valuesIf you’re looking for a breath of fresh leadership air and some hope in this world after watching CEOs doing the Perp Walk or the Resignation Shuffle, read the interview, “We Had to Own the Mistakes” with Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman and CEO, in the July-August, 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.

While Schultz is no stranger to our world as an iconic founder of one of the world’s most successful and formerly fastest growing firms, one might argue that he didn’t earn his leadership stripes until faced with the unexpected challenging of turning the firm around.

Love the coffee or not, it’s hard to leave the interview without a sense that Shultz has a firm handle on what it takes to lead successfully in this era of transparency and extreme employee distrust (well earned) of those in charge. I’ll let you read the interview, but I don’t mind pointing out the areas that particularly resonated with me, including:

  • The frequent use of the phrase: “I am responsible,” in reference to the firm’s troubles following his departure from the CEO seat. (He remained the firm’s Chairman.)
  • His refusal to throw the former management team under the bus for the firm’s troubles: “There was a different team here-very good people who deserve respect and not the burden of responsibility.  I was chairman of the company, and I am culpable.” There he goes again with that responsibility thing! Did you hear that, Tony Hayward?
  • The admission that organizational and leadership hubris created the problems.  “We had never had much competition.  Everything we did more or less worked, and that produced a level of hubris that caused us to overlook what was coming.”
  • His view to leading the turnaround of the firm: “The challenge was how to preserve and enhance the integrity of the only assets we have as a company, our values, our culture and our guiding principles and the reservoir of trust with our people.” That statement takes my breath away.

And without stealing  too much more thunder from a great and inspirational read, Schultz serves up example after example where he and the firm stood up and made the hard call in spite of overwhelming pressure.  Decisions to maintain health care benefits, never sacrifice quality for cost savings, invest in retraining the staff and introduce new offerings when the pundits all said they were horrible mistakes, are a few of the examples of moral courage in action.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I jumped off the Starbucks train a few years ago when the experience began to sour.  Poor service, expensive prices and noisy, cramped stores that no longer facilitated work or networking plus coffee drinking, were enough to send me in search of some local roasters.  After reading the interview, I may just have to learn that funny drink ordering language again and see if Howard’s refreshing leadership approach has filtered down to the store level.

Thanks Howard, for painting a picture of what good leadership sounds and acts like.