Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz’s Background

Howard Schultz, the chairman and chief global strategist of Starbucks Corporation, who built Starbucks from a single store on the Seattle Washington, waterfront into a world-wide chain with more than 12,440 retail locations in 37 countries. And it is also him who established the Starbuck’s vision, which led to their unheralded success. Schultz has received many prestigious awards in recognition of his numerous business and community contributions, including:

The top 25 Managers of the Year by Business Week magazine in January 2002
Top 25 Best Manager—awarded by Business Week in 2001
Top 6 Entrepreneurs of the year—awarded by Restaurant Business in 2001
Botwinick Price in Business Ethics—awarded by Columbia Business School in 2000
Executive of the year—awarded by Restaurants and Institutions in the year of 2000

Finding His Niche

Widely known as the architect of the company’s brand image, Howard Schultz is now Starbucks Chairman and Chief Global Strategist. He continues to provide strategic direction, serves as the vision and voice of the Starbucks brand.

Quick often great achievers spring from obscurity. “From my personal experience,” he once noted, “the more uninspiring your origins, the more likely you are to use your imagination and invent worlds where everything seems possible. That’s certainly true for me.”

Schultz was brought up the oldest of three children. Both his brother and sister live in New York, while his mother lives in New Jersey. His father, who has been an absolute inspiration to him as a businessman, passed away. Howard currently lives in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood with his wife and two children.

Howard Schultz became the first of his family to graduate from college at Northern Michigan University in 1975. He completed his education with a degree in communication while attending school on a football scholarship.

After college, he bounced back and forth between jobs, looking or the best fit. It was not until he chanced in a Starbucks on a business call he finally discovered his fore-most talent.

At that time, Starbucks was only a coffee bean shop which didn't serve any drinks there. But they taught their customers about coffee. They provide high quality coffee beans.

After a trip to Italy, Schultz was inspired by the Italian espresso bars and decided to sell coffee on Starbucks, but this idea was turned down by his manager, the original Starbuck’s manager. So, Schultz opened his own company, called Giornale in 1985.

Two years after, in 1987, he successfully combined the original Starbucks and renamed his company to Starbucks and started expanding his businesses reach across the globe.

Howard Schultz as a Servant Leader

Howard Schultz, one of the business world’s outstanding entrepreneurs and visionary leaders. His philosophy of using the power of the human spirit in business has earned him many prestigious awards in both business and the community. He is the person who establishes the Starbuck’s vision, which led to Starbuck’s unheralded success. Howard Schultz’s vision, far sightseeing, integrity and servitude has made him a fabulous story of the way corporate leadership should be.

The truly amazing part of the success story of Starbucks is the rapidness of the expansion. Starbucks has currently expanded into 37 countries and it has already owned 11,000 stores at all. Even more unbelievable though, is the fact the 5 stores are opened each day, making Starbucks the fastest growing company in American in terms of number of stores besides Wal-Mart.

The success of the Starbucks is mainly contributed by the vision and ambition of one ma; One person who decided that an atmosphere was so addicting that it needed to be infiltrate through American Culture. It is his ambitions changed a simple idea into a global business. To be honest, Schultz’s ambition drives him to see what no one else has seen, and achieve no one else thought could achieved. In the case of Starbucks, Howard Schultz’s vision has established the modern coffee culture.

Secondly, Schultz has a wonderful degree of integrity. In another words, he is acting as an ethical leader. Based on his direction, Starbucks offers health insurance to anyone who works more than 20 hours a week, even in unmarried, spousal situations. Moreover, Starbucks offer stock options to their employees throughout the whole company. This is the primary and crucial reason that coffee is as expensive as it is, Starbucks pays more in healthcare than they do coffee beans to make the coffee. Starbucks was one of the first companies in America to offer two unique benefits to its employees: Beginning in 1987, part-time partners became eligible for full health benefits; and in 1991, eligible full time and part time employees began to share ownership in the company in the form of stock options. In 1992, Starbucks became the first specialty coffee company to be publicly traded. In 1997, Schultz created The Starbucks Foundation to raise awareness for literacy causes. Howard Schultz wrote in his book “Pour Your Heart into it”, “Ultimately, Starbucks can’t flourish and win customers’ hearts without the passionate devotion of our employees. In Business, that passion comes from ownership, trust, and loyalty. If you undermine any of those, employees will view their work as just another job……their passion and denotation is our number one competitive advantage. Lose it, and we have lost the game.” Adding to the integrity of Schultz and his company, he pays the coffee bean growers above the market value for their crops. He feels that if he pays a farmer extra more, more passion and consistency will be given to their coffee beans.

Last but not least, Schultz is an active doer in the community he created. He is always helping out the new employee in the store. His friendly behavior helps him gained good reputations from his employees. His belief is that if you foster care and give people all they need from a business setting, then they will flourish emotionally and physically as a return. That is why he is in his stores. Not because he has to be, but because he would like to be.

He paid majority of his attentions on each individuals. That is why he is so popular among his partners. Servant leaders do just like he did, “serve others,” while remaining pay attention on achieving result in line with the organization’s value and integrity. According to his own reflection, his father and family taught him the value of giving, and actually he did make it through his life’s work. His credo is “give to you employee, all that you can. Give to your stakeholders what they expected. Act with integrity and loyalty to anyone you come in contact with. And be servant to anyone who you leader.”

In his book “Pour Your Heart into it”, he clearly stated what his leadership style is. Here are some quotes that is stated in his book and quite applicable to ministry and business alike:

A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It is seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It is seeing what other people don’t see, and pursuing that vision, no matter who tells you not to.
It is those who follow the road less traveled who create new industries, invent new products, build long-lasting enterprises, and inspire those around them to push their abilities to the highest levels of achievement.
But, passion is, and always will be, a necessary ingredient. Even the world’s best business plan won’t produce any return if it is not backed with passion and integrity.
When you take on a partner, and when you select employees, be sure to choose people who share your passion and commitment and goals. If you share your mission with like-minded souls, it will have a far greater impact.
When companies fail, or fail to grow, it is almost always because they don’t invest in the people, the systems, and the processes they need.
Once you figure out what you want to do, find someone who has done it before and ask them to mentor you.
In building discipline into a company it is possible not only to honor the creative process but also make it stronger and more dynamic.
Even when life seems perfect, you have to take risks and jump to the next level, or you will start spiraling downhill into complacency.
“We’re not in the coffee business serving people. We are in the people business serving coffee.” - Howard Behar, Starbucks executive
One of the fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.
To be an enduring, great company you have to build a mechanism for preventing and solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.
The head of a company can’t, and shouldn’t, always be the cheerleader. He has to be willing to let his people see the weaknesses and pain, as long as they understand them in the context of the company’s greater accomplishments.
Business at its best is not about just making a profit. It is about achieving the fragile balance between the fiscal responsibility that we have to our shareholders and our constituencies as well as our commitment to benevolence and to the people in the communities that we represent.