Success attracts predators. A beloved restaurant tastes different after private equity takes over, and that degradation isn't accident or competition. It's what happens when ownership changes and internal control dissolves into bureaucracy and corner-cutting.
Chapters
We all know this force. I call it the force that no one controls, but everyone obeys, that tends to drag organizations down into mediocrity to the point that we lose control of them. Now, sometimes we lose control of them because we get fired. Sometimes it happens because we're like Frankenstein and his monster. It starts to become malign or bureaucratic or frankly evil. We can't figure out how to stop it. I've had a front row seat at this. I've helped people create unimaginable amounts of wealth for themselves and for society. And yet I've also seen this darkness. The other day I was out to dinner with some friends. We go, we sit down to dinner, they take one bite of the food and they're on their phone and we're like, dude, you're being rude. It's just one sec. Yep. I thought so. I could tell that this restaurant got taken over by private equity.
I could taste it.
What's going on that you can taste the ownership structure of a company in the food? How many people have had a famous brand that they love get ruined? All kinds of famous companies. The thing that destroyed them was not competition. It was not someone else came up with a better product.
No.
Their very success became a liability. Because the more gold in the goose, the greater the temptation to butcher it.
