Howard Schultz: belief

Transcript context

…You’ve transitioned from being the CEO to someone else three different times. If you could go back, let’s even just say the first time, if you could go back years 1999 or 1997 so you can start working on some talent development, what would you do differently to make sure that succession? I would’ve believed Oren when he said, I only want to do this for a couple of years. I convinced myself I could just get Oren to do this for 5 years, maybe 10 years. When he kept saying I don’t want to do this anymore, I was stuck because I was not prepared to look around the room and say, God, I think he could do it. If I would’ve spent maybe a year or two, but I didn’t. I believe that I could convince Oren to stay longer. Also Jim Donald’s a great guy, but I think the immersion of an outsider at that time, given we were moving into a crisis, not a Starbucks crisis, but the financial crisis, very difficult. It’s on me (I think) when I look back and I just did not do a very good job of recognizing the internal talent and cultivating it. I want to say one more thing about Starbucks, and it’s the complexity of it. We’re in multiple businesses. We’re in the agricultural business. We are buying coffee from 30 producing countries around the world. We are subject to weather and the agricultural issues, many of which are not in our control. Political, all kinds of stuff. Second, we are manufacturing a commodity that is very, very challenging because it’s coming from 30 producing countries. Each coffee from every country has its own proprietary taste profile that has to be roasted differently. When you’re blending it like a winery, it’s art. We’re an agricultural buyer. We are a manufacturer. We are a retailer. We are a wholesaler. We are managing JV relationships in 80 countries. We have JVs with two behemoth companies—Nestle and Pepsi Cola. Above all else, we are in the people business managing the behavior, the motivation, and the opportunity creation for almost 500,000 people. And we’re a public company in which the expectations based on our success have been higher than most. Not to mention you’re a quasi-financial institution too.…

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