether we’re building a business, pursuing a creative passion, managing a team, or simply navigating life, we’re often encouraged to identify everything that might fail before taking the next step. But what happens when we reverse the question?
What could possibly go right?
That is the intriguing question behind Danny Meyer’s new book, What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture. It’s a refreshing change in perspective, and I think it’s a question worth exploring.
Why I Chose This Book
My interest in this book has a personal connection to something I experienced last weekend when I attended 300 Paintings at ASU Gammage. The performance left me thinking about creativity, experimentation, expectations, and what happens when we allow ourselves to explore possibilities without knowing exactly where they will lead.
As an artist, I am particularly interested in the relationship between creative intention and unexpected outcomes. We often begin a project with a vision of what we want to accomplish, but the creative process has a way of introducing possibilities we never anticipated. Sometimes those discoveries become more interesting than the original plan.
My experience at 300 Paintings prompted me to think more deeply about the importance of remaining open to those possibilities. It also made me consider how much of our thinking is shaped by expectations, assumptions, and the desire to control the outcome. What might happen if we approached our creative endeavors, professional challenges, and everyday decisions with a greater willingness to discover what could go right?
That question led me to Danny Meyer’s book. Although his world of hospitality and business may seem far removed from an artistic performance, I see an interesting connection between the two. Both invite us to examine the environments we create, the experiences we share, and the possibilities that emerge when we challenge conventional thinking.
I’ll be exploring my experience at 300 Paintings, along with the ideas and questions it inspired, in a separate blog post that will be published soon. For now, it provides an interesting starting point for why this particular book caught my attention.
The Man Behind the Question
Danny Meyer is no stranger to building something that lasts. As the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and the entrepreneur behind celebrated hospitality ventures, including Shake Shack, Meyer has spent decades exploring what makes organizations successful. His earlier bestseller, Setting the Table, introduced readers to his philosophy of Enlightened Hospitality, an approach that places people and relationships at the center of business success.
Rather than viewing hospitality simply as excellent customer service, Meyer encouraged leaders to consider how they treat employees, customers, communities, suppliers, and investors. His philosophy suggests that when people feel genuinely valued, extraordinary things become possible. Now, with What Could Possibly Go Right?, Meyer turns his attention toward another challenge: how to grow an organization without losing the culture that made it special in the first place.
Growth Is Easy to Celebrate. Culture Is Harder to Preserve.
We often measure success through numbers. More customers, more revenue, more locations, more employees, and more recognition. But growth can introduce an unexpected problem. The qualities that made a small organization exceptional can become increasingly difficult to maintain as it expands.
Think about a favorite neighborhood restaurant. You return because someone remembers your name, the atmosphere feels welcoming, the employees seem genuinely happy to be there, and the experience feels personal rather than transactional. Then the restaurant becomes successful. A second location opens, followed by a third, and eventually the organization grows beyond the founder’s ability to personally influence every interaction. Can the original experience survive?
That question applies far beyond restaurants. It applies to corporations, nonprofit organizations, artistic communities, educational institutions, and even families. How do we preserve what matters most while allowing something to evolve? This is one of the reasons Meyer’s book interests me.
The Power of Asking a Better Question
The title alone offers a valuable shift in perspective. Most of us are familiar with the phrase, “What could possibly go wrong?” It is usually delivered with skepticism, sometimes with humor, and often as a warning. Meyer challenges us to consider the opposite. What if we approached a new opportunity by imagining the possibilities rather than immediately cataloging the dangers? What if we asked what might succeed, what relationships might develop, what unexpected discoveries might emerge, and what positive consequences might follow?
This isn’t about ignoring risks or pretending that failure doesn’t exist. It’s about recognizing that the questions we ask influence the possibilities we are willing to explore. For entrepreneurs, this might mean pursuing an unconventional idea. For leaders, it might mean trusting employees with greater responsibility. For artists, it might mean experimenting with an unfamiliar medium. For travelers, it might mean taking a different route, entering an unfamiliar neighborhood, or accepting an invitation that wasn’t part of the original itinerary. Some of life’s most rewarding experiences begin with curiosity rather than certainty.
What Artists and Creative Thinkers Can Learn From Hospitality
Although Meyer’s professional background is in restaurants and hospitality, I believe the underlying themes are especially relevant to creative people. An artist develops a recognizable style, technique, or visual language. Over time, that identity becomes part of what collectors and audiences appreciate. But artistic growth requires experimentation. How does an artist evolve without abandoning the qualities that make the work distinctive?
The same tension exists in business. An organization needs to innovate while preserving its essential character. Perhaps the answer isn’t to resist change but to understand which values deserve to remain constant. For an artist, those values might include curiosity, originality, craftsmanship, or the desire to communicate an emotional experience. For a business, they might include generosity, trust, respect, and genuine hospitality. The forms may change, but the underlying philosophy can endure.
Thinking back to 300 Paintings, I find myself returning to the idea that creativity involves a certain willingness to surrender control. An artist may establish the conditions for something to happen, but the result can take on a life of its own. Perhaps successful organizations face a similar challenge. They must establish a foundation strong enough to preserve their values while remaining flexible enough to welcome new ideas and unexpected opportunities.
Culture Is What Happens When Nobody Is Watching
One of the most interesting questions surrounding organizational culture is whether it can truly be created through policies and mission statements. Companies frequently publish impressive declarations about their values, but culture is experienced through everyday behavior. It’s how employees treat one another when the manager isn’t present, how a restaurant responds when an order goes wrong, how an organization handles disagreement, disappointment, or unexpected success, and how people behave when doing the right thing is inconvenient.
A company’s culture isn’t simply what its leadership says it believes. It’s what people consistently experience. That distinction makes the subject of Meyer’s book particularly relevant in an era when organizations are growing, restructuring, automating, and incorporating artificial intelligence into everyday operations. Technology may help a business scale its systems, but preserving its humanity requires a different kind of attention.
Why This Book Belongs on More Than a Business Reading List
I am drawn to books that encourage me to look at familiar ideas from a different perspective. The best books don’t simply provide information. They challenge assumptions and introduce questions that stay with us long after we’ve finished reading. What Could Possibly Go Right? offers an opportunity to think about leadership, organizational growth, relationships, and the importance of building something meaningful enough to endure.
You don’t have to own a restaurant or manage a corporation to appreciate those questions. You might be organizing a community project, developing a creative practice, mentoring someone, or considering a new direction in life. At some point, almost everyone confronts the challenge of moving forward without losing sight of what matters. That makes this book relevant well beyond the world of hospitality.
An Invitation to Read and Reflect
I haven’t reached the final page of this book, so this isn’t a traditional book review. It’s an invitation to explore an idea that I find particularly compelling. As you read, consider what values you would refuse to compromise as something you care about grows. Have you ever watched a successful organization lose the qualities that originally made it special? Can a welcoming, people-centered culture be deliberately developed, or must it emerge naturally? What opportunities have you overlooked because you were too focused on what might go wrong?
I suspect that Meyer’s exploration of enduring culture will inspire conversations about far more than business. It may also encourage us to reconsider how we define success. Perhaps success isn’t simply about becoming bigger, wealthier, or more widely recognized. Perhaps it is about creating something that remains meaningful as it grows, something that continues to reflect our values even as circumstances change.
What I find especially appealing about this book is the possibility of applying its central question to everyday life. We don’t need to be launching a company or planning an ambitious project to benefit from a more optimistic perspective. Sometimes the most important changes begin with a simple willingness to imagine a different outcome. Instead of automatically anticipating disappointment, we might allow ourselves to consider the opportunities waiting on the other side of uncertainty.
My experience at 300 Paintings reminded me that some of the most interesting ideas come from encounters we never expected to influence our thinking. I went to experience a performance and came away with questions that extended into art, business, and personal philosophy. Those questions are part of what makes learning so enjoyable. One experience leads to another, and suddenly a book about organizational culture becomes relevant to a conversation about artistic creativity.
Perhaps the most productive question we can ask before beginning something new isn’t what we stand to lose. It’s what we might discover, create, or accomplish if things go right.
And that, to me, is reason enough to put this book on the reading list.
Recommended Reading: What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture, by Danny Meyer.
Coming Soon: My reflections on 300 Paintings at ASU Gammage, an experience that inspired me to think more deeply about creativity, expectations, and the possibilities that emerge when we challenge our assumptions.
Sometimes a book earns a place on our reading list because of the answers it promises. Other times, it’s because of the questions it inspires. For me, this one begins with a particularly good question.
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