Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, and it didn’t work right away. Howard Behar should be credited with so much of the cultural texture and the tapestry of the humanity of the company. Said, I will go to Chicago and fix it. He went to Chicago and stayed in Chicago through the winter, and recalibrated the mistakes we were making. Of course, he and Orin were so instrumental into the loneliness that exists as a entrepreneur and their ability to help me build the company that you know today. I have in my script here; this is literally labeled the H2O era. For anyone who was a partner at Starbucks, knows what I’m talking about. Anybody else outside has no idea. There’s two Howards. There’s Howard Schultz and Howard Behar. Howard Behar joined in 1989. Orin Smith joined in 1990. The way that it looks to me from the outside—and you can tell me if this is right—you were the vision and ambition that would almost take any ambition that anybody else had and force them to think bigger and faster. Howard Behar was in many ways the soul. He brought the idea of servant leadership. He brought the idea of nothing else matters if we aren’t people first. Obviously, that became a huge tenet of Starbucks as we knew it through the 90s and 2000s, but that seems like it really arrived with him. And then Orin is like a numbers God. No. He was the adult in the room. More than the numbers. He had the style, he was quiet, he was a gentleman, he was the only MBA in the company, but he was the wise man who behind the doors could say to me and Howard, you’re both full of shit. We’re not doing that. And we listened, more or less.…

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