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Starbucks’s Comeback // Book Summary of Howard Schultz’s ‘Onward’

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Starbucks founder, Chairman, and CEO Howard Schultz’s “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul” is an interesting case study of organizational change as orchestrated by a passionate entrepreneur. The book covers the first two years of the turnaround of Starbucks after Schultz returned as CEO.

'Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul' by Howard Schultz, Joanne Gordon (ISBN 1609613821) In 2007, in the face of falling consumer spending and the upcoming Great Recession, the consumer discretionary sector was hit hard. Like other companies in that realm, Starbucks’ sales and profitability had dropped. The company’s stock price plummeted after Wall Street pared the rich valuations (high price-to-earning) of the company’s once-hot growth stock. Through these trials, Schultz worked at the company’s Seattle headquarters as chairman. Even after retiring as CEO in 2001, he had never left the company entirely and had even interjected often during Starbucks’ presentations to investors.

Starbucks’ financial under-performance was likely as much due to the economic slowdown as it was self-inflicted. In an apparent instance of misplaced cause-and-effect, Schultz blamed the company’s leadership for focusing too much on rapid expansion, opening too many stores, and diluting the in-store Starbucks experience. Behind the CEO’s back, Schultz started working with strategy consultants and other board members to develop a “transformational agenda” centered on the core values of the company he had founded in 1982.

In January 2008, Schultz invited the CEO home on a Sunday evening, fired him, and assumed the CEO position for a second stint. Over the next two years, Schultz rejuvenated the company’s mojo by making operational improvements and focusing on employee engagement, Starbucks’ specialty coffee products and its distinctive in-store customer experience.

Schultz’s vision, focus, and execution of this transformation makes up the bulk of “Onward”. One dominant theme in the book is founder’s syndrome—the intense reluctance of entrepreneurs like Schultz to cede control of their businesses.

Towards the end of 2009 (when “Onward” was authored,) the economy started to improve. A measured recovery in consumer confidence invigorated the fortunes of most consumer discretionary companies that had suffered during the downturn. At Starbucks, customers returned to stores and spent more. Sales and profitability improved. The company’s valuation on Wall Street soared again. Conceivably, Starbucks may have enjoyed a comeback even if Schultz had remained just the chairman, retained and supported the CEO, and worked with the company’s leadership team to initiate course corrections.

That Starbucks continues to be an American success story and has done extraordinarily well to date under Schultz’s leadership is one more instance of a beloved fairy tale in the world of business—that of a company in distress rescued by the return of its visionary founder.

“Onward” is Schultz’s somewhat grandiose narrative of his return as CEO. The 350-page book is brimming with peripheral details, self-congratulatory superlatives, recurring claims, and Pollyanna-isms that are illustrative of a charismatic entrepreneur and a brilliant corporate cheerleader.

Recommendation: Skim. (For Starbucks aficionados: Read.)

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How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]

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If you’re an avid reader, you most likely have a stack of books you’ve started reading but never seem to complete. You may have the habit of eagerly devouring a book until another arrives. Consumed by enthusiasm, you start reading that new book and set the first aside. Continually finding more to read, this shortcoming repeats itself. Inevitably, you are left with a pile of books on your nightstand.

The following tips will help you read more than one book at a time, process a pile of books, and finish all the works you’ve ever wanted to read.

  1. Rotate your reading and stick to a pile before adding more books to your reading list. To process a pile of three to five books, use this disciplined system: when you’re in the mood to read, choose the book on top of your pile. Then, read it as long as you feel like reading it. When you’re done reading, don’t put back the book back on the top of your pile. Instead, put the book at the bottom of the pile. During your next reading session, pick up the second book, which is now at the top of the pile. Rotate your reading. In this way, you can progressively read every book and finish everything before taking on a new pile.
  2. Don’t add new books to your reading list until you’ve finished the texts at hand. As you process each group of books, don’t add anything to your reading list before you’ve finished everything in the existing pile. Focus on one pile of books at a time.
  3. You may not need to read every page or chapter to “read” a book. Pre-read a book by finding its summary on the Internet. Customer reviews on Amazon.com often have useful summaries or a list of significant ideas. To read a book quickly, first skim through its preface, table of contents, and index. Next, browse its substance by scanning section titles, subtitles and chapters, and by glossing over any pictures and illustrations. Read the first and last paragraphs of each chapter, and executive summaries. If you feel like reading any section of the book, read each paragraph’s first line to develop a conceptual understanding before reading the content more closely. Consider taking a speed-reading course to improve reading speed and comprehension.
  4. Give up if you find a volume uninteresting or unnecessary. You’re not obligated to finish a book just because you’ve committed to reading it.
  5. Choose books with a variety of topics, themes, or genres. The variety will keep your interest.
  6. Abraham Lincoln reading to his son Tadd at the White House Review what you’ve read. If you’re not sure which book to read next, instead of choosing from a wealth of new titles, consider rereading a book that you’ve previously read and found useful. A good book’s valuable concepts can’t be entirely absorbed with just one reading. As film critic Dana Stevens once wrote, “Going back to a book is a way of daring that past self to find new evidence for that old love.” Some books invite periodic perusing for further intellectual stimulation or for reinforcement of various insights. Moreover, it often takes multiple exposures to a useful concept for you to store it in your “little brain attic” (to borrow Sherlock Holmes’s term for mental models) and incorporate it in your behavior.

If you’re looking for something good to read, here’s a list of books I read in 2014 and recommended in an earlier article.

While we’re on the topic of reading, I recommend How to Read a Book, American educator Mortimer Adler’s classic guide to intelligent reading.

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On the Sherpas, Tenzing Norgay, and Edmund Hillary

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Preamble: Tomorrow’s article on the ‘Process Sherpa’ will reference the Sherpas—porters and mountaineering guides of the Himalayas. My editor suggested that I include in that piece a paragraph on the Sherpa people and the relevance of their professions to the ‘Process Sherpa’ concept. What started as a mere footnote soon grew into this standalone article.

Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering

The Sherpas (literally “men of the east”) are legendary high-altitude porters and modern-day mountaineering guides in the Himalayas.

Originally, the mountain-dwelling Sherpas were part of a nomadic Mongolian tribe that descended from Genghis Khan. The Sherpas are deeply religious and, as part of their Tibetan-Buddhist faith, considered the mountains to house their deities. Out of deference to these reigning deities, the Sherpas historically possessed no desire to climb the sacred mountains.

The Sherpas settled predominantly in the villages of Nepal’s Solu-Khumbu valley, where westerners began their expeditions into the Himalayas. As interest in ascending Mount Everest ramped up, western expeditions started to rely on the Sherpas as porters. Their great strength, physiological ability to acclimatize to high altitudes, and dexterity in negotiating dangerous paths in the ice-covered mountains made the Sherpas formidable load-carriers. Since then, no expedition to the top of the Everest has succeeded without their assistance.

In the high mountains, the term ‘Sherpa’ is now synonymous with an expedition guide. Sherpas work as not only mountaineering guides in the Himalayas but also as expedition guides in places as far flung as Africa’s Kilimanjaro, South America’s Patagonia, and other mountain tourism hotspots around the world.

Sherpa Sirdar Tenzing Norgay

The most famous of the Sherpas is Sirdar (Chief) Tenzing Norgay who, alongside New Zealander-teammate Edmund Hillary, was the first to reach Mount Everest’s summit. In setting foot on the great mountain’s summit at 11:30 A.M. on 29 May 1953, the two defined a key moment of 20th century exploration.

For the incredible account of the personal triumph of a poor and illiterate but ambitious and deeply religious explorer, read Tenzing Norgay’s autobiography “Man of Everest” and Yves Malartic’s biography “Tenzing of Everest”. These two books were required reading for my eighth grade-language class.

Sir Edmund Hillary

No discussion on the Sherpa people would be complete without mention of one man’s extensive humanitarian efforts. Edmund Hillary’s endeavors so endeared him to the mountain people that his scaling the Himalayas pales in comparison. Since the 1960s, Hillary’s Himalayan Trust has raised funds to build schools, clinics, hospitals, bridges, and water pipelines for Nepal’s Sherpa communities. Beyond the achievement for which he is best known, Hillary’s entire life story is also incredibly inspirational. To learn more, read Whitney Stewart’s “Edmund Hillary”. I also recommend Hillary’s autobiographies, “High Adventure” and “View from the Summit”.

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You Have a Pile of Reading Material at Your Desk?

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In this ‘information overload’ era, you confront a sizeable quantity of reading material everyday: books, magazines, newspapers, memos, reports, and so forth. You are incessantly pressed for time. Consequently, you probably have a stack of reading material accumulating at a corner of your desk.

Here are four habits to help manage your reading material.

Preview

  • Preview memos, magazine- and newsletter-articles. Scrutinize the table of contents, and for each article that may seem interesting, scan through section-headings, introductory and concluding paragraphs, illustrations and keywords in boldface or italics. If you ought to read an article, tear-away or photocopy the relevant pages and add them to a ‘To Read’ folder.
  • Preview books before buying or borrowing a book. Check reviews on Amazon.com or other websites. Scan the jacket cover, table of contents and chapter headings. After obtaining the book, focus on reading only chapters and sections that are relevant to your interests.

Organize

  • Manage Reading Material - Organize Discard old reading material. If your reading material expands into a disorganized—and perhaps intimidating—pile, consider discarding the older articles, likely at the bottom of your pile. The content of these articles may no longer be relevant. In addition, you will probably never get to reading them.
  • Classify for priority. Assess the importance of every article and organize your reading material into two or three groups. This way, if your reading stack gets unmanageable, you may discard the least-important group.

Expand Comprehension

  • Read with purpose. Throughout your reading, ask yourself questions such as “What are the key details discussed here? How are these details relevant? What are the take-away ideas? What can I learn? How can I change?”
  • Read the first and last lines of each paragraph to help grasp the premise of the entire paragraph. Check the summary or highlights first.
  • Study tables, illustrations, graphics and charts carefully. Characteristically, these visual elements contain comprehensive information that may summarize entire sections of text.

Stay On Top

  • Carry your ‘To Read’ folder in your briefcase or bag so you can read while waiting for an appointment with your dentist or at an airport waiting to board your flight.
  • Set aside time for reading. Dedicate convenient times for reading activities and add these times to your calendar. Even brief periods of focused reading can be very productive.

Concluding Thoughts

In this fast-paced world, reading can be overwhelming. By prioritizing and adopting the above habits, you can make significant improvements to your ability to read more quickly and efficiently.

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