If I were leading Starbucks today, I ‘d go through the last 20 years issues, complaints, problems locally or globally in customers handling due to whatever the reason, could be an issue in policies, procedures, operational, legal or ethical to get me on board.Before to jump in reviewing and changing of policies and practices, I need to know precisely the pain areas of problems and how they are impacting on reputation and revenue of Starbucks. I have found some tangible and non-tangible issues with Starbucks like price excessively high, a racial issue, ethical issue, social responsibility, and quality.We are humans so make mistakes but what we have a lesson learned and how we bring our values and reputation back by implementing new policies and improving procedures that matters.Let’s recall some policies and procedures related incidents which tend to us changing in the policies and procedures.
Racial Bias Issue
On April 12 Starbucks’ faced an unexpected incident when Starbucks café manager called the police to remove two black men because they were not purchasing anything and sitting in a café for a long time.Interestingly someone captured the whole incident and released that video of the entire event which spread within few minutes on internet and black community become angry by seeing that how cops arrested these men and dragging them with a handcuff. Angry protesters immediately reach on the scene and start protesting this racist act.Instead of blaming to café manager as usually happened in most of the cases, Johnson handled the situation very diligently and acted sensibly. He reached the place with his team, including executive chairman Howard Schultz to meet with both men who suffered, local police and civic leaders to address the situation and settled it. (Manning, Pamela N. Danziger, Apr 25, 2018)We need to educate and ensure that our staff does equal treatment with all the customers regardless of their color, ethnicity, age, gender, background and status and create a culture of warmth and belonging, dignity and respect where everyone is welcome. I would always keep this policy as my core value.
Social Responsibility
Doing business and make a profit is not unethical but ignoring the social responsibility, in my opinion, is a crime and I would modify the current practices to get the milk from these emerging countries on little cost and bring some welfare programs for their health, food, and education. Starbucks always follow the ethical standards along with social responsibility strictly and very careful in the welfare of animals, from the employees who serve coffee to the sellers of it
Starbucks and palm oil
On customer complain Starbucks stated that it was committed to using 100% Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil which is certified sustainable palm oil in different products such as its raspberry chocolate chip scone and Mallorca sweet bread by 2015, customers were not aware before. (Manning, Hanna Thomas, Tue 25, Aug 2015) It is one of the most concern areas in doing any business. If business doesn’t care health of customers and focusing on just making money so they must be penalized and I will never allow my company to do business with this kind of policy which I change in favor of my customer health.
Starbuck changed many policies and procedures to retain their customers and increase their reputations which I appreciate and keep them intact because by these their stock has surged more than 50 percent with revenue of $4.9 billion.
They did four things.
Mobile plus reward program Starbucks launched a mobile phone application to get orders more conveniently. Now as of today, there are more than 16 million users. 20 % of all money transactions in U.S. Starbucks stores are done through this mobile application.
Adaptability
Starbucks claimed that they are the third place which is comfortable location between the workplace and customer homes. -- where they can hang out with their friends meet friends, read your favorite book, or surf the internet.
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You scratch my back and... In the last few years, Starbucks has announced some lucrative partnerships.Some of them are The New York Times and Lyft where loyalty members can get points as well as a free digital copy of the New York Times on their mobile
Happy employees mean happy customers
Starbucks initiated to give some unique benefits to all their full time and part time employees such as health insurance, free drinks, a pound of coffee per week and stock options. This year, Starbucks again introduced new benefit to its employees and offering them college tuition assistance.Employees satisfaction rate increased, and even Starbucks got higher employer rating of 3.8 stars.
I will also keep the policy to use the bathroom or sitting in cafes; even customer doesn’t purchase the coffee and sitting in café with believing that Starbucks is our third customer place between home and workplace.The policy is designed to create “a culture of warmth and belonging where everyone is welcome.” (Manning, Darryl C. Murphy May 22, 2018)Before the new policy, the company left the decision of whether a person could sit or use the bathroom up to store managers. However, Starbucks executives said that approach was “loose and ambiguous.”
What would you do to sustain Ford Motor Company’s turnaround momentum?
The Ford Motor Company has showed monarchism in the Motor industry during the first half 20th century since 1903. It remained as the favourite choice for car lovers and enthusiasts. The globalization and growing economy has paved way for many other competitors like Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Though there were organizations competing round the corner, Ford motors didn’t give much thought about the market share occupied by the competitors. This is the primary mistake that has brought the organization into a tight corner. Knowing the customer needs and catering products as required by the customer is highly important for a successful business. Ford has tried its best to keep up with the competition but failed drastically, loosing most of its market share. Declining sales, slumping profits margins, negative cash flow, rising debts are not the problems. Rather, they are the symptoms of a company that has gotten off track. At this juncture, to bring a turnaround in the company is not an easy task, it is more than just improving the numbers. The most possible way to restore the company is leading as coach. In other words, value-based leadership is the best way to regain the path of becoming the best.
The company can be restructured by effective leadership, who can train coach and empower the employees to modernize the organization. The value-based leadership can be defined in “five bests”: best self, best team, best partner, best investment and best citizenship.(Harry Kraemer, June 2015). The best self refers to the leader, who needs to continuously engage in self-reflection, self- education and self-determination to accomplish the task and reach the goal no matter what. A leader should be able to define the values and stand on those values till the end. “Leadership is having a compelling vision, a comprehensive plan, relentless implementation, and talented people working together”. (Alan Mulally, n.d).
It is important to align people with the organizational values to reach the goal and make a sense of coherence among the team. Leader must take interest in training and helping people tp reach their full potential. Developing others is the most relevant and rewarding all management tasks.(Manning & Curtis, page 402). Leader should lead other by their personal example; It is important for a leader to know the business from ground zero which helps not only in uncovering the problem but also finding a possible solution to it. Performers in every field should be developed to delegate various tasks. The most successful organizations are masters of learning and most effect leaders are masters of training. Leaders with multiple skills help organizations and themselves (Manning & Curtis, page 408). Training should be measurable and deliverable oriented. It is useful to keep a track on training progress by taking feedback from employees to know their level of understanding.
At a broken and ship wrecked stage of the company, talent is the best resource to improve the productivity. Conducting seminars and speaking frequently with our employees, keeps them motivated and reminds the focus towards which the company is coaching them. It is the responsibility of the organization to identify leadership gaps and fill them with training effors. Intervention activities include conducting seminars, performance coaching, and field activities are useful to scrutinize business from grass root level. Not only the traditional Top down process but the reverse mentoring can also keep leaders current in both the technical and human aspects of work. Companies need employees who take initiatives and self-start the work flow.
The profits can be improved by changing operational procedures. For example, a company can generate more sales while reducing the expenses by cutting down costs on unnecessary expenses. This can be achieved by cross-selling- offering new products that complement the current offerings. Switching to a relationship-based sales model which gets customers back to you by offering customer loyalty plans. Conducting surveys within the customer base to know the customer requirements and developing products according to their needs helps the company to retain the customers.
References
- Bariso, J. (2015, December 07). The Strategy That Led Starbucks's Stock Price to Jump 50 Percent. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/what-you-can-learn-from-starbucks-continued-success.html
- Danziger, P. N. (2018, April 25). Starbucks Needs A Reputation Boost: Will Closing For Racial-Bias Education Do It? Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/04/25/starbucks-needs-a-reputation-boost-will-closing-for-racial-bias-education-do-it/#678a7f4b397e
- Murphy, D. C. (2018, May 22). Not everyone is sold on Starbucks' new loitering policy. Retrieved from https://whyy.org/articles/not-everyone-is-sold-on-starbucks-new-loitering-policy/
- Starbucks, Stop Exploiting Animals And Humans - Be a Leader In Social Change. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.change.org/p/starbucks-stop-exploiting-animals-and-humans
- Thomas, H., & Hanna Thomas is a campaign manager at SumOfUs. (2015, August 25). Starbucks and palm oil, wake up and smell the coffee. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/aug/25/starbucks-palm-oil-campaign-2015-sumofus-consumers-deforestation-commitments
- How Ford CEO Alan Mullaly turned a broken company into the industry's comeback kid. Retrieved from, https://qz.com/431078/how-ford-ceo-alan-mullaly-turned-a-broken-company-into-the-industrys-comeback-kid/
- 15 Ways to Increase Productivity at Work. Retrieved from, https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/15-ways-to-increase-productivity-at-work.html
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