[rating:4]
(New York: Rodale, 2011)
350 pgs
Perhaps this book caught me at a timely moment, or, perhaps I had simply gone too long since my last skinny, vanilla latte, but I liked this book. Howard Schultz is a consummate salesman and that comes through in this book [He sold me!]. He also loves coffee (he really loves coffee), so we had that in common. But there are some basic leadership themes that come through in this book that I think would be particularly helpful for people leading in the challenging environment of today.
In 2008, Schultz returned to be CEO of the company he made famous after he sensed it was in serious trouble. This book is about the effort of a leader to intervene to save a struggling organization. In the process, he does some things that are fundamental to good leadership. He identified the soul of his company. He refused to compromise its values. He sought help. He read. He enlisted great people. He inspired vision. He reinvented his company’s story. He respected and fostered corporate culture.
Of course this is not a “Christian” book, although I believe the principles he espouses could do a lot to infuse life into congregations. But it is about identifying the uniqueness of an organization and staying true to it.
Of course, he is famous for transforming a cup of coffee into an “experience.” He notes: “This was so much more than a coffee break; this was theater” (10). Schultz also related his famous story of how his father struggled in low paying, unfulfilling jobs all his life (15). This has been part of Schultz’s motivation in providing unique benefits such as health insurance for part time employees.
Schultz claims that Starbucks began to forget who they were and to allow their competition to define them (63). A low point was when McDonalds was rated with better coffee than Starbucks! (85). He claims, “In short, we were losing control of our story” (31). He notes that Starbucks was guilty of what many organizations do, becoming enamored with their success. He notes: “Our strategy was to do more of what had worked in the past” (35). He also observes how organizations can measure the wrong things and delude themselves into thinking they are healthy. He says: “every metric we were looking at said everything was fine” (40). “Like a doctor who measures a patient’s height and weight every year without checking blood pressure and heart rate, Starbucks was not diagnosing itself at a level of detail that would help ensure its long term health” (97).
Schultz goes into detail how over two years he turned the company around from its worst performance to record profitability. He is candid about his mistakes and failures and the process he went through to bring about positive change. He claims, “Now Starbucks needed another vision, and I had to come back with one. I had to come back leading” (47). He does share the excitement of the challenge: “It was invigorating to plan for how to make it right” (48). He uses the familiar metaphor of deposits in the bank to refer to the trust he had garnered over time with his staff: “We’d made enough deposits that I could draw from it. But not forever” (57). He also admits he did not return to the CEO role with a desire to be “liked” but to transform the company (57).
He also admits the harsh reality that not everyone will be able to make the necessary adjustments when you are trying to turn around a major organization: “I understood the fact that climbing a mountain is not for everyone. Some people would not have the fortitude for the kind of journey I needed them to embark on, or the skill to make the tough, quick decisions. Others simply would not have the faith in the brand or in me” (58). Schultz did have to let people go and to rebuild his leadership team.
Schultz proceeded to rediscover who Starbucks was as a company and to help remind people of their unique culture. He shares: “We had to rediscover who we were and to imagine who we could be” (73). He confesses: “We thought in terms of millions of customers and thousands of stores instead of one customer, one partner, and one cup of coffee at a time” (97). “We forgot that ‘ones’ added up!” (98).
Schultz takes the reader through the reinvigoration of the Starbuck’s mission. “The Starbuck’s mission: To inspire and nurture the human spirit one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time” (112). He also claims that Starbucks is not a coffee company that serves people but a people company that serves coffee (141).
Throughout the book, Schultz touches on numerous leadership issues. For example, he found that although Starbucks preferred to promote people from within, at times they had to enlist outside expertise in order to address the company’s shortcomings (188). He also discusses the manner in which they let people go. With dignity (171). He also demonstrates why he has been such a good promoter of Starbucks for so long when he notes that every time he saw someone go by with a coffee cup from another company, “I take their decision not to come to Starbucks personally” (201). He also notes he has not embraced traditional advertising but rather has sought to grow his company one satisfied customer at a time (211).
Concerning leadership Schultz suggests that although he does not believe there is a single ingredient for successful leadership, “. . . I do think effective leaders share two intertwined attributes: an unbridled level of confidence about where their organizations are headed, and the ability to bring people along” (260). He also claims, “How leaders embody the values they espouse sets a tone, an expectation, that guides their employees’ behaviors” (294). He concludes: “At its core, I believe leadership is about instilling confidence in others” (308).
Schultz also admits some misfires on launching new products. He concludes, however, that “exploring an imperfect idea can often lead to a better one” (269). He also suggests: “Growth, we now know all too well, is not a strategy. It is a tactic” (315). He also suggests that every organization ought to go through the challenging process of reinventing and updating itself every twenty years (315).
I have read countless leadership books. There is often something new to be learned but then often they seem to cover the same territory. That is one of the reasons I enjoy biographies, because they teach leadership with real-life stories. You see leadership played out in how they lived, rather than in twelve easy steps. I am not sure I learned anything new about leadership in this book (although I learned a lot of interesting facts about Starbucks!), but he puts flesh on many familiar concepts and does so in a generally modest way. Despite his previous, phenomenal success, Schultz, like many CEOs in recent times, learned how to lead in an economic downturn.
While you may learn more about Starbucks than you ever cared to know, this book has a lot to offer. It presents a great study on developing and distinguishing your “brand” as well as your culture. It examines change up close. It looks at how staying true to your values looks when you are under pressure to make changes. It shows how a leader who is over his head gets help and enlists a team. This is a longer book than some people may want to wade through (but hey! It has lots of pictures in the middle!). I think this is a book that touches on many of the pressing leadership issues people are struggling with today.