Sharing "The Mission"

Good morning… What can I get for you?

7 years ago, I was brought on to the SSC to run the Corporate Orientation program. It was a nice transition as it took quite a few months for the previous owner of the program to train and guide me on how the program works.

You bring in 15-25 newly hired Starbucks SSC partners… feed them, teach them about coffee, tell them about the business and hope to hell they do the right thing for the stores and the company.

My colleague took the time to teach me about Orientation programs and their importance in setting the stage for an employee and helping to retain folks. Simply put, a good first day increases the likelihood the new employee will stay longer. When I got there we were getting 40% of the new partners on their very first day with the company. The rest were left to sit at desks without phones, computers or guidance for the first few weeks.

So we worked at closing the gap… involved staffing to alert new hires that they would be going through the orientation program on their first day. We worked with the generalists to make sure they spoke with managers about the importance of getting their new partners to orientation sooner vs. later. We stretched the program to two days and included lunch on both to meet their basic needs… AND we put some tools in place to prompt managers to order computers, phones, desks, etc for their new folks.

Some of that worked… pretty well actually.

One of the tasks in Orientation was to get a key executive to show up and talk to the new partners about the company and the mission statement. After a few months, Dave Olsen, my cohort and myself sat down to work on an activity that would challenge new partners to think about their own values and the mission and align the two. Actually, Dave gave us the guidance and my colleague and I did the work...

After about a month, I think we had a winner. We started them off with a brainstorm on what things a company considerations a company needs to have to be a successful, global company… Things like: Products… People… Revenue… Some diversity… you get the point. Then we would have them force rank these items in groups and present back.

After that, part of the exercise was to chart them on a circle with 6 points on it… all an equal distance from each other and no ONE particular point in a more important spot than the others.

Then in their groups, they had to talk about which ones worked well together and with one they competed with, or caused tension with the most… It was always a great visual by the end.

The point was that the Guiding Principles were not meant to be listed in a linear fashion or as some kind of recipe for success. They were meant to be considerations for decision making at Starbucks. Points to remember when working towards the mission of:

Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.

It's still being used today I believe... The exercise that is...

We’ll see you tomorrow for your usual…

Pat Nerr...

P.S... So, how'd you all enjoy Howard's little talk at the SSC Open forum? Oh... and I don't mean yesterday's video.