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

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

#191

Post by daedalus_j »

favaq wrote: post #189
daedalus_j wrote: post #109

Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…

>obviously staff would recognize him I think it's probable that they wouldn't.

In the bay area, where "oh god, corporate is in the building" is a way of life and common thing you bet they would.

Outside the bay area, eh, 50/50, you're right.

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

#192

Post by toyg »

methodin wrote: post #105
dataviz1000 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first career was a chef. When I asked a friend of the family who owned a restaurant when I was teenager what steps I should take to become a chef, the advice he gave was "Get a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant because the most important thing you need to know is to respect your dishwasher because anytime everything goes wrong and you are in a jam, it is your dishwasher who will save you." Unknown to me the rest…

Can you elaborate a bit on how the dishwasher role gets the restaurant out of jams?

If it's anything like the small, dinky restaurant i washed plates for, the reality is that the restaurant doesn't have enough plates and pans to satisfy every order on a busy night without washing something. Pans in particular are reused multiple times during a shift, and they better be well-scrubbed, because you don't want your fancy ingredients tasting of something else.

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

#193

Post by flappyeagle »

screwturner68 wrote: post #179
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.

The issue in my opinion is their day or two on the job really doesn't give them a good picture of what's going on. Sure they might see a few things but they could just as easily be an anomaly as they could be systemic. I wish upper management that are brought in from the outside would be required to work a month or two in the field and live on those wages. For example at Starbucks in the 2 days he works he might see…

You’re making a lot of assumptions about how dumb he will be. Like you think he will just overfit on every detail instead of asking the store manager or employees about what he experienced? You think he will not work in more than one store, in more than one geography? Cmon man.

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

#195

Post by quacked »

screwturner68 wrote: post #179
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.

The issue in my opinion is their day or two on the job really doesn't give them a good picture of what's going on. Sure they might see a few things but they could just as easily be an anomaly as they could be systemic. I wish upper management that are brought in from the outside would be required to work a month or two in the field and live on those wages. For example at Starbucks in the 2 days he works he might see…

Eh, I think it depends on how canny the executive running the experiment is and how much experience they have in the particular part of the industry. I worked in restaurants when I was younger and now have done a lot of sales-side and logistics management, and it wouldn't take more than a day of working in a new restaurant for me to accurately understand some of the major issues going on. You just have to be open-minded, identify the best employees, and let them freely bitch at you for about two hours while trying to do the work with them. That'll give you a good sense of the big blockers at that particular restaurant. Same is true for any software org.

The difference will be if you think that you're going to come up with better prescriptions for success than they are (and this is where the level of executive cleverness comes into play). One day per month in a Starbucks shop and then giving technical directives wouldn't make any sense, but one day per month in a Starbucks shop and then redirecting budgeting at a corporate level might.

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

#196

Post by JohnFen »

logicalmonster wrote: post #186
JohnFen wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only onboard someone once. In theory, that person will have to be using the system every day for years. Why optimize for the one-time thing at the expense of the everyday use?

I suppose that the Devil's Advocate sort of counterargument is that for many startups or businesses on the bubble of survival, their most important task is for paying customers to understand the basics of their software and get hooked with a paid subscription quickly. From that perspective, it's ok if customers don't absolutely LOVE the software in a year or two, as long as they like it just enough to be paying today…

Perhaps, but I have no sympathy for companies using that business model.

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

#197

Post by quacked »

flappyeagle wrote: post #193
screwturner68 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue in my opinion is their day or two on the job really doesn't give them a good picture of what's going on. Sure they might see a few things but they could just as easily be an anomaly as they could be systemic. I wish upper management that are brought in from the outside would be required to work a month or two in the field and live on those wages. For example at Starbucks in the 2 days he works he might see…

You’re making a lot of assumptions about how dumb he will be. Like you think he will just overfit on every detail instead of asking the store manager or employees about what he experienced? You think he will not work in more than one store, in more than one geography? Cmon man.

Honestly I think you're making as many assumptions as the parent commenter--I agree you're right that the portrayal of the exec is really biased towards assuming stupidity, but it really depends on the quality of the executive and the people that hired them. It's completely possible to get a total dumbass, and also possible to get a genius.

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

#198

Post by screwturner68 »

queens_ridge wrote: post #20

I used to work in tech for a large retail company and when you joined the company you had to work 3 days straight at one of the stores. Honestly it was brutal and they put me to work. It made me thankful to work at the corporate office if anything.

Try a couple of months at the wage they pay those poor bastards. That's the thing about "having to work the floor". If I'm the CEO, I'm making $10MM a year and frankly busting ass for 4 whole hours at $5000/h isn't a big deal. It's a completely different experience when you have to bust ass all week at $8/h

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

#199

Post by toyg »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #135
badwolf wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've mixed feelings. Many probably wouldn't want the semi-dead weight of big executive screwing up the morning rush.

I haven't worked retail, I know its unpleasant but is there really that much skill to it?

Doing things, doing things correctly, and doing things correctly and quickly are VASTLY different things.

At rush time, you don't have time to think. You must have muscle memory to carry you.

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

#200

Post by Brendinooo »

tssva wrote: post #122
daedalus_j wrote: post #109

Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…

I wonder if he did the same thing at JC Penny when he was running it into the ground.

I didn't see it that way. He took a big swing to do something different and was fired less than two years into it. Maybe you could argue that he was straining against something too strong to overcome or misapplying his lessons from a higher-margin brand, but it's also possible to say that he wasn't given enough time to see it through.

It's like if someone would have taken over Kodak at the turn of the century to go all-in on digital. It would have hurt the company in the short term and kicked against their core business but maybe they would have come out on the other side better off. Impossible to say if the scenario isn't allowed to happen.

His tenure coincides with the beginning of the decline of department stores in general, so you'd have to show that JCPenney fared uniquely worse to say that he ran it into the ground. It still exists, unlike Lord and Taylor and Sears. Doesn't seem to have fared much worse than Macy's, though I didn't do a ton of research here.

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