Onward

Just finished Onward by Howard Schultz.

I saw an interview with Schultz via the Drucker School of Business on iTunes U and was intrigued by this man, even though I'm a Caribou Coffee guy myself.

Here is a brief clip from that podcast thanks to Youtube,




I don't know where I have been, but I was never aware that Starbucks was ever in such dire straights after Schultz left as CEO.  However, much like what Steve Jobs did for apple, Schultz returned and helped to reinvent the company.

His number one focus: changing the culture of the organization.

Once I heard that, I knew I had to get his book, for that is how Lincoln has been reinvented under our new leadership and his mantra: culture eats strategy for lunch.

Schultz quickly realized that the culture of Starbucks had changed from providing a communal experience around superior coffee to making profits as quickly as possible by opening as many stores as possible.  Starbucks had also grown complacent. No longer were they on the cutting edge, rolling out new coffee products that the country had never seen before.  Truth be told, Starbucks - under Schultz's leadership - was responsible for triggering America's obsession with good coffee, of the $4 latte (as McDonald's chose to phrase it when they stepped up their game and started offering premium coffee in their restaurants).

One of my favorite parts of the Drucker interview on iTunes U was when Schultz acknowledge that one of his partners said to him, "Now is the time for you to cut the employee health care package. Everyone else is doing int. No one will blame you."

Schultz said that was never a question. The complete health care benefits, which Starbucks offers to all employees, not just full-time workers, was never on the table. It was sacred.

That blew me away.

Onward, is Schultz's chronicle of how he turned the company around from the brink and made it the number one coffee company in America again.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and the entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the constructions worker, the technologist, the manager, and the clerk."

(I think we all in ISD 564 need to remember this. We might have a few thousands MacBook Airs and iPads in the hands of every single student, but we still have to use the technology to connect personally with our students and make a difference in their lives)

"Infusing work with purpose and meaning, however, is a two-way street. Yes, love what you do, but your company should love you back."

(And this is what is so vital about having a great leader in charge of your school. I have no doubt that this is going on at Lincoln).

"A well-built brand is the culmination of intangibles that do not directly flow to the revenue or profitability of a company, but contribute to its texture. Forsaking them can take a subtle, collective toll."

"I do not mean to imply that Starbucks is by any means a perfect place to work or the ideal retailer, somehow above reproach. We have made many mistakes over the years, and we will continue to make them. But we do aim high. And we do have high expectations of ourselves as we try to manage the company through the lens of humanity."

(This is how we must run our classes - even with all the technology - "through the lens of humanity.")

"I've always believed that innovation is about rethinking the nature of relationships, not just rethinking products."

When I read this, I thought of this, which I just came across last night.

"But we are on it [the challenges that face the company] with relentless focus on the customer, the customer experience, and doing everything we can to differentiate Starbucks from everyone else attempting to be in the coffee business . . ."

(I wonder why more schools, and teachers for that matter, don't take this to heart. Sure I know the department of education is pushing a One-Size-Fits-All curriculum on us, but still I don't see why we don't attack the standards uniquely. I know this sounds odd since I'm a proponent of common assessment, but that doesn't squash teacher creativity. It just looks at the best practices for teaching skills, it has nothing to do with climate, culture, and personality in the class.

Recently, on social media, I asked our students - past and present - to name a teacher who impacted their lives. The top three vote getters were H, Mumm, and Reese.  Science, phy-ed/coaching, and choir.  You can't get more distinct fields than those.  Totally different personalities. Totally different teaching styles. Totally different approaches.  Yet, one result: they impacted the lives of students more than their peers.  Differentiation is vital.  As is making an impact.)

"Starbucks is not a coffee company that serves people. It is a people company that serves coffee, and human behavior is much more challenging to change than any muffin recipe or marketing strategy."

"Success is not sustainable if it's defined by how big you become. Large numbers once captivated me -- 40,000 stores! -- are not what matter. The only number that matters is "one." One cup. One customer. One partner. One experience at a time."

(This too is totally relatable to teaching. I used to think of my classes this way, I have my textbook. It all starts with that. It's my job to take the knowledge and skills in the textbook and get them inside the heads of 30 kids in my classroom.

Then when I went to graduate school, I had a chance to zero in on something I had almost totally neglected in my first three years of teaching: process.  So when I returned to Lincoln, I didn't begin with the textbook. Instead, I began focusing on the process of how I would teach what was in the textbook.

Then another shift in focus happened, around 2005 or so. I started to focus on the students first, getting to know them and their passions as quickly as possible. Then I'd try to use process to connect them to the material presented in the text.

It doesn't always work like that, but that's what I strive for. One student. One classroom. One assignment. One unique learning experience at a time.

And this is where social media has been so vital. Each Sunday morning when I'm grading papers, I can text comments and scores individually to students, rather than just handing them back in one large batch on Monday.  The point is to create a unique learning experience that no one else does.)

"More than once I have promoted internal leaders to positions that would be a stretch from their previous roles because their core skills, determination, and passion for what Starbucks stands for would, I wholeheartedly believed, yield success."

(This too is vital for teachers. Our administration needs to place us in positions, whether it's on the leadership team, as department head, or on other committees that will cause us to stretch and move a bit outside of our comfort zones in order for us to grow. You don't want to teach the same year 35 times in a row.)

"All the cost cuts and innovation meant nothing unless our baristas understood their responsibility to connect with customers and unless our store managers felt personally accountable for operating profitable stores."

(Just replace baristas with 'teachers' and customers with 'students,' and you've got something I wish more administrators and education policy makers understood)

"But reigniting people's hearts and minds had to be done in person. For all the promise of digital media to bring people togethers, I still believe that the most sincere, lasting powers of human connection come from looking directly into someone else's eyes, with no screen in between."

(Now, I'm all for social media and technology, but this is the beauty of the real classroom).

"a core capacity of leadership is the ability to make right decisions, while flying blind, basing them on knowledge, wisdom, and the ability to stay wedded to an overriding goal."

(I think this is one of the things I love most about teaching: "flying blind" meaning not being totally sure of where a class is going to go. There is that moment of uncharted territory, where I don't know what the class is going to think of a reading or an assignment (sometimes thought up on the way to school or even on the way to my room). So I substitute it in for what we were going to do.  But my heart is in the right place, my "overriding goal," in that I want to get my students thinking critically and writing to analyze.)

"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."

(I think this is true for not only teachers but also their principals).

Thought Onward gets weighted down in a lot of details on Starbucks' supply chain organization, their brewing methods, and so on, it still is a great read on leadership and their core values.