This kind of stunt is right up there with "pizza parties" except unlike pizza parties, which only insult your workers, this will also completely stress them out for a day!
Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
221–230 of 353 posts
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
No there was no useful tips or anything new to his demonstration, only speed. If the completion of these tasks was meaningful to the performance of the store, it was only in his opinion. The store was already in the best shape it had ever been because of our hard work between the announcement and the day of his visit.
But he wants you to move fast all the time, so he can reduce hours somewhere as a result
Obviously he was only concerned about optimization.
Just want to make sure that it’s understood the point I’m making is that I had an obvious injury, still showed up for work, still did work, and was met with nothing but reprimand by this manager that I had just met. So in this particular case the benefit of a manager going down to the trenches seems only beneficial for one side.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#223I once took a cab in the middle of the night. The cabby was a elderly gentleman who did not seem to know his way around very well. It was a long ride so we got talking. Turned out he was the new boss of the company (a fairly big company, lots of cars) who wanted to get to know the circumstances under which his drivers worked. He had been working the night shift for a couple of weeks.
I hope you told him “nice chat, but under normal circumstances I’d be pretty upset that you took me on a joy ride costing me extra time and money.”
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#224Ron 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…
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions.
However, there's a real smell of something going wrong from them as well. The CEO working a single shift noticed something that needed to be changed? Why? Did none of the thousands of workers who work those shifts every day notice that problem? Did they have no way to report it? Did those reports not get evaluated properly? Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not notice the problem? Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#225Ron 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.
Was he the guy who promised to make their pricing easier to understand with clearly labelled discounts without coupons? He is. Then he probably did spend time in a store because confusion over sales and extra time at checkout were common at JC Penney. His plan would have made the shopping experience less complicated.
The problem is it didn't translate into improved performance. The opposite actually. Because what customers say and what customers do aren't always the same thing. They may complain that there are too many coupons. But when given the choice they preferred using coupons.
So he got sacked and JC Penney went back to the old pricing scheme. By becoming even more risk-averse no one after him even tried to pull the company out of its death spiral. In hindsight the plan would never have succeeded because the customers who would have appreciated the simpler pricing had already left. The JCP shoppers at that time were coupon hunters who resented the changes. He ignored the existing customers while chasing ex-customers who didn't want to return.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#226If this was not a PR move, but a desire to get a sense for work conditions, real problems, etc, it would not be publicized.
If this is not solely a PR move I'd be genuinely worried about Starbucks leadership.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if he did the same thing at JC Penny when he was running it into the ground.
In his defense shoppers wanting stuff to appear to be on sale is pretty dumb.
The hardest thing for that was that for him to succeed he really needed to play the long game. JCP was and still is eternally screwed. Mall retail is pretty much doomed to die and the ever increasing sale ratios are a side effect of attempts to 'growth hack' their way out of the inevitable.
The fact of the matter was that JCP was more expensive than Walmart for, effectively most of their main brands, the same product. Sales allowed JCP to pretend their product is 'worth more'. The problem became a race to the bottom though. Once you say a store-brand Polo should cost '$69.99' but is on sale for $24.99, you start to tell your customer "Our products are overpriced." As ultimately, your product still is more expensive than the $14.99 Walmart product.
By removing the price war, pricing their product at value. You now can compete on a more simple message of quality: "Our product is worth $10 more because X". The best part of this is...that's exactly what Walmart is actually doing. Walmart is actually rather sale-resistant and they frame it as a 'rollback' rather than X% off. Walmart's message is purely the regular price, not the value.
The issue you of course run into for JCP though, is in the interm, as the market changes, you need to throw a bunch quarters made up of that built up growth hacking debt of ever increasing sales in the trash. That just won't fly on Wall st.
What JCP really need is a reboot though, they are doomed either way due to their leases. Organizationally, I would be trying to get rid of those as fast as possible and get into outdoors small-medium retail. They have a great brand but have insanely expensive locations.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#228Ron 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…
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something g…
Your last paragraph has a valid point, and the outcome of such a visit can simply be that: There are ideas, but for some reasons, they don't make it to the higher levels. Let's find out why!
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#229Ron 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…
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something g…
The CEO can easily see problems that the line workers don't see as problems.
For example, I happily programmed in C for many years while not even noticing severe problems with the language. Later broader experience with other languages led me to wonder why I didn't see the problems with C before, even though they were negatively affecting my work.
Re: Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
100% chance that the regional corporate staff gets notice this is happening and goes on a panicked 48-hour cleanup drill to make sure the store is spotless for the incoming exec and make sure the grumpier members of staff are given the weekend off.