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Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

cnbc.com

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Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#51

Post by palijer »

gwbas1c wrote: post #39
tiedieconderoga wrote: post #24

It's a nice gesture, but this sort of ear-to-the-ground work is something that everyone over a VP level should be doing in such a high-touch customer-facing business. When it's just the CEO for one day a month...it's like when you see a frontpage news article declaring that your governor recently undertook a choreographed ride on the local subway to better understand their constituents' public transit concerns. Inste…

One shift a month means that the CEO will have a much better feel for the customer environment and not be disconnected. I hope he rotates through a few different stores, though. Otherwise, he may become myopic to the quirks of one particular location.

Once when I was working our incoming phone support a tech accidentally added our CEO's office number to the round robin system for incoming support calls.

CEO fielded 4 calls before he figured out what happened. No idea if he solved the problems or not.

I kinda dreamt since that day that any product managers would work some time taking support calls for their products and it'd be a better world because they'd realise all the issues we've been raising about their product are real.... But instead we were just lowly support folks who didn't know about product development and they continued to be "agile"

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#53

Post by zvonimirs »

whack wrote: post #13

I recall Amazon used to do something similar. Executives would sometimes take customer service shifts. The goal isn't PR or worker morale - most people see through stunts like that. The real goal is to help leaders better understand their product, its problems, and customer frustrations.

Absolutely! And that's what leaders should be doing.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#54

Post by dobladov »

whack wrote: post #13

I recall Amazon used to do something similar. Executives would sometimes take customer service shifts. The goal isn't PR or worker morale - most people see through stunts like that. The real goal is to help leaders better understand their product, its problems, and customer frustrations.

In this documentary about Kawasaki, they also mention that everyone has to expend some time in the production line, it seems like a great way to motivate your engineers to improve the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg32DlveFiE

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#55

Post by dachryn »

coldpie wrote: post #38
jstanley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be better? Wouldn't that leave him less time to do his actual work?

He's a CEO of a major company, man. They don't have actual work. This would be the most productive month of his life.

I was not expecting this Reddit level of comments on HN. Really hoping you are sarcastic.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#56

Post by dachryn »

the_mar wrote: post #15
tablespoon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this was not a PR move, but a desire to get a sense for work conditions, real problems, etc, it would not be publicized. And it wouldn't work. I don't think a lot of people would be comfortable sharing real complaints with the CEO who parachuted in for a single shift. It will probably end up being a bit of a Potemkin village situation. The shift will probably be filled up with the highest-motivated, most ass-kis…

Of course it is for PR, it would be really dumb to not publicize it. It would absolutely work in a sense. Of course the CEO will not get a real experience and of course no one will bring any real grievances to him. But the CEO will still get some exposure to day to day. It is still somewhat better than not doing it at all. It’s a good precedent to set and one can only hope more CEOs would follow

you are underestimating the impact of programs like this.

The CEO will quickly spot broken processes and inefficiencies. Ass kissing can't make up for business problems. Beyond that, by working in a different store, gets a feel on how generic the approach can be, and where they need local optimizations.

The only think you are taking out of the consideration is toxic lower management and asshole colleagues, but that's not something I'd expect the CEO to fix directly himself. If anything he is just bored of the ass kissers and good news shows, and wants to regain a feel of reality

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#57

Post by _aaed »

capableweb wrote: post #35
Ekaros wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a week in warehouse might do good for them. Or as delivery driving...

They want them to understand customer frustrations, not employee devastation. Plus, make the C-suite realize how they treat the "lowest" employees of the company and they might not want to work there anymore, have to tread carefully there.

Ignorance is bliss, very mature strategy

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#59

Post by dsfyu404ed »

whack wrote: post #13

I recall Amazon used to do something similar. Executives would sometimes take customer service shifts. The goal isn't PR or worker morale - most people see through stunts like that. The real goal is to help leaders better understand their product, its problems, and customer frustrations.

IIRC McDonalds still does this for some subset of its corporate workforce.

Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

#60

Post by prottog »

zug_zug wrote: post #28

This is only going to be remotely effective if the workers aren't aware he's CEO. Heck even the franchise-owner is going to have the store cleaned probably, ask his friends to come by and compliment the store.

Starbucks doesn't franchise, at least in the US. Though you will find "licensed" stores in airports and such.
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