StarBucksStruck

People told me how frank he would be, how voraciously he would talk about our stores, how eloquently he could wax about all of the company's successes, ambitions, and problems. I'd read his book and been impressed - enough to spend meaningful portions of my 2005-06 school year chasing down his company. Everyone in my family asked whether I'd seen him on 60 minutes. I watched him 1-on-1 on MSNBC for 30 minutes. I'd already met the CEO and CFO of Starbucks. Still, nothing could prepare me for meeting Howard Schultz.

It wasn't like meeting Steve Yzerman at 13. I'd like to say it couldn't have been that special, but truthfully, I had no idea why meeting Yzerman was so special. It's only in looking back that I realize the weight of those moments in 1990. But today, on July 25, in the Tazo 7 conference room at Starbucks, I knew what I was getting into. Or so I thought.

He arrived kind of discreetly. One minute he wasn't there, and the next minute he was, just milling around by himself near the front of the room. As the interns leading the coffee tasting got things ready to go, I introduced myself to him. I'd never thought about what I would say. So I introduced myself as an intern from Coffee Category, and told him who I worked for. He asked where I'd joined from, and I told him Berkeley, that I was an MBA student there and I'd read his book as a student and - in Peets' domain - been inspired to work actively with the company. I didn't mention our MBA project because I didn't feel that it truly qualified as "working in the stores" - after all, this was Howard.

After a great tasting of aged coffee (his favorite), he got into his spiel. I can't imagine how he determines what he'll talk about. Moving into China? Inspiration? His history? Our growth? Coffee as a core? You can probably count, on one hand, the number of interesting 35-year-old companies whose entire histories are at the disposal of one individual, and Starbucks is one of those companies.

He kicked off talking about the importance of finding a company you can trust and believe in, one that truly shares your values. He mentioned that he'd met Tom Friedman a few weeks ago, and learned that Tom daugher works at the Seattle Friendship Plaza Starbucks. Milton said she liked her job...and proceeded to give Howard his view on life, which Howard passed on to us. Basically, he said that the "IQ" is trumped by the "CQ" (curiosity quotient) and "PQ" (passion quotient) when the latter two are combined effectively. Howard's addition (or interpretation) was that it's critical to balance the need for achievement with a passion and curiosity.

I later asked him to expound on this - his motivations for achievement were clear (difficult home life, etc.), but I wanted to understand more about the passion part. Were it not for the luck of running into Starbucks, I wondered, would he have been famous for coffee in some other way? He responded by saying that he was always searching for ways to allow people to connect, and that coffee was the vehicle for him to do so. The true a-ha came when he visited Italy and saw how people connected over coffee, and he realized that coffee shops (not just whole bean vendors) needed to come to America. The rest, obviously, is history.

Howard spoke about the importance of integrating CSR into business strategy. Go Haas and Kellie's CSR Class! He sounded exactly like she does. Some other interesting things (without divulging several things related to future products and innovations that were brought up):

• HR should generally be the first functional priority of a business, for two reasons: (1) the importance of hiring ahead of the growth curve; (2) finding talented people with shared values
• Starbucks is still in the "very early stages" of its growth
• "You have to demonstrate when you first come here that you can play on the team. You have to earn the right - you need to get your ticket punched in retail before you come here"
  
• Starbucks is a gift (same as Michael Casey told us)
  
• "I'm concerned about the 'Dilution of Aroma' that is happening in our stores" - something that he said the company is aggressively pursuing fixes on - to counter the non-coffee-ness that has seeped into too many of our stores' environments
• "You have to have the courage to put yourself in a position to win, which is a really risky thing...it entails trusting your own talents to say 'I can do this!'"

He mentioned in the answer to my question (I did not ask directly about this) that he felt he had failed with the Sonics.

Some asked about Health & Wellness, and obviously, this is high on his agenda. He mentioned that the company is looking all around the world at who does a great job with H&W - even some really small merchants in Asia - to learn whatever it can.

He believes Whole Foods is the best Merchant in America.

Howard felt that there have been 3 tipping points in Starbucks' history:

1. Instituting Bean Stock/Healthcare for all 20 hr/week+ employees (1992)
2. Expanding internationally, first to Japan (1996)
3. Beginning to "monetize the brand outside our stores" (now)
   

In many ways, it was interesting and amazing and inspiring to hear what he said. In other ways, it didn't matter. He was there, on time, patient, and willing, spending time with a group of people he'd never met, many of whom had written him long and intensely personal letters thanking him for changing their lives. He wasn't magnetizing, and he wasn't astoundingly captivating. But he was real. And all that he's accomplished is so much more real than what almost every other person in the private sector has accomplished. We experience it as customers every day, all over the world. Starbucks isn't Google, and it isn't Ford. Those companies change lives in ways never fathomed before their creations, but they are not truly experiences. Howard has personalized and monetized an experience, and in that, he may be alone in history.

And he had an hour for me.

More from Starbucks

So much for the weekly update, but that's mostly because I've actually settled into the workflow, and the weeks no longer seem as discrete as they once did. Still, a couple amazing things have happened in July.

The first that comes to mind is the tour of the company's roasting plant in Kent. It's one of 4 roasting plants in the world (the others are in York, PA, Carson Valley, NV and the Netherlands), and this particular plant provides the beans for stores in the Western US (except CA). It's staffed by a few people who have been around since the early 80s, and our tour guide was the ultimate hippy. While his super-serious delivery was pretty funny ("Flavorlock made this from a $3.8mm company to a $30B company...yeah...yeah."), I had to be impressed by the way that everything really came together for Starbucks. So many other companies have tried to be the dominant supplier in any given industry, and so few succeed. The razor-sharp focus on coffee quality was evident in the way they measure the quality of the roast and the way that packaging is done. I'm not sure that the coffee beans are propelled with the velocity of a Howitzer that would be the envy of our military, or that restaurants that served 8-day-old Starbucks coffee in the 80s are still blacklisted by the company, but I'm impressed with the operations. Would have liked to learn even more. But I did get to see a Kanban, and didn't have to ask what that was, so I think my education is paying off.


Probably the two most powerful morning minutes I've ever experienced came on Tuesday morning when I got in early and went up to see Howard's office. At his assistant's table across from his office were a pile of copies of his book from employees (some other interns) with notes asking for his signature and explaining how he had helped change their lives. In the office are pictures with him and dozens of the world's most famous people. World leaders, Bill Bradley, Mark McGwire, and Ichiro come to mind. There's also a picture of him with Kenny G, which made me wonder why there isn't a new Kenny G CD in Starbucks stores. Anyway. Even an Ichiro 2004 batting glove enclosed in a big class cube with an autograph. Nice view to the North (and West and East). Just being in the room was a very intense feeling - like being in the Pike Place store if there were no one around. The guy that sits there had a vision, and he used it to fundamentally change the way people will forever interact with the world around them. That's powerful stuff. In my last job I probably was in the offices of 15 CEOs from the Fortune 500 and a few private companies. Nothing compared to this, ever, and he wasn't even there.

Random assortment of other things - painting pottery at Color Me Mine on a team "offsite"...going to the engagement party of Kevin, one of the other interns...running a half marathon in Bellevue on Sunday with Rebecca...having the CEO, Jim Donald, come up to me again at work, this time while I was working in the 8th Floor commons, to ask me how things are going and when I was getting married...taking walks with the Mandells and Teddy...watching the Tigers take 2 of 3 from the M's right before the All-Star break...coming in one Wednesday at 5:15am after dropping Amy off at the airport and getting to park right in front of the building...but not even close to being the first one there...getting good feedback from my director and others I'm working with...good lunch with Ben, the Kellogg intern who's the Net Impact chair there, where we talked about what to do with our lives...discovering that decaf lets me sleep better and tastes the same...

So much to say

A lot has happened in the past couple of days. As a Detroit and Northwestern sports fan, it has pretty much been the pits.

Randy Walker passed away.

Ben Wallace was lost to the Bulls.

And, most critical to me, Steve Yzerman finally hung up his skates.

I was at the Mariners game in Seattle tonight where Jeremy Bonderman mauled the home team, which was fun to see, but other than that it's been a rough week.

Yzerman officially announced his retirement on Monday afternoon in Joe Louis Arena, while I was out at Rainier National Park hiking up to Eagle Peak with Amy. I had no cell phone, and there would not have been any cell service. Nor were there any TVs or newspapers. I literally had no way to know what was going on in Detroit as we climbed from 2,800 to 6,000 feet.


There are an amazing number of memories I associate with Yzerman. First is the tenacity he showed during the 1988 season, coming back from his first knee injury to return against the Oilers in the Campbell Conference Finals. We lost that series to Gretzky and co., of course, but no one could ever have imagined that Yzerman would play his last game in the same building 18 years later in a loss to the team coached by an old gritty Oiler center.

The next year, in 1989, Stevie came to our hockey school. Even though he wasn't there long, he made an impression as a humble and likable athlete - the kind of guy we all wanted to be when we grew up and played for the Red Wings.

Over the years, I saw him live in Detroit, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Jose, Raleigh, and Minnesota. He got the same reception in all those places, from both our fans and theirs. No one was ever ignorant of being in the presence of greatness when Detroit came to town. I got to see him in his last game in California. I even got to see the Wings' last win of 2006 (against Dallas), and even though Stevie sat out, it was the last regular season home win he'd ever be part of.

Nothing will ever be like 2002. In 2002, Yzerman sustained so much knee damage that he eventually needed an osteotomy, yet led the Wings to a Stanley Cup and played a huge role in helping Canada win Gold in Salt Lake. Canada won that game on my birthday in 2002, and I watched the 3rd period from the New Orleans airport after visiting with the college crew there for the weekend. It was a turning point for me. As I trained for the AIDS Ride that summer, I kept thinking about all the sacrifice that Yzerman made for his team, and how much harder he had to work than I ever had. That made it easy to go up long hills and keep pressing, no matter how tired I felt.


After going down 2-0 to Vancouver in the first round of the 2002 playoffs, our fans threw Hasek jerseys on the ice. They booed the team off the ice. Yzerman said not to worry, that our goaltending would be just fine. So we won a game in Vancouver when Nick Lidstrom's goal from center ice turned the momentum around, then we won another on a Sunday night when Yzerman scored from his butt. A shutout in the next game, then back to Vancouver for game 6, when Chelios had 4 assists in a 6-3 win. Erasing the Blues in the next round, then the legendary series with the Avs capped off by the 7-0 win in Game 7. A grueling, hard-earned win in 3OT in game 3 in the Finals in Carolina pulled the Stanley Cup within our grasp, and Detroit won in 5. Those were the days of the dream team, the days when Yzerman could say "we will come back and win" and he was right. Those days are long gone.


It was the right time for him to step away. The team needs a major makeover, a strategic shift. The "best" team no longer wins the Stanley Cup, and rarely even makes it to the round of 4. All that matters is team play in the playoffs. Having good goaltending is nice, but the last 3 Finals have featured streaky goalies that were quiet for 82 regular season games, so even that is nothing to hang your hat on anymore. Team play and discipline. The Wings enjoy playing together, but they don't play as a team when the pressure is on anymore. It's time for us to be younger, quicker, and hit harder. Iron Will just doesn't win games on its own anymore like it did in 2002. Not with teams like Anaheim, Tampa and Edmonton out there.

It hasn't sunk in that he's gone. Maybe that's because so many things are happening - I am loving the internship, we are planning the wedding, I am far from hockey country, and there were some tragic moments recently. Even Ken Lay, ahem, died of an apparent heart attack.

It was nice to be on top that mountain and just think about everything and nothing. Now Yzerman gets a chance to do it for a while. Even though I haven't earned it, he most certainly has.

Take a look at YouTube for some cool tribute videos. I stayed up too late watching them last night and overslept today.

I will miss you. We all will. But now I know one thing. I already know everything I ever need to tell my kids about life. I learned it from #19. Thank you.