If you put a gun to their heads... they could do it...

Good morning... What can I get for you?

How about a little training? Certainly, by now you've heard about the NEW and IMPROVED Training that will close your local Starbucks on February 26th from 5:30-8:30...

In a move that can only be part "marketing" to Wall St. and part setting expectations for partners, Starbucks has used the word "training" as a way to fix employee performance.

In my time at Starbucks, I've witnessed quite a few instances where employee performance improvements have been lumped into a "training fix".

Leader (who probably never worked in a store): Our baristas just aren't friendly enough... and they're not creating the third place for our customers...

Other Leader (who definitely did not work in a store): Well... they need more training obviously. We'll give them more training. Do we have a person who can write that training?

They then spend the next few months pulling content from previous training, out of their asses, from coffee experts who are too busy to devote the time to such things and other folks. This first part of the process ends up producing an enormous pile of stuff that "baristas need to be told".

In addition, several people will add their two cents on how the language needs to be Starbucks.

Partner 1: They used the word "problem here"... We should use the word "challenge". It just sounds more positive.

Partner 2: Oh yeah... let's make sure we tell them not to forget about how hot the steam wand is... We need some kind of safety statement there...

The end product is then delivered in a "cascading" manner to implement it... leaving store managers to their devices on how to engage a group of folks and make sure they "get it".

So... how does Starbucks "know" that they "get it"? The answer is they don't... because the key measures of success were never spelled out in the first place. The "challenge" with this last approach is that once again the word/profession of training will get a bad name at Starbucks due to the great misunderstanding of what training, assembling training and delivering training is all about. Bottom line is that this efforts only indicator will be if sales go up or if the customer's voice says things are better. Unfortunately... they'll never know for sure so training will get the blame for failure. So here goes readers... here's what it is...

Training is about teaching skills and knowledge... If you could put a gun to a partner's head and tell them to brew a shot to Starbucks standard... and they can do it... it's not training. It's something else. It could be one or more of the following:

• They don't care
• They're not motivated or there's a negative reward for doing it right
  
• They were never told the standards
• They were never told it was expected
• They've never received feedback that they were doing it wrong
• They're physically or mentally not able to do it

I only tell you this to set you up for success... to give you a realistic picture of what to expect after much money is spent for the 3-hour closure. It's not a cure all. However, if this is only 3 hours of setting expectations, then that's a different animal... but they called it "training".

So... what to do for next time? Do an analysis of each store. Find out operation by operation where the skill gaps are and address that. Go back and retrofit the training materials to have clear learning objectives that can be measured. Here's some for the espresso bar...

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

• Pour espresso shots to Starbucks standard
• Steam milk to Starbucks standard
• Assemble beverages to Starbucks standard using Starbucks beverage recipes
• Deliver Starbucks beverages to customers in a friendly manner (this objective is a bit fluffy)

Sure, these objectives don't hit on creating the Third Place or "artfully creating a coffee merchant culture"... They don't need to... it's training. When you get to the customer service portion... we can address that. It's a different skill and set of expectations.

On the up side, the barista has to feel pretty good that the company is now going to actually dedicate some time to them for level-setting and setting expectations. They'll feel pretty good for a few weeks until the day to day sets back in again. This feeling of happiness is called "lift".

So there you go... that's how they got to training. I guarantee you though that if I went to a store and showed them some clearly written learning objectives.... they could already do it.

We'll see you soon for some more clarification...

Pat Nerr...