Mergers and Acquisitions Law and Finance

Thompson, Robert B.

Part I — Introduction

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Chapter 1

Service is black and white, hospitality is color

it feels great to make other people feels good

Chapter 2

People will forget what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel
That smile was all I needed, and it taught me an invaluable lesson—what it’s like to feel truly welcomed
while most people save the best bottles of wine in their cellars for celebrations, he drinks his best bottles on his worst days
by the time Daniel was embracing us goodbye, my dad and I were the last people in the entire restaurant—not the last guests, but the last people, period. There was no check.

Lesson: Feeling Welcome

Chapter 3

For my father, intentionality wasn’t a luxury or business philosophy; it was a requirement.
Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters.
It’s easier to learn the right way to do things at the high end than it is to break bad habits. You can always take it down a notch later, but it’s harder to go the other way.

Lesson: Intention

Chapter 4

Tough as he was, it was impossible not to love Floyd and his huge grin. The childlike wonder on his face as he watched us taste a mind-blowing new dish for the first time was a gift as inspiring as his food.
The host would ask guests, “How’d you get here tonight?” If they responded, “Oh, we drove,” he’d follow up with, “Cool! Where’d you park?” If they told him they were by a meter on the street, he asked which car was theirs so one of us could run out and drop a couple of quarters into the box while they were dining.
“All it takes for something extraordinary to happen is one person with enthusiasm.”
You know, man, I’m trying to make today the very best day of my life.
If the boss was gone, then I was the boss—which is why I worked harder when Randy was gone than when he was there.
“Constant, gentle pressure” was Danny’s version of the Japanese phrase kaizen, the idea that everyone in the organization should always be improving, getting a little better all the time.
"Athletic Hospitality" (offense + defense)
Ask first: "you're late - is everything okay?"
Maybe this person needs more love

Lesson: essential hospitality

Chapter 5

for the first time, I saw someone approaching the financial side of the business with the same unreasonable passion and ingenuity I saw Danny putting into enlightened hospitality.
Hani hadn’t been doing me a disservice by making me wait; he had been forcing me to strengthen my foundation, a solid base I relied on for years afterward. Waiting didn’t dim my ambition or hamper my progress; it taught me to trust the process—a lesson I would see the wisdom of when I was showing my own staff that the right way to do things starts with how you polish a wineglass.
Just because a few regulars love an employee doesn’t mean they should be allowed to erode the foundation of everything you’re trying to build.
the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information, while the people on the front line have all the information and none of the authority. I was learning that, taken too far, corporate-smart could be restaurant-dumb.
It was a step in the right direction, if not a perfect solution; I did miss the orderly abundance of a fully replenished case. But the experience showed me that creativity was going to be the main ingredient in striking a true balance between restaurant-smart and corporate-smart.

Lesson: Be business smart without losing creativity

Chapter 6

Well, if you want them to be there for you when you need them, then you need to be there for them when they need you.

Lesson: Pursue Partnership

Chapter 7

Mostly, the team needed to be brought along. They needed to feel seen and appreciated. They needed expectations to be clearly laid out and explained. They needed discipline to be consistent. They needed to feel like vital and important parts of an exciting sea change, not obstacles to making it happen.
Some of the best advice I ever got about starting in a new organization is: Don’t cannonball. Ease into the pool.
You’re not always going to agree with everything you hear, but you’ve got to start by listening.
A leader’s responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be.

Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.
Every manager lives with the fantasy that their team can read their mind. But in reality, you have to make your expectations clear. And your team can’t be excellent if you’re not holding them accountable to the standards you’ve set.

That was unreasonable, but the way you do one thing is the way you do everything
the ones who aren’t trying, and the ones who are. The end result may be similar, but the two need to be handled differently: you’ve got to move heaven and earth to help the people who are trying.
We needed to slow down to speed up.

Lesson: slow down to speed up

Chapter 8

You don't touch the table
When you ask, “Why do we do it this way?” and the only answer is “Because that’s how it’s always been done,” that rule deserves another look.

When you get too caught up in showing your prowess—“Look at what we can do!”—you’re losing focus on the only thing that matters, which is what will make your customer happy.

Lesson: make it cool to care and break (some) rules

Chapter 9

The choices you make are always going to be subjective, a matter of opinion.
As Martin says, multiple conflicting goals force you to innovate.

Lesson: Working with purpose

Chapter 10

He discovered that when he gave the teams responsibility, they became more responsible; elevated by his trust in them, they stepped up into the role.

These weren’t line items lost on a manager’s to-do list, crowded with a thousand other things, but minor, inexpensive fixes implemented by a young person paying close attention.

Take a chance, and that person will almost always work extra hard to prove you right.

Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.

Someone may even come to you with an idea that’s just plain dumb. That’s an opportunity to teach—to listen, and then to explain in a respectful way why the idea is unlikely to work, so that the person leaves both encouraged and educated. Remember: there’s often a brilliant idea right behind a bad one.
You don’t want to have a hundred keys; you win when you end up with only one—the key to the front door.

Lesson: giving ownership

Chapter 11

If you’ve corrected a guest because you don’t want them to think you’ve made a mistake, you’ve made a much bigger mistake.

Lesson: focus on the small details

Chapter 12

It’s easy to be someone’s partner during the good times, but it’s most important during the hard ones, and I wanted him to feel as loved and supported as he would have if he had won.
drink your best bottle not on your best day but on your worst.
To break a stalemate, we would sometimes try swapping sides. It’s easy for passionate people to get entrenched in their respective positions. But you can’t help but connect with a position when you’re arguing for it, and swapping sides tends to jog you out of a stubborn focus on “your” idea.

Other folks are sensitive to criticism. This isn’t necessarily a negative characteristic—it’s usually an indication they want to do a good job and feel deeply wounded at any suggestion that they haven’t.
But those people are going to react, no matter what you say or how gently and diplomatically you say it, so you’d better spend some time planning exactly how you’re going to deliver the feedback. And you’d be wise to budget time to spend with them afterward, so you can sit with them and let them know that they’re still loved.

no aspect of your business should be off-limits to reevaluation.

But these tendencies are often what make these people so good at their work; they need to have delicate antennae.

Lesson: leaning into people

Chapter 13

They were right, in a way; the more attention people got, the more job offers they got, too. But I prefer to make decisions based on hope, rather than fear.
People are going to move on, and I’d rather they leave feeling like heroes. Alums of our restaurant, out there doing extraordinary work? That was good for us, too.
my old boss from Tabla, never worried I had less respect for him because Danny Meyer praised me; if anything, he could see I worked harder as a result of it.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Lesson: validation and persistence

Chapter 14

The answer is no. If you aren’t tending to your own needs, you can’t help those around you.

Lesson: slow down

Chapter 15

Uncertainty is scary. But though it’s easy to panic in the face of adversity, creativity is the better solution.

We were creative in how we saved money, and we got creative in how to make money, too.

Lesson: surviving the bad to live through the good

Chapter 16

The first group was attentive; the second paid attention.

I know this for sure: if you don’t have the courage to state a goal out loud, you’ll never achieve it.

Lesson: earn rapport through presence

Chapter 17

Lesson: learning to be unreasonable

Chapter 18

Why do people put so much time and effort into a marriage proposal? Because they know it’s a story they’ll tell for the rest of their lives. The best of those stories do two things: First, they put you right back in the moment, so that you’re not just recounting the experience, but reliving it. Second, the story itself tells you that while you were having the experience, you were seen and heard.
The true gift, then, wasn’t the street hot dog or the bag full of candy bars; it was the story that made a Legend a legend.
It isn’t the lavishness of the gift that counts, but its pricelessness.

Lesson: spot and systematize the Legends

Chapter 19

Creativity is an active process, not a passive one.

Lesson: learning how to grow

Chapter 20

Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what’s realistic or sustainable.