Category Archives: BookNotes

SMaC Down!

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– a quick personal note: I’m away attending to some urgent family business, so I’ve suspended the 2013 GsD Fall Term for a week. In it’s place, I’m reposting one of the most popular series on 27gen – a look at Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice with application to ChurchWorld. It continues to get views almost every day, so I hope you enjoy the entire series

 

All week long I’ve been posting excerpts and summaries from Great by Choice, the latest work by Jim Collins (assisted this time by Morten Hansen). Great by Choice asks a simple question:

Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?

Collins and Hansen have answered that question with solid principles, based on nine years of research and interviews. The following are the authors’  comments on SMaC.

SMaC stand for Specific, Methodical, and Consistent.

The more uncertain, fast-changing, and unforgiving your environment, the more SMaC you need to be.

A SMaC recipe is a set of durable operating practices that create a replicable and consistent success formula; it is clear and concrete, enabling the entire enterprise to unify and organize its efforts, giving clear guidance regarding what to do and what not to do. A SMaC recipe reflects empirical validation and insight about what actually works and why.

Developing a SMaC recipe, adhering to it, and amending it (rarely) when conditions merit correlate with 10X success. This requires the three 10X behaviors:

  • empirical creativity (for developing and evolving it)
  • fanatic discipline (for sticking to it)
  • productive paranoia (for sensing necessary changes).
courtesy greeceathena.wordpress.com

courtesy greeceathena.wordpress.com

Amendments to a SMaC recipe can be made to one element or ingredient while leaving the rest of the recipe intact. Like making amendments to an enduring constitution, this approach allows you to facilitate dramatic change and maintain extraordinary consistency.

Far more difficult than implementing change is figuring out what works, understanding why it works, grasping when to change, and knowing when not to.

What is your SMaC recipe? Is it still valid, or does it need amending?

Continually question and challenge your recipe, but change it rarely.

Great by Choice

Leading Above the Death Line

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– a quick personal note: I’m away attending to some urgent family business, so I’ve suspended the 2013 GsD Fall Term for a week. In it’s place, I’m reposting one of the most popular series on 27gen – a look at Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice with application to ChurchWorld. It continues to get views almost every day, so I hope you enjoy the entire series

In one of the strangest names I’ve seen applied to a business principle, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen describe three key dimensions of productive paranoia in their book Great by Choice with the following chapter title:

Leading Above the Death Line

courtesy peakfreaks.com

courtesy peakfreaks.com

The authors use a real story (two different climbing teams’ assault on Mt. Everest in 1996; one succeeded, one had a tragic ending) to illustrate the concept of productive paranoia.

  1. Build cash reserves and buffers to prepare for unexpected events and bad luck before they happen.
  2. Bound risk – Death Line risk, asymmetric risk, and uncontrollable risk – and manage time-based risk.
  3. Zoom out, then zoom in, remaining hypervigilant to sense changing conditions and respond effectively.

10Xers understand that they cannot reliably and consistently predict future events, so they prepare obsessively – ahead of time, all the time – for what they cannot possibly predict. They assume that a series of bad events can wallop them in quick succession, unexpectedly and at any time.

It’s what you do before the storm hits – the decisions and disciplines and buffers and shock absorbers already in place – that matters most in determining whether your enterprise pulls ahead, falls behind, or dies when the storm hits.

10Xers build buffers and shock absorbers far beyond the norm of what other do. The 10X companies studied carried 3 to 10 times the ration of cash to assets relative to the median of what most companies carry and maintained more conservative balance sheets than the comparison companies throughout their histories, even when they were small enterprises.

10X cases are extremely prudent in how they approach and manage risk, paying special attention to three categories of risk:

  1. Death Line risk (which can kill or severely damage the enterprise)
  2. Asymmetric risk (in which the downside dwarfs the upside)
  3. Uncontrollable risk (which cannot be controlled or managed)

10Xers zoom out, then zoom in. They focus on their objectives and sense changes in their environment; they push for perfect execution and adjust to changing conditions. When they sense danger, they immediately zoom out to consider how quickly a threat is approaching and whether it calls for a change in plans. Then they zoom in, refocusing their energies into executing objectives.

While you might not face the same circumstances in ChurchWorld as in the business world (especially in terms of generating revenue), you have a risk profile just as any business does.

Take a look at the environment around you – how much time before the risk profile changes?

What have you done to get ready for it?

Great by Choice

Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs

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– a quick personal note: I’m away attending to some urgent family business, so I’ve suspended the 2013 GsD Fall Term for a week. In it’s place, I’m reposting one of the most popular series on 27gen – a look at Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice with application to ChurchWorld. It continues to get views almost every day, so I hope you enjoy the entire series

In Jim Collins’ last book Great by Choice, he and colleague Morten Hansen used extensive research to identify companies whose financial performance bettered their competition by at least a factor of 10 over the study period. Identifying these organizations and their leaders as 10Xers, they then discovered three core beliefs that these organizations had in common. Their research also revealed some common principles these organizations practiced; principles that lead the companies to greatness in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control.

Take this one, which could come out of the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie:

Fire bullets, then cannonballs.

Here is a summary of what Collins and Hansen said about this principle:

A “fire bullets, then cannonballs” approach better explains the success of 10X companies than big leap innovations and predictive genius. A bullet is a low-cost, low risk, and low distraction test or experiment. 10Xers use bullets to empirically validate what will actually work. Based on that empirical validation, they then concentrate their resources to fire a cannonball, enabling large returns from concentrated bets.

courtesy examiner.com

courtesy examiner.com

The 10X cases fired a significant number of bullets that never hit anything. They didn’t know ahead of time which bullets would hit or be successful.

Next, there are two types of cannonballs, calibrated and uncalibrated.

  • A calibrated cannonball has confirmation based on actual experience – empirical validation – that a big bet will likely prove successful.
  • An uncalibrated cannonball means placing a big bet without empirical validation.
Cannon

courtesy jackintheteambox.com

Uncalibrated cannonballs can lead to calamity. The companies researched paid a huge price when big, disruptive events coincided with their firing uncalibrated cannonballs, leaving them exposed.  10Xers periodically made the mistake of firing an uncalibrated cannonball, but they tended to self-correct quickly. The comparison cases, in contrast, were more likely to try to fix their mistakes by firing yet another uncalibrated cannonball, compounding their problems.

Failure to fire cannonballs, once calibrated, leads to mediocre results. The idea is not to choose between bullets or cannonballs, but to fire bullets first, then fire cannonballs.

The difficult task is to marry relentless discipline with creativity, neither letting discipline inhibit creativity nor letting creativity erode discipline. This combination of creativity and discipline, translated into the ability to scale innovation with great consistency, better explains some of the greatest stories – from Intel to Southwest Airlines, from Amgen’s early years to Apple’s resurgence under Steve Jobs – than the mythology of big-hit, single-step breakthroughs.

The Leader’s Key Question

Which of the following behaviors do you most need to increase?

  • Firing enough bullets
  • Resisting the temptation to fire uncalibrated cannonballs
  • Committing, by converting bullets into cannonballs once you have empirical validation

Ready – Aim – Fire!

Great by Choice

20 Mile March

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– a quick personal note: I’m away attending to some urgent family business, so I’ve had to suspend the 2013 GsD Fall Term for a week. In it’s place, I’m reposting one of the most popular series on 27gen – a look at Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice with application to ChurchWorld. It continues to get views almost every day, so I hope you enjoy the entire series

Great by Choice is the latest work by Jim Collins, answering a single question: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Collins and his colleague Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.

Like the world we live in today.

Yesterday’s post looked at the three core behaviors that Collins and Hansen identified in their successful group – the 10Xers.

courtesy gazellessystems.com

courtesy gazellessystems.com

The first of these – Fanatic Discipline – is illustrated by the term “20 Mile March.” You need to read the book to get the full understanding, but here is Collins’ summary:

To “20 Mile March” requires hitting specified performance marks with great consistency over a long period of time. It requires two distinct types of discomfort, delivering high performance in difficult times and holding back in good times.

A good 20 Mile March has the following seven characteristics:

  • Clear performance markers
  • Self-imposed constraints
  • Appropriate to the specific enterprise
  • Largely within the company’s control to achieve
  • A proper timeframe – long enough to manage; yet short enough to have teeth
  • Imposed by the company on itself
  • Achieved with high consistency

A 20 Mile March needn’t be financial. You can have a creative march, a learning march, a service-improvement march, or any other type of march, as long as it has the primary characteristics of a good 20 Mile March.

The 20 Mile March builds confidence. By adhering to a 20 Mile March no matter what challenges and unexpected shocks you encounter, you prove to yourself and your enterprise that performance is not determined by your conditions but largely by your own actions.

Failing to 20 Mile March leaves an organization more exposed to turbulent events. Every comparison case had at least one episode of slamming into a difficult time without having the discipline of a 20 Mile March in place, which resulted in a major setback or catastrophe.

The 20 Mile March helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.

10X winners set their own 20 Mile March, appropriate to their own enterprises; they don’t let outside pressures define it for them.

20 Mile Marching wasn’t a luxury afforded to the 10X cases by their success; they had 20 Mile Marches in place long before they were big successes, which helped them to become successful in the first place.

How far are you going to march today? And tomorrow? And the next day? and the next…

Great by Choice

Are You a 10Xer?

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– a quick personal note: I’m away attending to some urgent family business, so I’ve had to suspend the 2013 GsD Fall Term for a week. In it’s place, I’m reposting one of the most popular series on 27gen – a look at Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice with application to ChurchWorld. It continues to get views almost every day, so I hope you enjoy the entire series

Jim Collins’ latest book is out – and it’s another winner, packed with an amazing depth of research that he and colleague Morten Hansen have distilled down into thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. Great by Choice is the equal to Good to Great, and is a must-read for leaders in ChurchWorld. Get your copy today, and dive into it. You’ll soon be introduced to some amazing concepts.

Like the 10Xer.

With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness – beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years – in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research team then contrasted companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments.

Weaving the story of South Pole explorers Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott throughout the narrative, and juxtaposing them with current CEOs, Collins and Hansen paint a vivid picture of what 10X organizations (and their leaders) look like:

  • Fanatic discipline: 10Xers display extreme consistency of action – consistency with values, goals, performance standards, and methods. They are utterly relentless, monomaniacal, and unbending in their focus on their quests.
  • Empirical creativity: when faced with uncertainty, 10Xers do not look primarily to other people, conventional wisdom, authority figures, or peers for direction; they look primarily to empirical evidence. They rely upon direct observation, practical experimentation, and direct engagement with tangible evidence. They make their bold, creative moves from a sound empirical base.
  • Productive paranoia: 10Xers maintain hypervigilance, staying highly attuned to threats and changes in their environment, even when – especially when – all’s going well. They assume conditions will turn against them, at perhaps the worst possible moment. They channel their fear and worry into action, preparing, developing contingency plans, building buffers and maintaining large margins of safety.

Underlying the three core 10Xer behaviors describe above is a motivating force: passion and ambition for a cause or company larger than themselves. They have egos, but their egos are channeled into their companies and their purposes, not personal aggrandizement.

On the one hand, 10Xers understand that they face continuous uncertainty and that they cannot control, and cannot accurately predict, significant aspects of the world around them. On the other hand, 10Xers reject the idea that forces outside their control or chance events will determine their results; they accept full responsibility for their own fate.

Are you a 10Xer?

Great by Choice

Thriving in Uncertainty

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– a quick personal note: I’m away attending to some urgent family business, so I’ve had to suspend the 2013 GsD Fall Term for a week. In it’s place, I’m reposting one of the most popular series on 27gen – a look at Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice with application to ChurchWorld. It continues to get views almost every day, so I hope you enjoy the entire series!

Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask:

Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?

Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins’s prior work by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today.

With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and his colleague Morten Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness – beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years – in environment characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research then contrasted these “10X companies” to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments.

These 10X companies and leaders navigated the chaotic times exceptionally well. They don’t merely react; they create. They don’t merely survive; they prevail. They don’t merely succeed; they thrive. They build great enterprises that can endure.

Thriving in a chaotic world is not just a business challenge. Collins is arguably on of the most widely read and quoted authors in ChurchWorld. His previous works, especially Good to Great, continue to influence leaders in churches both large and small across the country.

Principles like the Hedgehog Concept, First Who, core values, BHAG, the flywheel, Level 5 Leadership and the Five Stages of Decline have all contributed to the success and growth of leaders and their organizations. Great by Choice tests these principles and found that they do apply in a chaotic and uncertain world. But the primary purpose of the book is to share new concepts learned.

Over the next few days I will be diving into sections of Great by Choice and making some applications to ChurchWorld.

Tomorrow – just what is a 10Xer, anyway?

Great by Choice

Listening is an Active Verb

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At Starbucks, listening is synonymous with connecting, discovering, understanding, empathizing, and responding.     – Joseph Michelli, Leading the Starbucks Way

The benefits of this type of listening fuel the entrepreneurial and adaptive spirit of a brand that could have easily lost its nimbleness as a result of its growth and scale.

courtesy 360degreefeedback

courtesy 360degreefeedback

According to organizational consultant Joseph Michelli, many leaders are either too busy to listen or are more interested in speaking. As a result, listening intently, regularly, and respectfully to team members separates the great leader from the good one.

In the Starbucks organization, listening takes many forms. While leaders listen informally at an individual or team level, Starbucks also has a formalized department that consistently listens for the needs and engagement level of partners.

Virgil Jones, director, Partner Services at Starbucks, notes:

Our team conducts surveys, focus groups, and continuously takes a pulse on our partner population. Within that department, the most important thing I do on a daily basis is listen to our partners. The second most important thing I do is continue to touch base with our partners and adjust, because with the way technology is advancing, the things that are hot, interesting, and engaging with our partners today is going to be completely different 18 months from now.

Michelle Gass, president, Starbucks Europe, Middle East, and Africa, like many other Starbucks senior leaders, demonstrates a different kind of regular and personal listening that fuels partner engagement. Her approach comes in the form of “listening tours.” According to Michelle:

I travel across my region regularly and conduct listen tours and roundtable meetings. These are informal meetings where we spend about 90 minutes paying attention to the thoughts, needs, and ideas of those we serve. While listening is important, taking swift action to elevate experiences is essential. These tours are an ongoing process of connection and discovery, not an event.

Michelli adds:

In many ways, when leaders demonstrate formal and informal listening, they not only engage employees but also gain access to information that helps them stay relevant to the needs and observations of their team members.

ChurchWorld Application

  1. Do you practice regular, scheduled “listening tours” with your front-line team members?
  2. What are your systematic approaches to other types of leadership listening?
  3. How do you complete the listening cycle (what actions do you take to inform your team members that they have been “heard”?)

Are you really listening to your teams? What are you hearing? Most importantly, what are you doing?

Part 5 of a series in the 2013 GsD Fall Term

Leading the Starbucks Way: Information, Insights, and Analysis Needed to Create a High-Performance Guest-Oriented Organization

inspired by and adapted from Leading The Starbucks Way, by Joseph Michelli

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How Are You Making Deposits in Your Customers’ “Reservoir of Trust”?

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Leaders at companies like Starbucks have found ways to maintain strong emotional bonds with their customers and achieve their business objectives despite a landscape of heightened consumer empowerment and corporate cynicism. At the center of these sustained emotional bonds is a leadership principle that I refer to as “Love to Be Loved.”     – Joseph Michelli, Leading the Starbucks Way

Somewhere along your education journey, you were probably exposed to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarch of Needs: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, and self-actualization. According to Maslow, basic survival requirements take precedence over more evolved social and transformational needs.

According to organizational consultant Joseph Michelli, Maslow’s theory is also relevant to understanding the perceptions of customers of your organization. Theorists and researchers at the Gallup Corporation have defined a hierarchy of customer perceptions that escalate from low levels to full customer engagement.

In the Gallop model, the first hurdle a company must face is the question, “Are you competent?” If you are to ensure a more secure relationship with your customers, they must be able to address the second question, “Can I predict that this company will demonstrate fairness and consistency in the way it delivers products and experiences?” A positive answer to that question demonstrates the company operates with integrity. Being perceived as having integrity established the opportunity for customers to experience a heightened level of emotional engagement – “pride.” Customer pride comes when your organization is viewed as a positive force in your customers’ lives or in the lives of others they care about. The pinnacle of Gallup’s customer engagement hierarchy is passion. The customer feels your organization is perfect for him, and he can’t live without it.

Trust is the gateway emotion on a journey to greater levels of engagement.

Based on Michelli’s observations, Starbucks leaders strive to demonstrate morality in their actions by making deposits in their stakeholder’s reservoir of trust (a phrase coined by CEO Howard Shultz). This is accomplished by:

  1. Empathetically looking at business decisions through the lens of humanity
  2. Communicating straightforward intent, acknowledging shortcomings, and keeping promises
  3. Balancing the competing interests of stakeholders
  4. Creating operational systems and quality improvement processes to deliver a consistently reliable product
  5. Establishing training and empowering partners to deliver service recovery

ChurchWorld Application

  1. Based on the hierarchical stages of customer engagement discussed above, but transferred into the world of Guest Experiences at your church, how do most of your Guests, attenders, and team members perceive your organization? Are you “competent” at what you do? Do your team members display a sense of “pride” in serving in ministry? Does your organization have a sense of “integrity” as recognized by your community – even those who have no connection to your church? Finally, is a sense of “passion” displayed by constituents – even to a degree that their lives are enriched because of their connection to your organization?
  2. How well does your organization “make deposits in the reservoir of trust” for your stakeholders? How would you grade yourself in each of the areas listed above?

SB Barista group

How Starbucks Moves Forward with Greater Levels of Engagement

  • A team approach to product development and implementation, along with rigorous testing, leads to earning trust through consistency.
  • Partners are trained and developed to create inspired moments by defining those service behaviors that should “always” or “never” occur at Starbucks.
  • From the earliest training, partners are provided with the resources and autonomy to resolve customer complaints or concerns.
  • The only way to become beloved is to be loving.

Michelli makes this closing point:

Customers who make extremely strong emotional connections with a company actually perceive their preferred brands as extensions of their personality and integrate the brands into their rituals, lifestyle, and identity.

Part 4 of a series in the 2013 GsD Fall Term

Leading the Starbucks Way: Information, Insights, and Analysis Needed to Create a High-Performance Guest-Oriented Organization 

inspired by and adapted from Leading The Starbucks Way, by Joseph Michelli

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What Kind of Experience Do You Want Your Guests to Have?

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Unlike many other places that sell coffee, Starbucks builds the equity of our brand through the Starbucks Experience. It comes to life every day in the relationship our people have with our customers. By focusing again on the Starbucks Experience, we will create a renewed level of meaningful differentiation and separation in the market between us and others who are attempting to sell coffee.  – Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, speaking about the priority of the customer Experience as a part of Starbucks Transformation Agenda

3 Aspects of Starbucks Customer Experience Excellence

Starbucks leaders:

  • Define and communicate the desired and unique Starbucks Experience
  • Select individuals with the requisite talent to deliver that experience consistently
  • Train partners on the key pillars necessary to engage customers regularly

The worthy customer experience ideals at Starbucks are expressed in the company’s mission statement and are supported by the principles of how this mission is lived out everyday – principles like the following:

Our Customers – When we are fully engaged, we connect with, laugh with, and uplift the lives of our customers – even if just for a few moments. It starts with the promise of a perfectly made beverage, but our work goes far beyond that. It’s really about human connection.

Our Stores – When our customers feel this sense of belonging, our stores become a haven, a break from the worries outside, a place where you can meet with friends. It’s about enjoyment at the speed of life – sometimes slow and savored, sometimes faster. Always full of humanity.

SB customers

Organizational consultant Joseph Michelli, in his new book Leading the Starbucks Way, writes that these principles are “brief and clear, and put the customers, products, and experiences at the purposeful center of Starbucks.”

Many organizations orient new team members by teaching them the tasks to be performed on the job but fail to educate them on service excellence skills and/or the experience that they want those team members to deliver. At Starbucks, initial skills training quickly moves into content like “Customer Service Basics” and the “Starbucks Experience.”

A great example is a process tool called the “Store Walk Through”, where the new team members move through the café environment observing and recording important aspects that a customer is likely to encounter on their journey from arrival through departure. These customer perspective walks occur once per shift at each store.

Another helpful tool provided by Starbucks leaders is a defined service vision that describes what needs to be achieved during service experiences. Additionally, it provides four customer service behaviors that help partners understand how the customer service vision is to be accomplished.

The Starbucks customer vision statement reads “We create inspired moments in each customer’s day.” To accomplish this objective, partners are encouraged to focus on the following customer service behaviors:

  • Anticipate
  • Connect
  • Personalize
  • Own

According to Michelli, by providing the desired destination and ways to arrive there, you help your teams develop exceptionally strong bonds with customers that powerfully differentiate your organization from the competition.

ChurchWorld Application

  1. If asked, what percentage of your Guest Experience team members could articulate your Guest Experience vision or the way you want Guests to feel as a result of the experiences they have while at your campus?
  2. Develop a process tool in which your team members literally walk through the entire Guest Experience at your campus from the perspective of a Guest. Debrief the training. Make it a regular part of your team training.
  3. Do you know what your Guests are expecting when they come to your campus? Are your Guest Experience team members knowledgeable enough about Guest expectations to anticipate and deliver an extraordinary experience?

Michelli continues to develop the exceptional customer experience by outlining additional competencies that world-class service providers exhibit:

  • The ability to maximize customer engagement through environmental design
  • Integration of key sensory factors
  • A capacity to listen and adapt your Guest Experience to meet the changing wants, needs, and desires of your customers

While many leaders look for ways to improve experiences by adding elements to the environment, the best outcomes often come from the removal of negative cues that distract from a memorable experience.     – Joseph Michelli

ChurchWorld Application

  1. Assume the persona of one of your key targets – say, a young single professional. Walk key leaders of your team through your typical Guest Experience, observing through the eyes of your identified persona. What elements of clutter or confusion stand out? What can be done to clean up these experience detractors?
  2. Repeat the same exercise, this time choosing a completely different persona. Are there different areas of clutter or confusion? If so, how will you rectify them?
  3. For a real challenger, repeat this exercise with as many key target groups as you can identify. List all the areas of clutter and confusion and take action on repeated areas immediately.
  4. With your Guest Experience leadership team, conduct a sensory audit of your organization. What are the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities? What sights, sounds, smells, and tactile elements do your Guests experience throughout their journey at your campus? 

A couple of important “Connecting Points” by Michelli:

People can copy your products and your services, but seldom can they build the powerful connections with customers that emerge from the well-designed experiences that you deliver.

Whether it is connecting the design of your physical space to your company’s mission, vision, and values; strengthening efficiencies to improve the customer experience, or adding sensory elements, successful customer experience enhancements have one unifying component: the need to execute the details.

How will you move your Guest Experiences from “replicable and consistent” to “magical and unique”?

Part 3 of a series in the 2013 GsD Fall Term

Leading the Starbucks Way: Information, Insights, and Analysis Needed to Create a High-Performance Guest-Oriented Organization

inspired by and adapted from Leading The Starbucks Way, by Joseph Michelli

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When Good is not Good Enough, It’s Time to Lead Your Team to “Savor and Elevate”

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“Savor and Elevate” is a business principle that emphasizes the importance of maximizing enthusiasm for the products, services, and experiences your company provides.      – Joseph Michelli, Leading the Starbucks Way

To achieve Starbuck’s mission “to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time,” leaders at Starbucks crafted a set of principles to be lived daily, the first of which involves passion for:

 Our coffee. It has always been, and will always be, about quality. We’re passionate about ethically sourcing the finest coffee beans, roasting them with great care, and improving the lives of people who grow them. We care deeply about this; our work is never done.

 Starbucks leaders have produced diverse tools to help Starbucks partners develop or deepen a genuine product passion.

One of those tools is a coffee education that reflects a 70/20/10 growth and development approach. Based on research on how people integrate and utilize new information, new baristas at Starbucks receiver approximately:

  • 70 percent of their initial coffee education through on-the-job experience and hands-on practice
  • 20 percent of their training through the feedback and mentorship from their peers, learning coach, and store management
  • 10 percent of their training from an online modularized curriculum
courtesy coffeeconcepts.com

courtesy coffeeconcepts.com

At intervals during the certification training and development process, new partners must pass a knowledge test and demonstrate to their store manager skill competency in tasks such as preparing a cappuccino.

A person can become passionate not only about the coffee itself, but also about the artistry involved in its creation.

If a barista only goes through the motions of pouring espresso, if he or she does not care, then Starbucks has lost the essence of what we set out to do 40 years ago: inspire the human spirit.    – Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO

ChurchWorld Application:

  1. What is your Guest Experience Team’s overall level of passion in serving your Guests and attenders? How does it compare to the passion levels at the best service providers you have encountered in the marketplace?
  2. Have you built-in Guest Experience knowledge and passion from the beginning of your team member’s involvement?
  3. What first impressions do you create for new team members? Do they experience what you hope they provide?

While the opportunity for developing a passion for coffee and the artistry of its preparations is built into the formative learning experiences of Starbucks new hires, the company’s leadership understands that this passion is reinforced, sustained, and deepened through corporate celebration and communication rituals, immersive learning opportunities, and core business strategy. Michelli elaborates:

Authentic corporate rituals are powerful ways to create a common bond, inspire commitment and innovation, and build an integrated and effective culture.

Rather than providing messages that solely describe the “what” and “how” of your products, listen for and share stories that will help connect your people to the nuances of your products and/or special aspects of the customer journey.

Leaders at Starbucks have crafted way to immerse staff members in enriched learning experiences that create opportunities for product passion. They have also found ways to spark master of product knowledge by relying on an intrinsic sense of accomplishment that comes from advanced learning and the ability to teach others.

Evaluate every strategy to ensure that it aligns with your core values, reinforces your purpose, and stimulates continue progress toward your aspirations.

Increased visit frequency, wider product penetration, greater customer engagement, consistent product sell-through, and employee pride and professional development are enviable by-products of igniting the passion of your team members.

Growing research evidence indicates that “knowledgeable employees” is one of the top items on the wish list for customers today.

Imagine what knowledgeable and passionate employees can do, not only for your customers, but also for the morale and enthusiasm associated with your organization.

ChurchWorld Application:

  1. Examine the habits, rituals, and messages that you employ in your Guest Experience ministry. Are they facilitating emotional connections, a sense of community, and passion for excellence?
  2. How to you capture and share stories of your Guest Experiences team members that help connect them to Guests, one another, and the vision of your church?
  3. How are you incorporating Guest Experience mastery and social recognition into your team training programs?

Part 2 of a series in the 2013 GsD Fall Term

Leading the Starbucks Way: Information, Insights, and Analysis Needed to Create a High-Performance Guest-Oriented Organization

inspired by and adapted from Leading The Starbucks Way, by Joseph Michelli

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