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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

#251

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #229
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a small example:

    S s;
    S *p;
To read a field:

    s.field
    p->field
It turns out that there's no ambiguity in using `.` for both `.` and `->`. Both can be:

    s.field
    p.field
But what's the problem with `->`? It's when you want to refactor the code to switch between a value to a reference. If `.` is used for both, just change the typedef and maybe a couple places. With `.` and `->`, there are maybe thousands of tedious changes to make in the code base. The inevitable result of this is you're not going to attempt such a refactor, as it's too much work. The code stays in the way it was originally designed.

I was able to see this only via broader experience with other languages. I never even noticed the issue before.

C++ addressed this not by fixing it, but by introducing the reference type. But the C++ ref type brings along with it all kinds of new problems, which I won't get into here.

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

#252

Post by MuffinFlavored »

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.

I have a dumb question related to this.

The new Starbucks CEO is Laxman Narasimhan. Google says he's worth about $20m.

The previous Starbucks CEO was Howard Schultz. He's worth about $3.7b

Can somebody who is worth between $20m and $3.7b really just... hang out broad daylight behind a counter at a Starbucks from a security perspective?

Obviously I get the gap between $20m (he's just starting out, I'm sure his net worth will grow to at least $50m shortly if he does well at Starbucks) and $3.7b is huge. But at what point is going outside (without security? where people know you will be?) kind of a risk?

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

#253

Post by tshaddox »

WalterBright wrote: post #229
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The workers might be distracted by other problems that are literally impossible for the CEO to even simulate, like food insecurity, housing instability, looming medical bankruptcy, etc. I bet the CEO is able to be a much more productive barista without spending company time worrying about those things!

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

#254

Post by danabrams »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224
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…

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…

Even if the problems get reported, this helps the CEO get insight into how to prioritize fixing them, how much to invest in doing so, etc.

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

#255

Post by recfab »

throw101010 wrote: post #247
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like your last paragraph a lot, one reason in my experience as to why a problem didn't get reported/fixed is that employees are unfortunately rarely rewarded for fixing processes in large structures (or just once, when the fix itself improves the productivity in a lasting manner). So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the first place. The…

There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political inertia" involved.

In my experience, the existing process has a way of appearing invisible such that any change will feel like more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them more work.

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

#256

Post by ethbr0 »

justin_oaks wrote: post #214
ethbr0 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a whole class of problems that fall into the "seems like a good idea/measure at some management level, based on the data and worldview they have, but fail in reality, due to some detail at the ground level" category. Or, consequences of lossy compression as information gets summarized before being transmitted up the management ladder. And it isn't always a bad management call! Sometimes they're making the r…

Sure, the decisions by management may make sense based on the data they have, but how stupid are management that they trust information filtered through layers of underlings? I get it, at some point you have to admit that you're not going to get 100% truth from people. But that doesn't mean you don't talk to different people at different layers of the company.

It's not 100% truth -- it's that you can't even get 100% detail.

This clip always resonated with me, re: high level leadership: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gguxM8eABP8 (as context, one subordinate he's talking about is presented as a terrible leader, the other as a great one)

Specifically, the point being made that all information is... uncertain. And how a good leader makes good decisions within that uncertainty, instead of picking winners.

It's easy to make the right decision when you have all the facts, but you can't have all the facts when you need to make 15+ decisions in a day.

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

#257

Post by WalterBright »

tshaddox wrote: post #253
WalterBright wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The workers might be distracted by other problems that are literally impossible for the CEO to even simulate, like food insecurity, housing instability, looming medical bankruptcy, etc. I bet the CEO is able to be a much more productive barista without spending company time worrying about those things!

If the CEO is spending a shift working on the line, he still has all his CEO responsibilities to worry about. Those are 24/7, they never stop.

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

#258

Post by glasss »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #252
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.

I have a dumb question related to this. The new Starbucks CEO is Laxman Narasimhan. Google says he's worth about $20m. The previous Starbucks CEO was Howard Schultz. He's worth about $3.7b Can somebody who is worth between $20m and $3.7b really just... hang out broad daylight behind a counter at a Starbucks from a security perspective? Obviously I get the gap between $20m (he's just starting out, I'm sure his net wor…

I think you're overestimating the danger of being outside.

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

#259

Post by nektro »

> Starbucks CEO says he’ll work a shift at the company’s cafes once a month

> Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan told employees Thursday that he’ll work a half day every month at one of the coffee giant’s locations.

contradiction in the first sentence. doesnt leave this stunt in good light

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

#260

Post by bakugo »

WalterBright wrote: post #229
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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