Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?
A. The first time was when we opened up Il Giornale, which was the coffee-bar business that I started in 1985. At that moment, I realized I was responsible for something much larger than myself — people were relying on me.
Q. And was that an easy transition for you?
A. That was a time when we had unbridled enthusiasm for an idea, and I think it covered up a lot of mistakes and it covered up a lot of naïveté. But I also remember at that time writing a memo that has become kind of the template for the culture and values and guiding principles of Starbucks today.
What we set out to do then, and it has held true today, was really try to build a company that had a set of values and guiding principles that were as important as the equity of the brand or the product we were selling.
Q. Where did you get the idea to do that?
A. It was my experience as a young child and growing up in Brooklyn, where my dreams were beyond my station in life, and I wanted to build a different kind of company that perhaps my father never got a chance to work for. It came from seeing firsthand that if you were not a highly educated or a very successful person — that perhaps as a blue-collar worker or lower-middle-class person, as my parents were — that the work environment didn’t treat you with a level of respect.
Later on I realized that, not unlike a young child, new businesses are formed in the imprinting stage and organizations have a memory. People have come to me over the years and said to me: “I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?” I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
Here’s one example: In the late-’80s, before we went public in ’92, Starbucks gave comprehensive health insurance to part-time workers and equity in the form of stock options to part-time people. That created an unbelievable connection, and we still do it.
Q. What is your advice to an entrepreneur who asks you: “I’m just starting a company. How do I create a culture?”
A. I would say that everything matters — everything. You are imprinting decisions, values and memories onto an organization. In a sense, you’re building a house, and you can’t add stories onto a house until you have built the kind of foundation that will support them. I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven’t done the work that has built the foundation to support it.
People ask me what’s the most important function when you’re starting an organization or setting up the kind of culture and values that are going to endure.
The discipline I believe so strongly in is H.R., and it’s the last discipline that gets funded. Marketing, manufacturing — all these things are important. But more often than not, the head of H.R. does not have a seat at the table. Big mistake.
Q. What are the some other lessons you’ve learned over the course of your life that have shaped the way you lead?
A. I was part of a family that grew up on the other side of the tracks, and that gave me tremendous motivation to want to exceed at a level that would create an environment for my own family that was different from the one I was in. I also think that I was insecure about being a poor kid, but with that came a sense of values and sensitivity about those people who didn’t get respect and had low self-esteem because of that.
So in the early days of Starbucks, my office was in the roasting plant. And I ended every day by walking the plant floor and thanking people who were the unsung heroes of the company. For many people, that demonstrated that I wasn’t sitting in some ivory tower. I was one of them. And I think the leadership style I have is that I’ve never put myself above anyone else, and I’ve never asked more of anyone than I was willing to do myself.
Q. What about early work experiences that influenced you?
A. I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.
Q. What was the strangest one?
A. I had a friend whose family had a furrier, and after school I took the subway from Brooklyn and came into Manhattan and I stretched skins with my hands.
Q. What kind of skins?
A. Fox. I was in high school, so I’d get there in the afternoon, and there’d be a pile of skins. You had to wet the pelt with a brush, and you had to stretch the skins. You were paid by the pelt. It just teaches you at a young age what it takes to make money.
I also worked in a garment company in Queens. It must have been 100 degrees in the summer, and I was steaming curtains. There was no air-conditioning. It was death, just death, but it was the only job I could get.
Q. How do you hire? What are you looking for in, say, somebody who would be a direct report?
A. I want big thinkers. I want people who are going to be entrepreneurial. I want people who are going to have important things to say and the courage to say them. I want people to challenge the status quo, but I also say something to everyone I hire, and that is: “You don’t have to come in here and try to hit a home run, and let me tell you why. You’re coming in here because I and many others believe very strongly in who you are and what you can bring to the company. So you don’t have to come in here and prove something right away.”
People who succeed at Starbucks are going to demonstrate a healthy level of respect and understanding of the culture of the company and the people who have come before them. There have been great people who have come into the company who haven’t succeeded because they have not embraced the culture and values of the company, so you need to do that.
I think the first 30, 60 days after a new person arrives at Starbucks is the most critical stage. So I will spend more time with that individual on the front end than I probably will that whole year, ensuring that they understand the deep level of sensitivity around the heritage and tradition of the company.
Q. A lot of the qualities you’ve mentioned are intangibles. How do you find out if a job candidate has them?
A. I think one of my strengths is that I have a very good antenna about people. I’ll ask a few things that are probably different from a traditional interview. First off, I want to know what you’re reading and then I’ll ask you why. Tell me what work-life balance means to you. I would want to know specifically their level of understanding about our company and Starbucks culture, and I’ll see early on who’s faking it and who’s not.
I obviously want people who enjoy coffee. I think it would be very difficult for me to hire somebody who doesn’t drink coffee. I want happy people. I want people who enjoy other people. And we’ll talk about what it’s going to take to win and I’ll ask people to describe that for me.
Q. Talk more about the winning question.
A. I’m aware of what it means to build a team. I played quarterback and I understand what it means to win, and that the guy throwing the ball or the guy scoring the touchdown only did that because the linemen protected the quarterback or opened the hole.
I think it’s so difficult to succeed today in business. The ability for the team to function together, to support one another, to trust one another, to have cohesion and to also have creative tension, is just mission-critical.
If you came in to our weekly Monday-afternoon meeting, you would think, “Man, this company’s in trouble.” Because we are incredibly self-critical, and that’s an attribute I have because I know there are always areas of improvement. But we also have to find opportunities to celebrate success, and I want to find opportunities for the people in the company to find those moments where people are doing things really well and recognize them and support them and celebrate them, especially in this kind of environment.
Q. If you could ask somebody only two questions in the job interview, what would those questions be?
A. I think I’d ask them about their current family and their family history. Now you’ve got to be careful with some of this, but I’d want to know that.
Q. What are you listening for?
A. If you don’t love what you’re doing with unbridled passion and enthusiasm, you’re not going to succeed when you hit obstacles. I want to see emotion. We are in an emotional business, and I need people around me who understand that we are an emotional business and have a visceral affection for it.
Q. What advice would you give to somebody who’s about to become C.E.O.?
A. I would say the following: Very few people, whether you’ve been in that job before or not, get into the seat and believe today that they are now qualified to be the C.E.O. They’re not going to tell you that, but it’s true. So everyone you meet has a level of insecurity. The level of insecurity that you have is a strength, not a weakness. The question is, how are you going to use it?
For whatever reason, people believe that when they get to that spot, they have to know everything. They’ve got to be in total control, and you can never show weakness. I would say one of the underlying strengths of a great leader and a great C.E.O. — not all the time but when appropriate — is to demonstrate vulnerability, because that will bring people closer to you and show people the human side of you.
Now, in order to demonstrate vulnerability, you have to make sure you have people around you who will never use that against you, because you trust them and they trust you. So the ability, behind closed doors, to have open and honest conversations with your team about the concerns you have, the fears you have, and the opportunities, is the balance that someone needs to succeed.
Source: The New York Times
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