Brilliant Communication, with Howard Schultz
If you’d like to learn what masterful communication sounds like, I recommend this fascinating Acquired podcast/video with Howard Schultz. Schultz is the visionary and charismatic leader who effectively founded Starbucks and made it a cultural icon and global brand.
What I love about this discussion (it’s over three hours long — treat it like a mini audio book rather than a long interview) is how Schultz compellingly explains the entire story of Starbucks, including the economic model and challenges of creating a speciality coffee category, and ties it back to the every day mission of the company.
I appreciate his missionary zeal and obsession for the customer experience, while speaking plainly and simply. This discussion, recorded in June 2024, includes problems Starbucks is currently facing, and foreshadows the appointment of Starbucks’ newest CEO, Brian Niccol, to turn around the company.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
We’re not a beverage company serving coffee. We are a coffee company serving people.
We’re not in the transaction business. We have to execute transactions, but that has to go through the lens of being an experience business, an experience place. People are longing for human connection.
We cannot continue to allow the mobile app to be a runaway train that is going to consistently dilute the integrity of the experience of Starbucks…The mobile app is the biggest Achilles heel for Starbucks….Everyone shows up, and all of a sudden we got a mosh pit, and that’s not Starbucks.
The problem when you get this big is you start thinking about large numbers. But if you reduce it to the lowest common denominator, one store, one cup of coffee, one customer, one partner, and what if all of that works?
The shareholder is not the primary person. It’s the Starbucks partner in the green apron, which is the cloth of the company. If we exceed the expectations of the cloth of the company and our people, shareholders and customers are going to win.
The worst thing that Starbucks could become is a utility. Scale and ubiquity creates complexity. Complexity demands efficiency. But we are in a business where that touch point between the customer and the barista has to be protected and has to be elevated. Now, you get stores that are so busy where the barista can’t even look up.
Most founder-led companies are entrepreneurially driven. It’s not that they’re not following the rules. They’re making the rules, especially if you’re creating an industry that did not exist. Founder leaves…and companies lose not only the extent of the entrepreneurial DNA, but they lose the ability to be on offense. The worst thing that a company can do like a sports team, is start playing defense because you’re afraid to fail.
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