Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul - Couverture rigide

Schultz, Howard

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1605292885 ISBN 13 : 9781605292885

Editeur : Rodale Pr, 2011

Synopsis

Book by Schultz Howard Joanne Gordon

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Chapter 1

A Beverage of Truth

One Tuesday afternoon in February 2008, Starbucks closed all of its US stores.

A note posted on 7,100 locked doors explained the reason:

"We're taking time to perfect our espresso.

Great espresso requires practice.

That's why we're dedicating ourselves to honing our craft."

Only weeks earlier, I'd sat in my Seattle office holding back-to-back meetings about how to quickly fix myriad problems that were beginning to surface inside the company. One team had to figure out how we could, in short order, retrain 135,000 baristas to pour the perfect shot of espresso.

Pouring espresso is an art, one that requires the barista to care about the quality of the beverage. If the barista only goes through the motions, if he or she does not care and produces an inferior espresso that is too weak or too bitter, then Starbucks has lost the essence of what we set out to do 40 years ago: inspire the human spirit. I realize this is a lofty mission for a cup of coffee, but this is what merchants do. We take the ordinary--a shoe, a knife--and give it new life, believing that what we create has the potential to touch others' lives because it touched ours.

Starbucks has always been about so much more than coffee. But without great coffee, we have no reason to exist.

"We looked at all the options," the team seated around me said. "The only way to retrain everyone by March is to close our stores, all at once."

I sat back in my chair. It would be a powerful statement, but no retailer had ever done such a thing. "That's a big idea," I replied, considering the risks. Starbucks would lose several million dollars in sales and labor costs. That would be unavoidable. Competitors would capitalize on our absence and try to lure away our customers. Critics would gloat, cynics would smirk, and the always-unpredictable media scrutiny could be humiliating. On Wall Street, our stock could sink even lower. Most dangerous of all, such a massive retraining event would be perceived as our own admission that Starbucks was no longer good enough. But if I was honest with myself, I knew that that was the truth.

I pursed my lips and looked at the team. "Let's do it."

There is a word that comes to my mind when I think about our company and our people. That word is "love." I love Starbucks because everything we've tried to do is steeped in humanity.

Respect and dignity. Passion and laughter. Compassion, community, and responsibility. Authenticity.

These are Starbucks' touchstones, the source of our pride.

Valuing personal connections at a time when so many people sit alone in front of screens; aspiring to build human relationships in an age when so many issues polarize so many; and acting ethically, even if it costs more, when corners are routinely cut--these are honorable pursuits, at the core of what we set out to be.

For more than three decades, coffee has captured my imagination because it is a beverage about individuals as well as community. A Rwandan farmer. Eighty roast masters at six Starbucks plants on two continents. Thousands of baristas in 54 countries. Like a symphony, coffee's power rests in the hands of a few individuals who orchestrate its appeal. So much can go wrong during the journey from soil to cup that when everything goes right, it is nothing short of brilliant! After all, coffee doesn't lie. It can't. Every sip is proof of the artistry--technical as well as human--that went into its creation.

In the beginning of 2008 I deeply wanted people to fall back in love with Starbucks, which is why, even when bombarded by warnings against it, I decided to close all of our stores across America. I did not feel fear as much as a sense of the unknown, like I was flipping over a playing card. All I had was my belief that, even more than perfecting our coffee, we had to restore the passion and the commitment that everyone at Starbucks needed to have for our customers. Doing so meant taking a step back before we could take many steps forward.

When clocks struck 5:30 p.m. in cities across the United States, our customers were gently asked to leave our stores and the doors were locked behind them. Inside, our green-aproned baristas watched a short film our coffee experts had produced in a matter of days back in Seattle and shipped to all 7,100 stores, along with 7,100 DVD players. What our people heard that afternoon was pure and true:

If poured too fast from the spout into a shot glass, like water flowing from a faucet, the espresso's flavor will be weak and the body will be thin. A shot poured too slow means the grind is too fine, and the flavor will be bitter. The perfect shot looks like honey pouring from a spoon. It is dense and tastes caramely sweet.

If the espresso was not good enough, I told everyone at the end of the video, they had my permission to pour it out and begin again.

And then there was the milk.

For our espresso beverages, steaming milk to create a creamy, sweet consistency is crucial. Unfortunately, in the name of efficiency, our company had created some bad habits among our baristas. Not only had we not trained many of them to steam milk correctly--the process requires aerating and heating the milk in just the right fashion--but some had also been steaming large pitchers of milk prior to customers' orders, letting the pitcher sit, and then resteaming the milk as needed. But once steamed, milk begins to break down and lose some of its sweetness. We had to correct these behaviors and return to higher standards.

Speaking to our people via the video, I had no script, just a heart-felt plea. "It is not about the company or about the brand," I said. "It is not about anyone but you. You decide whether or not it is good enough, and you have my complete support and, most importantly, my faith and belief in you. Let's measure our actions by that perfect shot of espresso."

Meanwhile, in city after city, news crews pointed their cameras at our closed stores as reporters interviewed baffled customers. "A World without Starbucks?" asked a headline in The Baltimore Sun. In New York City: "Starbucks Shutdown a Grande Pain for NYers." Online, opinions pro and con streamed in throughout the day, and on television, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, and others covered the closings with an odd sense of wonder, as if it had snowed in summer. Late-night comedians also roasted us. At my home in Seattle, I watched Stephen Colbert's mock news report about his three tortuous hours without a caffeinated drink, which climaxed as he doused himself in the shower with coffee, foam, and cinnamon. I went to sleep laughing for the first time in months.

Not everything went well that day. As predicted, Starbucks lost money. Approximately $6 million. One competitor tried to poach our customers by promoting 99-cent cups of espresso-based beverages. Some critics were brutal, insisting that by admitting we were broken we had forever dented the Starbucks brand. But I was confident that we had done the right thing. How could it be wrong to invest in our people?

In the weeks following the closures, our coffee quality scores went up and stayed there as stories made their way to me, like this one from a barista in Philadelphia:

A gentleman came into my store this morning and told me he would like to try espresso but was afraid it would be too bitter. So I told him that I would pull some perfect shots for him and also make him an Americano. Together we talked about espresso, its origins, and how to enjoy the perfect shot. He enjoyed it immensely and said he would be back for more. . . . I think I now have a customer for life.

That was proof enough for me that we had done the right thing.

There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is the right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead.

This is the kind of passionate conviction that sparks romances, wins battles, and drives people to pursue dreams others wouldn't dare. Belief in ourselves and in what is right catapults us over hurdles, and our lives unfold.

"Life is a sum of all your choices," wrote Albert Camus. Large or small, our actions forge our futures, hopefully inspiring others along the way.

Ultimately, closing our stores was most powerful in its symbolism. It was a galvanizing event for Starbucks' partners--the term we use for our employees--a stake in the ground that helped reestablish some of the emotional attachment and trust we had squandered during our years of focusing on hypergrowth. A bold move that I stand by today, it sent a message that decisiveness was back at Starbucks. No doubt, after that Tuesday, thousands of Starbucks espresso shots were poured like honey. But a symbolic act and three hours of education would not solve our mounting problems. We had a long, long way to go--further than I had imagined when I returned as ceo. In the winter of 2008, the fight began for our survival. What we faced was nothing less than a crucible, and I had spent the past year preparing for it.

Quatrième de couverture :

On February 26, 2008, customers at 7,100 Starbucks stores in the US were asked to leave. For the next three hours every barista in every Starbucks was retrained in the art of making the perfect espresso. The act was unprecedented, but proof of just how dire things were becoming at a company that could once do no wrong.

For more than three decades, Starbucks had a storied history of being a great place to work, of ethically sourcing and roasting the highest–quality coffee beans, and of crafting beverages for millions of customers who went to Starbucks for coffee and for a sense of community. But by 2008, after years of focusing on rapid expansion, the traits that made Starbucks successful were in jeopardy. Sales started to slide at a distressing rate. The stock price was falling. The company′s very survival was at risk.

To address the emerging problems, former chief executive officer Howard Schultz, who had stepped aside almost eight years earlier to become chairman after growing Starbucks from 11 stores to thousands, did something no one expected: He returned as CEO to oversee day–to–day operations. His goal was not just to stabilize the company, but to transform it by refocusing on core values and reigniting the innovation required to thrive in a dramatically shifting marketplace, all while fending off harsh critics and huge competitors.

Schultz came back with passion and a plan, and in the course of two years–even in the face of painful revelations about internal troubles and a worsening economy–Starbucks astonishingly returned to sustainable, profitable growth.

Onward is the remarkable story of that transformation. Schultz offers readers an extraordinarily intimate look at his daily decision–making process, from closed–door planning sessions in Seattle, to conversations with coffee farmers in Rwanda, to investor presentations in New York during the worst of the economic turmoil.

Onward is more than just a business book. Personally inspiring and unexpectedly candid, it brings a dramatic story to life with the emotional power and narrative suspense of a novel.

"Through the lens of his personal leadership journey, with all of its dizzying ups and agonizing downs, Howard Schultz has written, with aching honesty and passion, the single most important book on leadership and change for our time and for every generation of leaders. This book is not just recommended reading, it′s required."
Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California, and author of the recently published Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership

"Howard Schultz′s refreshingly candid, compelling narrative demonstrates what it takes to lead in these extraordinary times. Onward is a rare firsthand account of how one of the world′s most iconic brands overcame the challenges that confront us all."
Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo

"The second toughest thing in business is building a successful enterprise–the toughest is to engineer a turnaround and still maintain the core culture and values of the organization. This is a classic example of how it can be done. Howard has proven it′s not enough to be smart or well intentioned–sustained success will not occur without true passion from the very top!"
Jim Sinegal, cofounder and CEO of Costco

Starred Review: "[This] sequel to the founding of Starbucks is grittier, more gripping, and dramatic, and [Schultz′s] voice is winning and authentic. This is a must–read for anyone interested in leadership, management, or the quest to connect a brand with the consumer."
Publishers Weekly

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Rodale Pr
• Date d'édition: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1605292885
• ISBN 13: 9781605292885
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 350