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Starbucks President: It’s Not about the Coffee, Leadership Lessons from Scaling Starbucks from 28 to 1,500 Locations | Howard Behar
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- [00:04]
Howard Behar
When I read those words, I just absolutely said, that's me. That's who I want to be. I'm a leader, but I'm a servant first. And I brought that to Starbucks and I drove it home. Because at that time, there was nobody in the organization that thought of it in those terms. I coined this phrase that we're not in the coffee business serving people, but we're in the people business serving coffee. Coffee was important, like software or whatever it is is important at Google. But it was about people that was going to determine our success or failure. First and foremost, the people that worked in Starbucks and then the human beings we serve.
- [00:44]
Dart Lindsley
Welcome to the Work for Humans podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. As president of Starbucks North America and Starbucks International, Howard Behar said, set the standard for how to scale a company while sticking to your core values and scale. They did. Howard joined Starbucks when they only had 28 stores located entirely in the United States. And by the time he retired, they had 1,500 stores in almost 50 countries. Howard founded his management philosophy on the principles of servant leadership, the belief that companies thrive when they focus on people first. That philosophy shaped Starbucks culture and became a model for businesses everywhere. In this episode, Howard and I discuss how values based leadership transformed Starbucks, the challenges of scaling without sacrificing culture, especially scaling internationally, and why he believes serving others is the foundation of all work. We also talk about what today's leaders get wrong and how companies can build cultures that truly support their people. All right, if you enjoy today's conversation, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a future episode. Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Howard Behar. Howard Bihar, welcome to Work for Humans.
- [02:16]
Howard Behar
Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here as a.
- [02:19]
Dart Lindsley
Leader of Starbucks through such enormous growth. I think today what we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about human values, being a people centered company, being a servant leader through scale, what that means and how you do it. But then how do you do it as you become just an enormous company? And I think a lot of us find ourselves in enormous companies that didn't start out human centric, and we want them to be more human centric. And it's hard to pull them around, right?
- [02:52]
Howard Behar
Incredibly difficult.
- [02:54]
Dart Lindsley
So Starbucks was founded March 30, 1971, and it was just beans. And I think I remember visiting in 73. I was a kid, but we lived in Seattle. My parents loved coffee. And you started working at Starbucks in 89. So there were 28 stores at the time. How did you find out about the role?
- [03:16]
Howard Behar
I was trying to buy a business at that time, actually a franchise. And I had a friend named Jeff Brotman who was one of the co founders of Costco. And he said I needed to meet this young guy named Howard Schultz who had just bought Starbucks. I'd been a Starbucks customer for 17 years, buying coffee by the pound. So Jeff introduced me to Howard and over a year long period of time we had this dance that at the beginning, neither one of us wanted to dance to the music. And at the end of a year we got back together again and fortunately I was extended an invitation to join Starbucks.
- [03:54]
Dart Lindsley
Before you joined though, you said, look, I'm going to work with you for a week. Yes, and you did. And at the end of that week you decided to join. What did you see?
- [04:04]
Howard Behar
I saw that it was not about the coffee, that it was about people. I smelled it right away. I smelled the beans, but more I smelled the people. And I worked in the company for a week for free. I asked Howard, let me work here a week for free. I want to work on the trucks, I want to work in the roasting plant, I want to work in the stores. At the end of that week, let's get together again and if you think there's something here with me and I think there's something with you, then we can talk. And fortunately, I fell in love and Howard extended an invitation. I saw right away that it was about people. And you know I'm an avid coffee drinker. So here I was in the middle of this place in the roasting plant. No sale. I wasn't roasting coffee, I was packaging coffee for Costco in bags. Hand pulling a crank, filling a two and a half pound bag, putting a piece of tape on it, putting in a box. I did that two days straight. I hadn't worked that hard. I couldn't remember when on my feet the whole day, but I fell in love with it. So the rest was kind of history.
- [05:03]
Dart Lindsley
When you saw that it was about people, it was about customers and it was also about employees.
- [05:08]
Howard Behar
Yes, both. The customer part I always got that. I've been in retail my whole life, so I understood that. But coffee is a people centric product. Coffee is, I call it the grease of life. You sit down, you have a cup of coffee by yourself, contemplating, just thinking. Might be reading a newspaper or a book. Or you might sit down with a friend and have a conversation. Or you might sit down with somebody you love and have A romantic conversation, but you're among people usually. And so I just thought right away that that's what it was about. It wasn't easy getting other people in the organization to understand that they thought it was about coffee.
- [05:48]
Dart Lindsley
So you started working there in 89 and then in 92 Starbucks went public. Were you involved in that at all? And did it seem like a risk to the soul of the company to put shareholders in charge?
- [06:09]
Howard Behar
Well, yeah, and we talked about it. We talked about what's going to change. And all of a sudden we have outside owners versus venture capital or equity partners. And so we knew that there were going to be some changes. But I'd been part of two other public companies before that. I understood it. And what I understood was you're not a victim of a public company. Public company can allow you to do things you couldn't do with venture capital on your own. And so we just had to hold true to our values. And we made our minds up early on that we were, it didn't mean we didn't make mistakes and we didn't do things that we probably shouldn't have done in the name of being a public company. But for the most part we stayed true to our values. And there were conflicts, no question about it. We had health insurance for all of our people, including part timers. Nobody was doing that in our industry. It wasn't just coffee industry but fast food or restaurant. Nobody was doing it. And we said we're going to do it. And there were a lot of shareholders that said what do you need to do that for? It cost you a lot of money. And we said because it's part of our values. And we straight two to those values. And when people push too hard, we used to say sell your stock.
- [07:18]
Dart Lindsley
The other thing you did is you offered more than minimum wage.
- [07:22]
Howard Behar
Oh yeah, we did that. More than minimum wage. We had great benefits for everybody. We always were looking for how can we help people have a better life. We gave everybody equity in the company. Every part time worker got equity in the company, got options and all the way through. And the same health insurance the CEO had was the same health insurance that the barista had. That was part of Howard Schultz's deal because he had a dad that didn't have health insurance when he was working for a company and had an accident and couldn't work and his father couldn't support the family. And so he never forgot that. And Orin Smith, the other leg of the stool, pretty much. Orrin and I were raised by depression era Parents. My dad was born in 1895, my mother was born in 1909. So I never forgot the stories about their lives and how tough it was. And we wanted to live by values and we wanted to serve our people by respecting human beings first.
- [08:22]
Dart Lindsley
In 1995, you were named president and. And at that time there were about 400 stores. And in 1996, the first international site opened up and I was in Tokyo.
- [08:35]
Howard Behar
I became president of Starbucks International.
- [08:38]
Dart Lindsley
That's what I wanted to clarify. It's president of Starbucks International which meant that you were responsible for the expansion outside of the country.
- [08:45]
Howard Behar
Yeah. Outside of North America. Correct.
- [08:48]
Dart Lindsley
So as you started to move internationally, did you find that human centrism and being people centric meant a different thing in different countries, or does it scale pretty well across international boundaries?
- [09:05]
Howard Behar
So when we went in, the first country outside of North America was Japan. And I took servant leadership to Japan. Starbucks had to be Starbucks no matter where we went. Does Japan have some different cultural things in the United States? Sure. Did the UK have different culture? Yes. Did Dubai have. Yes. But we stayed with what we knew and how we treated people within the confines of our four walls. We weren't going to change Saudi Arabia on our own, although amazingly enough, we did lots of things with inside of Saudi Arabia that nobody had ever done. And we did lots of things in Japan. You didn't find very many female heads of companies in Japan, nor officers of companies. And I went in and we did everything, by the way, with joint venture partners. So we couldn't just ring the bell ourselves. We had to get our joint venture partners signed on. And I kept pressing our joint venture partners and I was on the board of the Starbucks Japan company to have females in senior leadership positions. And it took a while, but we finally did and we ended up with two presidents of Starbucks Japan that were both female. Now, there weren't very many companies like that, but it was who we were and what we wanted to do. And so we stayed with it and we kept pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, and it worked. Now you're looking at a guy that barely got out of high school. I had two years of community college. I should never have had that job being the president of Starbucks International. I got it because I was persistent. I did the first business plan I taking Starbucks outside of North America and I pushed for it. And I knew Starbucks, so they had confidence that I wouldn't destroy Starbucks going to other countries. But I didn't have experience of selling in another country. I had experience of buying from another country. Because I grew up in the home furnishings industry. But I took what I believe, which was people were people no matter where you went. And I came out of that experience more convinced than ever that's just the way that it is. Everybody wants to be treated with respect and dignity. Everybody wants to love and be loved. Everybody wants to grow as a human being. Everybody wants more for themselves and families. And those things are universal. They appear in different forms in different places, but they're all the same. And so that's what we went with, that this is how we were going to treat people with inside our walls. And that's what we became known for. And people wanted to come to work for Starbucks, not because it was a coffee company, but because of what we represented and who we were.
- [11:40]
Dart Lindsley
It's interesting, the idea that you're not qualified because it's very easy to think that the core knowledge that makes it possible to take a company international is something in a spreadsheet, that it's something that an MBA might create. But the core knowledge that you had growing up around your father's store and growing up face to face with customers in the furniture business was the core knowledge of what to build a company on.
- [12:12]
Howard Behar
Yeah, you know, I became a student of servant leadership in my late 20s. It was where I finally was able to define who I was as a leader, who I wanted to be as a leader and the knowledge I needed to gain. I was an unconscious competent. I was a servant leadership before I even knew what the words meant. I'd like to tell you that I'm 80 years old and I am now a conscious competent in terms of servant leadership. But I am always learning and growing about servant leadership and what it means. And so I had that innately, most of it came out of family of origin stuff. Parents, my dad, small mom and pop, grocery store, growing up in retail business, and my brother and brother in law's furniture stores. And so I had that basis in what I truly believed in. And that's what I brought with me to Starbucks. And that's what I took to Starbucks International. And I knew the business of Starbucks and I knew how retail stores make money. And it's the same globally. You know, there were no differences.
- [13:11]
Dart Lindsley
And when you first named servant leadership, was it because of Robert Greenleaf's book?
- [13:16]
Howard Behar
Robert Greenlake coined the term servant leadership and it was because of his work. And I read his pamphlet the Leader as Servant. And I so struck me when I read those words, I just absolutely said, that's me, that's who I want to be. I'm a leader, but I'm a servant first. That was just who I was. And I brought that to Starbucks and I drove it home because at that time there was nobody in the organization that thought of it in those terms. And I coined this phrase that we're not in the coffee business serving people, but we're in the people business serving coffee. Because I was trying to get people to understand what it was about. Coffee was important, like software or whatever it is, is important at Google, but it was about people at Starbucks. And that was going to determine our success or failure, how we performed in that arena. First and foremost, the people that worked in Starbucks and then the human beings we serve. I didn't like calling them customers because when you call people customers, it says they have a dollar bill pasted to their forehead. And if you just manipulate them, you can get that dollar bill. I thought you serve people because you want to, whether they going to give you a dollar bill or not.
- [14:30]
Dart Lindsley
Okay, wow. Going to have to change my language. You're right. There's a dollar bill pasted to the forehead of customers. So the mission or the vision of Starbucks, which I'm going to read, is to be one of the most well known and respected companies in the world. Known for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit. I've never heard that in any other company's vision, the human spirit. Arriving at that must have been a deep conversation.
- [15:05]
Howard Behar
It was difficult. We had baristas, store managers, officers, the chairman of the CEO trying to figure this out. It was when Jim Collins came to help us. It was before his books came out. Good, great and built the last. And he was a professor at Stanford and he had this term he called the bhag. Big Hairy, audacious goal that was bigger than you, bigger than the organization. You never can get to it. You may never complete the goal, but it drives you. And that's what we came up with, was those words. And when those words came out, and it took us a long time, it took us months to finally wordsmith it to where we all said, that's it, that's us. You got to remember at that time we had a couple hundred stores and to say, we're going to be one of the most well known and respected organizations in the world, that was beyond. Everybody laughed about that. Somebody even said, someday we'll be as well known as Coca Cola. Then we really left. We didn't have that dreams of grandeur that was too big for us, but to be known for nurturing Inspiring the human spirit. Everybody attached to it. I so attached to that that I plagiarized it for myself. And I said, that is now my mission in life. Every day I'm going to nurture and inspire the human spirit of myself first, and then for others. That's how I live my life.
- [16:23]
Dart Lindsley
The very first chapter, I think, of your book, It's not about the Coffee, is about self knowledge. So we've got this one foundation which is the foundation of. It's humans helping humans. Right? That's the foundation. But there's this other piece to it, which is the quote that you have is from William James at the beginning of the chapter. Seek out that particular mental attitude which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive. Along with which comes the inner voice that says, this is the real me. But this idea that the foundation of your leadership needs to be on the bedrock of who you are, which at the beginning, you may not know who you are. Did you know?
- [17:12]
Howard Behar
No, I did not. I did not. I was behaving in a way that put people first. And it's kind of who I was from the beginning. A smile on my face always. I was the third born. I was the baby of the family. I was treated with a lot of love, unlike my brother and sister, who got the abuse. A much younger father, I didn't. And so I got used to that. And that's who I was innately. But I had no idea what that meant until I ran into a problem. First time I was ever an officer of a company, it was in the furniture business, a company called Grandtree Furniture Rental. And I was an outspoken guy. I never held anything back. I said what was on my mind. I wasn't afraid to do that. I was always willing to give my opinion. I was always willing to listen to others. And my CEO of the company thought that I was too emotional, that I shared too much, and that if I was going to be a good executive, I needed to hold my cards a lot closer to my vest. And when he said those words to me, I thought to myself, well, why did they promote me? And I went into depression because I tried to change myself. I tried to be that executive that I thought he said I needed to be. I didn't share anymore. I closed up myself. I was. I had anxiety. I went from a guy that loved to get to the office early every day to a guy that hated it. And over time, I realized that I needed to get out of there because it wasn't like he was asking me to change the Color of my pants. He was asking to change me. And he would have been better off to say, you don't fit with where I want to take this company. I could have dealt with that a lot more easily than dealing with the fact that I needed to change. And so I stayed about another year. But after that experience, I said, the problem was not Walker. The problem was me. I didn't know who I was really. I couldn't define who I was. I knew it innately, but I couldn't talk about it. And so I decided I needed to figure out who I was. And somebody gave me this book. And I can't even remember the name of it now, but it's kind of like the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And the first thing in the book, it said, you need to identify your 8 to 10 core values. What are the things that really matter to you? And then, come hell or high water, you're going to live by these values. It didn't mean you couldn't change them. You wrote them in pencil, but they were really who you were and what really mattered to you. And in those days, there was no going online to get a list of 300 words that represent your values. In this book, it had A list of 300 words that represented human values, and you had to get it down to 8 to 10 core ones. It didn't mean that there weren't 50 or 100 other words that might identify you in some way or another, but these are the things that really matter. And then you had to take those core values and you had to define them for yourself. What do they mean? Because values are just words until they're turned into action, until they inform your decisions. They have to become real. They're about the things that you do or the things that you don't do, the things you say or you don't say. And then the second part of the book talked about identifying a mission statement for yourself. I'd never even heard the term mission statement. Companies didn't have mission statements in those days. Their mission was to make money. And it said a mission statement has to be something that's bigger than yourself and that drives you every day. And so in those days, because I was in the furniture business, my mission statement, I wanted to be one of the leading executives in the home furnishings industry. And then I changed it once Starbucks did its bhag. You know, that became so innate in me. I said, that's me. And then the third one said, write a paragraph or some sentences that Define how you want to live your life. And I came up with, I call my six P's. First P is everything I do in my life has to have a purpose greater than me. It's not about me. It had to be about serving somebody else. It had to be a purpose that got me up in the morning and that the second P I was passionate about, that I got up in the morning, could hardly wait to get to my work and to do the things that I wanted to do. Because passion is important. It's that energy, that innate energy that you're excited about doing the work that you're going to do, even though you might get tired sometimes, you might get bored, but it drives you. And then the third P is persistence. See, in the rivers of our lives, those rivers that we all are on, there are rocks. Some of those rocks are below the surface of the water. And we're going down that river and we, boom, we hit that rock and it shakes us. And we say, oh, shit, what are we going to do? And you have to figure out how to get over, around or through that rock or blow it up or there are rocks in our rivers that we can see and for some reason we hit them anyway. It's amazing. They're sitting out there, we can see them ahead of us, and it's like we're oblivious. And then those rocks that our parents or our coaches or our bosses, our teachers tell us about and warn us about, and we ignore their advice. But we got to be persistent enough to get through, over, around, or blow up those rocks. Because persistent pays in life.
- [22:42]
Dart Lindsley
Foreign hey, everyone, I want to let you know about some upcoming speaking events. If you happen to be in the Great lakes area on September 30th. I'm keynoting the HR track at the UWEBC 27th Annual Emerging Best Practices in Technology conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference pulls in some fabulous speakers to discuss topics across all of business, not just HR. Also in Oakland, California, September 17th and 18th, two of our past guests at Work for Humans will be speaking at the Responsive Conference. Bree Grof will be talking about her sparkling new book Today Was Fun. And Simone Stolzoff will be talking about his next book. So check it all out@revolutionive.org use promo code elevenfold. That's eleven fold to get a substantial discount. All right, hope to see you there. And it's gotta be backed up by 0.1 and 0.2. So purpose and passion.
- [23:46]
Howard Behar
Oh, yeah.
- [23:46]
Dart Lindsley
When you hit the rocks that I.
- [23:49]
Howard Behar
Can get through this. And I will get through it because.
- [23:51]
Dart Lindsley
There'S something on the other side of it.
- [23:53]
Howard Behar
Yeah, there's something on the other side. And then the fourth P is patience, which you'd say, geez, isn't that the opposite of persistence? It's not. The most important person you have to have patience with is yourself. Not everything comes in the time frame that you want it. You know, you can set a goal for yourself and sometimes it just takes longer than you think it's going to take. And sometimes things get in your way and you got to have the patience to get through them and you have to have patience with other people. Not everybody gets it in the time frame you're going to get it. Not everybody attaches in the way that you want them attached. And so you have to have patience with others. It's a skill that you learn to develop. It doesn't mean that you aren't driven to get things done. It's not my point. But sometimes you have to have room for people to come along a little bit slower than you want them to come along. Unless it's a fire in the building and then you grab them by the collar and say, we're getting out of here because we're not going to die.
- [24:50]
Dart Lindsley
Does patience have baked into it some forgiveness?
- [24:54]
Howard Behar
Yes, absolutely. You know, when you got a team and you hire somebody, people are people. They either giving you more or less than what you expect. It's hardly ever right on the money. And so you've got to be able to forgive people when they don't give you what you expect. It's always amazes me how leaders are really able to take the surprises when there are the wonderful surprises. Like Google or Starbucks gets a million dollar order from somebody they didn't expect. And everybody claps and everybody's excited and they put their arms around you. But when you come in and you say you missed one, they don't have much patience for that. Right. But you got to have patience for the good and the bad.
- [25:36]
Dart Lindsley
Number five is performance.
- [25:38]
Howard Behar
Well, that's the one we human beings all struggle with. Because nobody likes to be measured. We don't like it in any parts of our lives. And the people that are measuring us don't like to tell us the truth. A lot of the times they don't want to deal with the conflicts that kind of come. But performance matters in this world. If you get married and you commit to have a monogamous relationship, being monogamous is performance. If your job is to take out the garbage at home, you shouldn't have to be told to take out the garbage. Taking out the garbage is performance. If you commit to your co workers to get something done when you're supposed to get it done, then getting it done is performance. You know, there's always room to say, you know, I'm sorry, I forgot to take out the garbage, I'll do it right now or I'm not going to make this deadline. Can you help me? But performance matters. Performance matters. When you say to your kid you're going to be at the soccer game, you better show up. Right? Because that's performance. And we're getting measured whether we like it or not. We get measured by our bosses. We get measured by our significant others or spouses. We get measured by our kids. We get measured all the time. And the most important person we have to perform for is us. You need to look in the mirror every night and say, how did I do today? Against all things, against your values, against your mission statement, against my, what I call my six P's against the work that I do. Did I get done what I say I was going to get done? Did I live up to the expectations of my spouse? And there's a lot of times I don't and fortunately she lets me know.
- [27:14]
Dart Lindsley
And so you're clear eyed about your own performance and patient?
- [27:18]
Howard Behar
Yes.
- [27:18]
Dart Lindsley
If occasionally you don't make it.
- [27:21]
Howard Behar
Yeah, I don't. And there's plenty of times when I don't and I try to hold myself accountable. It's not easy, not easy to look in the mirror and say, howard, you screwed up, but you got to be able to do it. You got to be able to look at yourself first.
- [27:34]
Dart Lindsley
And the sixth B people.
- [27:36]
Howard Behar
There's not one thing that any of your listeners or any human being will do that isn't about serving others. I don't care what you do. I don't care what your title is. Doctor, lawyer, fire chief engineer, architect, doesn't make any difference. All the way to widget maker. A widget maker makes a widget that gets sold to a publishing company that goes into a printing press. And the printing press produces magazines or newspapers that get delivered to somebody's home to inform or entertain them. The lowly widget maker is about serving others. And it behooves us in life to understand what we do, how we do it, how it serves other people. Because when you do that, then you're less likely to get burned out or get bored. You may get tired, everybody gets tired, right? But when you are attached to the idea that we're here to serve others. That invigorates you.
- [28:32]
Dart Lindsley
And as a business, as Starbucks, how far does your responsibility extend? So there's the four walls, there's your supply chain. There's the humans that come to experience each other. And to experience Starbucks, does it have edges or does it drop off as you?
- [28:55]
Howard Behar
Yeah, well, yes, we can have influence in the world, but how we have the greatest influence is by staying true to our values and living. But there's lots of people in today's world. Look at the conversations we're having about dei. I mean, give me a break. Diversity, equity, inclusion, what is that really about? It's not about black or white or green or yellow. Diversity is primarily about diversity of thought. What organization do you not want to have diversity of thought? Google couldn't survive without diversity of thought. I mean, I know those two founders think they know everything, but they did not know everything. They hired a lot of great people that helped them move along. It's the same as Starbucks. So equity is not about everybody being equal, but equity was about that everybody gets treated in the same way, that everybody gets the same opportunity to experience, to grow, to learn, to perform. Right. And inclusion means that we include all people in the journey. And that goes to your point. Look, inclusion means that we have a responsibility not only to our shareholders, but we have a responsibility primarily to our people, to the people we serve, to the communities we live in, to the world in which we buy coffee from. Right? And that's the only thing that keeps the world going. And when you get greedy, and I don't mean greed in the context of money, but when you get greedy in the context of how we treat other human beings, when it's always about you, that destroys community and the world in which we live. What are families about? What makes families tick? If you got three kids, do you want them all to be the same? Do you want them all to think alike? I don't think so. You want them experience life and become their own human beings. And what does equity mean in a family? That we treat each other as equals. In a family that we understand that as a parent, we're to help our kids grow, to coach them, but we see them not as little children that aren't capable, but of human beings that are capable of great things. And inclusion means we include them in the greater family. My family used to have planning sessions with our kids, and we'd listen to what their goals were, and they would listen to what our goals were, and we included them in the process. And it helped Them grow.
- [31:30]
Dart Lindsley
Were you looking at your five year plan?
- [31:32]
Howard Behar
Yeah, we'd have five year plans. We included our kids in our five year plans. The things that were our own personal goals, like I have personal growth things I wanted to learn, jobs I wanted to have money, the kind of equity money I wanted to make, things like that. You know, I told them about that, but they weren't part of that. But when they had goals, we helped them achieve their goals.
- [31:52]
Dart Lindsley
One of the things that you've written about extensively is listening and listening to the people in your organization. I think one of the lines I particularly love, people don't work on work, they work on dreams. How did you listen to people and then how did you scale that?
- [32:17]
Howard Behar
Well, first of all, you better be listening for people's dreams. Servant leadership, at its core are these three things. You help your people grow as human beings. You help your people grow as professionals. You help them achieve their personal goals in life, and that's what you're there to do. First. You got to know where they want to go before you can ask them to assign themselves to the greater purpose of the organization. So you got to start there. And look, that saying, we want to nurture and inspire the human spirit. Right? Everybody understood that, right? And that became the rallying cry. It wasn't, hey, we want to sell a zillion pounds of coffee. We had goals. We had monetary goals, economic goals, of course, but it was how we wanted to treat the people in the organization. It was hard to get fired at Starbucks for missing your numbers. Difficult. It was easy to get fired for messing with the people, no matter what level you were at. And we drove that throughout the organization. And I took that with me wherever I went and wherever we had success. And I'm just, I'll talk internationally. It was because our joint venture partners intrinsically understood that and acted on those ideas. Nurture and inspire the human spirit. Wherever we failed internationally is where I screwed up and I got the wrong partner. And they didn't understand it was about the people. And we had to eventually get them out, which wasn't always so easy.
- [33:45]
Dart Lindsley
How did you listen? Like, physically, what do you do physically?
- [33:50]
Howard Behar
What you do, you have to listen to what's not being said. First of all, a lot of people don't say the things that are on their minds and you have to ask questions. I had three questions, amazingly enough. I've been retired for 13 years, but I still ask Starbucks people when I go into stores if I have a chance to talk to them. Okay, what do you like about Starbucks? What don't you like about Starbucks? What would you change about Starbucks? And then I would take the answers to those questions, and when I was working at Starbucks, and over time, there'd be enough people that were telling me the same thing. I'd go, aha. I think there's something here that I need to act on. And so I did. Because if you listen but don't act, it's worthless. So when somebody tells you something and enough people tell you and you ask clarifying questions about that, then you have to say you have to ask other people, well, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? Howard Schultz was the creative genius of the company. I was the alchemist. I took what people said. I put it. Disparate ideas, put it together and put it out there. And not always with Howard's approval, you.
- [34:59]
Dart Lindsley
Know, Were you able to walk into stores and be unrecognized? Did you want to?
- [35:04]
Howard Behar
No, I wasn't there to spy on them.
- [35:07]
Dart Lindsley
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:08]
Howard Behar
You know, I mean, we had what some people call mystery shoppers. I hated that term. I wanted to call it snapshot, because at any given point in time, if I turn my face this way, sometimes maybe I look more handsome if my face is turned to the right. It's a snapshot. It's a point in time. It doesn't mean that's the way the story always is. And we didn't take that information and come back and use it as a hammer. I said, I want it to be in a velvet glove. Give them the information. Let them act on it. Now, if we did four or five snapshots and we found the same thing going on all the time, then we would have a conversation, a different kind of conversation. But that didn't happen very often. It did sometimes. There's some people that get it and can get there and some people that can't, and that's okay. It doesn't make them bad human beings. It just means they don't belong working at Starbucks. That's okay. Nothing wrong with that. You gotta love them going out the door as much as you love them coming in the door.
- [36:04]
Dart Lindsley
One of the things I really admire about your approach, there's a lot of HR departments that think that employee experience, the part that they're responsible for, is HR services, which definitely they are. So I'm not saying that they're not. But what you're very focused on is the experience of work. What's it like in the store? And I always look at baristas And I look at their eyes, and if their eyes are alive, I feel like things are working. And if their eyes are not. And so my son's a barista. Right now I ask him, are your eyes alive, or do you feel alert and aware and engaged with what you're doing? And he does. He's been doing it for a year. A year? Not quite a year, six months. But I certainly wouldn't want him to have his eyes go out.
- [37:03]
Howard Behar
No. And people do. And it doesn't just happen to barista. It happens to executives. We had a CEO that was a smart guy, a very smart guy, came out of the tech industry, but he didn't understand the stores. And shame on us for putting him in that role, but he did not understand the people or the stores. And we got a union because of it in the Northeast. And it happened during COVID It was a struggle for all companies at that time because government was giving mixed signals. Our people were scared. We didn't know what to do. And so the input from leadership was inconsistent and not in keeping with the people's fears. See, they had fears, but we didn't listen to their fears. And we did a lot of good things, but in a couple of places, in a geographic area, we didn't. And it spawned a union because they didn't feel they were getting listened to, and they had the fears that they were dealing with, and they felt like leadership didn't care. And when that happens, that's what you get. And you get those kind of eyes that you're talking about with baristas when they feel they're not cared about. Now, some people don't know how to have alive eyes. They don't know how to stay in the moment. And so you have to coach them and you have to teach them. What does it mean? And they don't understand. They're there to serve others. I used to tell our baristas, these were in the early days that you're social workers, and you have 10 seconds to determine where that person is in front of you. Did they just get a traffic ticket for 200 bucks and it used up all their food allowance for the week or month? Or did their kid just get a full ride to Harvard and they're excited to tell somebody, if you're paying attention, if your eyes are alive, you will smell it, you will sense it. Those little antenna that you can't see that we all have. You're in tune with other human beings. And you know, the people that are. I had yesterday experience at Starbucks or let's see, was it yesterday or day before yesterday? And I was going through a drive thru, Starbucks drive thru and I was getting my drink and the person handed me a drink and didn't even look at me, right? And I said to my wife, that's a problem. She didn't even look at me, okay, she's young and stuff like that. I'm forgiving. But I almost stopped and said to her, you know what, here's something that would have made me feel better if you had just looked at me when you handed me the drink. Not say, you're a bad person because you didn't look at me. But help her grow. She's young, she didn't know and she wasn't paying attention. And that's our job, is to teach people. See, this idea is about serving others. When you learn at Starbucks how to serve others, you take that with you through the rest of your life.
- [39:46]
Dart Lindsley
What's so internally consistent about this is that if I'm making coffee, my eyes will go out. And the reason is I have turned it into muscle memory and I'm just making coffee at that point. But if I'm looking at people, people are infinite. You're never going to run out of new and you're never going to run out of depth when you're serving people.
- [40:10]
Howard Behar
And some people come in and they're nasty. And we have that all the time. Sometimes we had a lot of female partners. You know, we call partners or people that work at startup partners. And sometimes men would come in and be inappropriate. We'd ask them not to come back and we had to stick up for people. But sometimes our leaders didn't respect our people, sometimes our managers didn't respect our people and sometimes our customers didn't respect our people. And if it's not inappropriate, sometimes you got to understand it's not personal. They're just where they are that day. And sometimes when somebody's not treating you well, you can ask them, how are you today? Is something wrong?
- [40:53]
Dart Lindsley
I asked that about my bank the other day. My bank absolutely blew it like three times in a row. I said, are you guys okay? Yeah, because accidents happen. But I'm worried about you. They didn't like that at all because they think if you're worried about the bank that you think that there's going to be a bank run or something. That wasn't it. I was worried about them as people because something was going wrong in there.
- [41:22]
Howard Behar
Yeah, exactly.
- [41:24]
Dart Lindsley
So so much of this is about your personal self knowledge and your Way of listening. But organizationally, was there any operational structure that was responsible for the experience of people at work? Was it hr? Was it bigger than hr? Did you have research teams?
- [41:48]
Howard Behar
No. No.
- [41:49]
Dart Lindsley
What'd that look like?
- [41:50]
Howard Behar
It's everybody. And it began with me, and it ended with me. And let me tell you, I'm an emotional guy, and I could sometimes get out of control, but I recognized it myself, and I immediately owned it. If I made a mistake, they're going to hear it from me first, and I'm going to own it. But it was everybody. Everybody had to participate in that. And we didn't all do it. And I was as guilty as the next guy. But I reinforced it constantly. I mean, I gave two speeches when I was at Starbucks a thousand times, right? And the first speech was about people, why we're here. And the second speech was about coffee, how coffee serves other people, and the importance of the creativity in our coffee. But the first speech was always about the people. And I never stopped talking about it. I still talk about it because it's what keeps us together. It's the important thing in life. You know, let's take our new president. I would say that his family loves him, and I would say that he loves his family the way he talks about them and the way they look at him. And his grandchildren love him, and he loves his grandchildren and stuff like that. I can guarantee you he doesn't talk to his grandchildren the way he talks to the rest of us. I can guarantee you that. And how he talks about other people. And for some reason, he thinks that it's okay to be two different people. It's not. I was Howard. No matter where I was. I always believed I needed to bet my job every day. Howard Schultz and I used to get in some blowout arguments, blowouts where he probably should have fired me a dozen times. But you know something? I was not afraid of getting fired because I was going to live to my values.
- [43:42]
Dart Lindsley
I want to talk about two things. So, first of all, in terms of the current president, one of the things I really would like to say is, you know, this role is not about you, right?
- [43:54]
Howard Behar
Yeah, but he thinks it is.
- [43:56]
Dart Lindsley
I know it's not adornment. It's a servant role. You serve the public well.
- [44:04]
Howard Behar
See that? Remember I said greed is not just about money. He has a little greedy tendency. It's all about money. Him, he always is wanting to tell people how much he's worth and how much he's making and all that kind of stuff. And look, there's nothing wrong with wanting money. I like money. I am a capitalist pig. I admit it. First and foremost, I love the game, right? But I never believed that the idea was to maximize. I always thought the idea was to optimize with this understanding that you got to serve others along the way. If you really want to have a healthy economy, want to have a healthy company. And greed is also about making it all about you.
- [44:44]
Dart Lindsley
You mentioned you had some blowout arguments with Howard Schultz. What would that be about?
- [44:49]
Howard Behar
Oh, lots of things. Sometimes he could be hard on people and I'd be the first one to go and say, what are you doing? This is not helping you. It's not helping the organization. Most of the time it was about things that I wanted to do. So he hated Frappuccino, right? And I snuck it in. Wasn't my idea. It was a store manager and a barista's idea and eventually became 20% of our sales. I don't think he still likes Frappuccino. He did not want semi automated espresso machines. I snuck them into Japan was the first place he never saw him. We had them in and we had to do it because we were serving so many people and we had turnover like all kinds of fast food places had. And so to educate people on how to use these machines was difficult. And we had carpal tunnel syndrome because they have what's called a group, which you were turning it in. And these young women who weren't quite tall enough. We'd have boxes trying to get up so they were at the right height because it created carpal tunnel in their arms. So I said, we got to do something. So there were always arguments about that kind of stuff. The first one we had was about non fat milk. He didn't want non fat milk in the stores. And I was this way. I was early on in the company and I'd go into stores and the people would. Customers or those human beings we call customers would order stories, skinny lattes. And I didn't know what that was. And I'd say to the barista of the storm, what's a skinny latte? And they say, well, they want non fat milk, but we don't have it. So what we have is 2%. So we offer them 2%, but it wasn't what they wanted. And I said, why don't we have non fat milk? Well, because Howard Schultz thinks it denigrates the coffee. I said, he thinks it what? That's not our decision. That's that human being, our customer's decision. And so I planted a question. We had open forum meetings that I brought with me, and these were where anybody could ask any question at any time, no matter what the question was. You wanted to know how much money I make, what kind of car I drove. You could ask any question that was okay. So I planted the question, why don't we have non fat milk? I had a store manager ask it and I said, I don't know, why don't we, right? And is anybody here getting requests for non fat milk? Everybody raised their hand. I said, so why don't we try it? So any six store managers want to try it? We put it in the stores. It became 50% of the business in about two months. So now everybody wanted it, but he hated it. I had one guy that was in the coffee department actually quit over it because he was so sure that we were denigrating the coffee.
- [47:21]
Dart Lindsley
First of all, I'm just somehow delighted that that's what the blowouts were about. It wasn't about, should we buy back some stock? It was about skim milk. Damn it.
- [47:35]
Howard Behar
Yeah. The original founders of Starbucks did not want to be in the beverage business. They wanted to only be sell whole bean and tea and stuff like that. And Howard was the one that said we ought to be in the beverage business. And finally they said they wanted to sell out. And Howard bought the company and he turned it into primarily a beverage company. Totally changed the company. I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if not for Howard. He was listening.
- [48:01]
Dart Lindsley
And that required some milk. I'm just saying, required some milk. Not skim milk, but at least getting into the country, it required some milk. So one of the things we talk a lot about on the show is experience design. And there's a book that I particularly love by Joe Pine, which is the Experience Economy. And he also talks about mass customization. And all the time when we talk about experience design, we talk about Starbucks. Starbucks is. Everybody knows what we're talking about, for one thing. And everybody knows that it's not what coffee shops used to be and that it's a more complete experience. You probably never used the word experience design, but it sounds very much like that's what you were thinking, which is what is the experience of being here?
- [48:48]
Howard Behar
Human experience. I didn't have to design a damn thing. Be nice, right? Be thoughtful. Be caring. Understand you're here to serve. That was all it was about. There is not a damn thing different between doing that and going home or leaving in the morning. And instead of yelling, I Love you from the back door. Going up to your significant other, give her a kiss on the cheek or the lips or whatever you do and say, honey, I love you. I'll see you later. You want to call that experience design? No, that's just human beings acting as loving and caring human beings. And that's all I ever wanted at Starbucks. Just act as a loving, caring human being to the people that work in the company and as a loving, caring human being to the people we're serving. That's all. No more, no less. And I took that internationally. That's all I was. I was no more than less than that.
- [49:40]
Dart Lindsley
Stories about Starbucks circulate all the time as examples of business and people who are developing theories talk about that. But I recently read a very lovely book which I think you would like. It's called Leading through to a large extent. It's written by Kim Clark and two of his kids and it's about morality in business. And one of the things that they talked about there was that one of the most important things you can do is give people freedom and give people in an organization, agency. But there's this balance that I think is very hard to strike. And I'm wondering if you work to strike it, which is Starbucks is extremely uniform in its presentation. And I know there's a binder or something, one of my nieces is an absolute drop dead expert on that binder and how to run a Starbucks or whatever. Maybe it's probably online now, but there's a lot of uniformity. Does it leave room for freedom of the people who work there or is that not a concern?
- [50:53]
Howard Behar
No, it is a concern. When I was at Starbucks, we did not have manuals. We had tool books. I would not have a manual. We were hiring a bunch of people out of the quick service fast food industry. They all had manuals. So I wanted a tool book. Why did I wanted to call it a tool book? Because if you're in your kitchen and you know the little, the light switches and they have little screws, why do they always come loose? I don't know how it happens, but there's always one that's loose. So you don't need to go to the garage to get a screwdriver. You can go to the knife drawer and you get a little knife and you take it and you turn the screw and you put the knife drawer back in. That's a tool book. Right? So I wanted to tell people, here's what we're trying to do, here's why we're trying to do it, please follow this tool book. But if you have a better idea, we want to hear about it a better way. Now, I like recipes, not rules. But there are some recipes we have to follow to the end for safety. That's a recipe that you don't mess with. The recipe for counting the cash, putting the cash on the safe. That's a recipe we all follow for how we make drinks. We made a drink the way that human being we call our customers wanted it, right? So we had a recipe for a latte. That's how we made a regular latte. But if somebody said, I'd like a little extra foam, another shot of coffee, whatever it was, then break the recipe. See, I love carrot cake. The problem is, is that I don't really like carrots, but I love carrot cake frosting. So you could give me a piece of cake with the bed that was about a half inch with two inches of frosting. That's my idea of good carrot cake. Some people like tons of carrots. So the idea is to tell your people what we're trying to accomplish, right? And here are the things that are sacrosanct. Here are the recipes that I want you to follow. Here are the recipes that have to do with people you don't need to follow. Do what's right for the human being. And human resources can get caught up in follow the goddamn excuse, the expression recipe. This is how we treat people. Don't vary from it. So I'll give you a Starbucks example of when somebody said, I'm going to follow the recipe. But it was wrong to follow the recipe. So we had a store manager that was struggling to keep his store clean. So a bunch of store managers said, we're going to come help you after your store closes and we're going to come help you clean up the store. So they all show up at 9 o' clock at night and somebody brings a case of beer and some pizza. So they clean the store and they get it and they help this guy clean up his store, trying to help him out. And they're drinking the beer and eating the pizzas. They're singing their songs, cleaning the store. And the next day the district manager found out about it. We don't allow alcohol in our stores unless they're where we sold alcohol. You cannot bring alcohol into store people. Cannot. So he fired all the store managers because that was the rule. That was the unassailable recipe. Except that's the recipe that you make exceptions for. And he wasn't understanding Enough to do that. So we straightened it out. But look at the damage it did. There was no reason to do that. You ask yourself the question, were they doing something to serve the organization and the people in the organization? Yes, they were. So can we sometimes say to them, we really appreciate what you're doing and we really don't want alcohol in the stores. That's one of the recipes we don't want to break. So please don't do that again. That's all. It didn't require any more than that. And thank you, by the way. Thank you for helping Joe clean his store. Really appreciate that you did something great there. And see, that's where it comes into. People want rules. They want to know that they're okay all the time. And leaders, leaders always say, I don't want any surprises. Except they like the Million Dollar Order. That was a surprise. They like that one. So it's that idea. It's loose, tight, right? My kids. Kids are kids, and I was a kid. So I used to put a cup with a hundred dollars in the cup with five and $10 bills or $20 bills. And at any time, if they were going out at night, I would say, you know, always don't drive if you drink. Please don't. They're at high school. I knew what they were going to do. They were going to smoke a little marijuana. They were going to, and I didn't want them to. And I advised against it. But some things you can control in life, and I didn't want them to lie. So I'd say, anytime you want to take a taxi home, the money's in the cup. You get the taxi home. If you don't have the money, you go get the money out of the cup, you pay them, and you'll never get asked where the money went. And I kept that cup full of. They didn't use it very often, but once in a while they did, and I was glad they did.
- [55:59]
Dart Lindsley
One of the foundations there is trust.
- [56:01]
Howard Behar
Yeah.
- [56:02]
Dart Lindsley
Which is we're starting from a position of trust and we're doing the right thing.
- [56:07]
Howard Behar
It's the grease of life. Trust is what makes the world go round. No trust, no community, no family, no marriage, no organization, no nothing. You don't trust each other, you got nothing. And that's the problem we're having in this country right now. We don't trust each other. I'd love to give you an example I had with Google. So you probably didn't know this, but I was asked to come speak to a team At Google, the ones that do the telephone, that had the telephone, right. They made the phone. I came a day early. I asked if I could come a day early and so that I could talk to all the leaders. And so I went around talking to all the leaders. And I'll never forget, I said to one of the leaders, you know, have you ever tried to call Google? Have you ever tried to ask for help from Google? And you know what that leader said to me? We believe that our products are so good that you don't need any help. I didn't say a word, but I used it in my speech. I said, are you sure your people you're serving don't need help?
- [57:07]
Dart Lindsley
And how would you know if they can't call you?
- [57:10]
Howard Behar
The difference between Apple and Google is a bat. You know, I'm 80 years old. I struggle with my computer, with my iPads, with everything. I call them up, and sometimes I have to wait 15 minutes, usually not. And they help me every single time. Every single time. Why do I spend so damn much money with Apple? I think I'm an idiot. I got up talking to you on an iPad. The damn thing was. I don't know how much it was. 1500 bucks. My last phone was like. I mean, and I have bought so much Apple stuff, I can't even. But you know why I do? Because I believe that they care about me. That's why I do it.
- [57:51]
Dart Lindsley
I've talked about that on the show several times. And you're talking about it on the service end, but I also feel it on the design end. When something's really well designed, I feel seen. I feel like it's predicted me. It saw me before I even bought it.
- [58:06]
Howard Behar
If you get on the phone and you call at and T, I don't care who you call. You call 100 companies and what do they say? And I want to put you on hold. We have an unexpected amount of calls, or I forget what they say. It's always the same, right? But it's unexpected. They're lying to you. They're lying. It's not an unexpected amount of calls. They're too cheap to have enough people to answer the damn phone. That's what it is. That's all it is. No more, no less. I'd rather have them say it's too costly right now to answer all the calls. But if you leave your number, we'll call you back when we get time. At least it's an honest answer. Don't lie to me.
- [58:47]
Dart Lindsley
So there's something you said at the very beginning of the show that I want to bring back, which is when you went public as a company and all of a sudden you have shareholders who have expectations of you. One of the things you said is just tell them, sell our stock if you don't like.
- [59:03]
Howard Behar
That's for me to say, you know. But, you know, a guy named Jim Senegal who was the CEO of Costco, did that a couple times. Now, I listen to your shareholders like you listen to other people, but you also have to talk to them and you have to tell them why you're doing what you're doing and what it's going to be. Now, sometimes they get mad and they say, well, we don't like that and we want the CEO out, but so be it. Gotta be willing to bet your job every day for the truth.
- [59:31]
Dart Lindsley
That's the hard part, I think. Because I was going to ask, why is it that so many leaders have such a hard time holding the line? I can't remember who coined the term, but he talked about the inshitification of products. They started off great and then they started to make it about extracting revenue.
- [59:53]
Howard Behar
Yes.
- [59:54]
Dart Lindsley
And as they start to extract revenue, they just get crappy. So there's two possibilities there. One is you did a really good job of explaining to your shareholders why you were making decisions and they got it and they continued to believe in.
- [60:09]
Howard Behar
What you were doing over the long term. And you gotta ask them for that. Too many CEOs, they're afraid how many shareholders really understand there is no company where the earnings go like this and nice line right up to the top. If you really get behind and you understand how hot dogs are made, this is what it is. But they look for ways to even it out. They're not telling you the truth most of the time. Maybe some are, but most of them aren't. They're always looking for ways to even it out. What do they do? They do stock buybacks to get the earnings per share. They do all this stuff trying to get that. Is that really how we want to operate things? That doesn't mean we don't want to grow. It's just the understanding. Human beings don't grow like that. We do good things, we make bad mistakes. We do good things, we make mistakes. We're growing. That's what's happening. And that's what happens with CEOs. We just can't seem to deal with the truth in life. I'm not always a good husband and I'm not always a good father. And I'm not always a good grandfather.
- [61:12]
Dart Lindsley
Has Starbucks, while you were managing, ever had to do layoffs?
- [61:17]
Howard Behar
Yes, we did. And I'm embarrassed about that because we were going to have to do some layoffs because we were closing stores. So we were going to lose store people. But we laid a lot of people off at the support center that had been with the company a long time that we didn't have to. And within a year, we were already starting to hire people back. And that was in the 2007, 2008 downturn. We weren't losing money, we weren't going to go broke. Right. It was a downturn in the economy and we shouldn't have laid them off. I wrote a book about that, a fiction book. I didn't talk about Star Wars. It was called the Magic cup. And it talks about a board not paying attention and leaders not caring about the people. And I was mad about it. I just didn't think we needed to do it and we didn't need to do it. And we got rid of people that we should never have gotten rid of. Their heart and soul bled Starbucks. And the next group of people that came in, it isn't that they didn't care, but their heart and souls didn't bleed Starbucks.
- [62:14]
Dart Lindsley
That decision, I see it a lot. I see it a lot in Silicon Valley. I see companies making billions of dollars more than they did the previous year, literally enormous amounts of money and laying people off. And I will tell you that it is insiders in Silicon Valley who I speak with are sort of like bewildered by that. And Jeff Pfeffer says something. He's a Stanford professor who's very much.
- [62:43]
Howard Behar
A. I know Jeff.
- [62:45]
Dart Lindsley
Yeah. He said people do stupid things all the time. Why would you expect leadership not to do stupid things? But it is a mystery what's going through the minds to try to even out earnings.
- [62:58]
Howard Behar
That's all they're trying to do.
- [63:00]
Dart Lindsley
That's what they're trying to do.
- [63:01]
Howard Behar
Let's get down to what the truth is. The truth is, is that look what happened to salesforce.com that CEO I like a lot. I think he's a pretty good, honest person, cared about people. So the company is not performing at the level that he wants. He's got to come back in. And what does he do? He goes through a bunch of layoffs. Now, if you're going to get rid of a business inside the unit, fine. You're going to have layoffs. I understand that. But let's be honest about what we're doing, why we're doing what we need to do or why we're doing. But the shareholders beat the hell out of him. Right. And he panicked. Now, you got to perform over periods of time. I'm not advocating not performing. You've got to perform, but it needs to be looked at over a period of time. Let's look at what happened to Intel. What did they do? They are performing well. They start saying, we got to increase our earnings. And they start getting rid of engineers and people that brought them to work. And how are they doing today? Let's look at Boeing. You want a great example? Boeing, right? They wanted big earnings, so they bought. What did they do? They merged with McDonnell Douglas. And the minute they did that, they brought in a whole different style of leadership. It became about money. And then the board isn't paying any attention. Lousy board members, because they allowed that to happen. And they started getting rid of people when they'd have layoffs and they'd lay off engineers. You know how hard it is to get a good engineer. So who's kidding who here? Short term, itis. Would you get a divorce every time you didn't like something your wife did? Would you disown your kids because every time they didn't perform at the level you want? No, you wouldn't.
- [64:39]
Dart Lindsley
Yeah. You think about something like Boeing. You think about these large tech companies in particular, the people you lay off. They have a complete mental model that has never been written down of how your company works and how your product all fits together. And they may lead Boeing. Right? And they may love that company.
- [65:01]
Howard Behar
You know, it's like we're going through this deal that our friend Mr. Musk and Mr. Whatever his name is, they're going to fire 75% of all the people that work in government. Okay, go ahead, do it. I say let's do it tomorrow. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. My opinion about all this, if I'm a Democrat right now, I'm going to let it all go. I'm going to give my input, and then I'm going to shut up. And let's see how all of this really works.
- [65:30]
Dart Lindsley
Let's talk about the amazing work that government does because they're going to get slammed in the next four years.
- [65:40]
Howard Behar
It's almost criminal. Elon Musk, he looks at it. He could give a shit less about the people, could care less. You look how he treats people, how he treated all the people that left Twitter. Was those people doing a good job? Did they come and say, you got to hire me. You got to hire me. You got to hire me. No, they get hired by people that were running it. It wasn't their fault if he didn't like it. And he does the same thing with all his companies. Now, I have to give him credit, he's obviously smart, but he thinks he did it all himself. And everybody think, where did all those engineers come from at SpaceX? Were they all baristas? Just working at Starbucks and he got hired them. They must have had some experience at making spaceships or whatever they do. And I'll bet a lot of it was in government.
- [66:25]
Dart Lindsley
Well, and interestingly, when you look at Musk's businesses, they all have a government component. They are mostly subsidized. And so you take EVs, they're subsidized by governments. You take spacecraft.
- [66:38]
Howard Behar
They didn't even create the damn car. Somebody else created it.
- [66:41]
Dart Lindsley
Yeah. I recently pointed out that Musk was very accomplished, but very small. And reading your book, one of the things that was so encouraging to me was that you are very accomplished and you are expansive. It's not about being small, it's about humans.
- [67:02]
Howard Behar
He's obviously very smart.
- [67:04]
Dart Lindsley
You can be smart.
- [67:05]
Howard Behar
But the problem is there's a lot of smart assholes, right? Yeah, a lot of them. What's his name that started Uber was a smart asshole. And my definition of an asshole is somebody who doesn't care about people and is all there just to make a lot of money. The guys that ran Wells Fargo, smart assholes. The guy that ran Tyco, smart assholes. And there's a lot of them in this world, and they could care less about really how the world works. They've got their idea and they're going to drive it home no matter what it costs. I mean, I think Zuckerberg is one of those. He could care less about the damage that this is doing. And it's done a lot of damage. Is it great tools? Yes. But uncontrolled tools, you know?
- [67:53]
Dart Lindsley
Well, I could talk all day. I am going to go into closing questions. I'm very encouraged by this conversation, except for the last bit, which is true. So I ask a few questions. So one of the questions I ask because I believe work is a product that companies sell, that I think of work as a product because I ask product design questions about work. And so I ask each person who comes on the show, what do you hire your work to do for you? And what is interesting about that question in asking it of you is you're going to say, I hired My work to do things for other people? Yes, but I'll still ask it. I'll still ask it, what do you want from work? And it might have to do with what's your current five year plan?
- [68:41]
Howard Behar
I live my life, like I said, every day trying to nurture and inspire the human spirit. Sometimes it's just picking up a piece of garbage off the street. And fortunately in Seattle there's always plenty of inventory. So I get to pick it up. But I bend over and I pick it up and I put it in the trash can. Look, at the end of the day, here's how I want to be evaluated. Here's how you can evaluate my performance. Did he live up to nurturing and inspire in the human spirit? Did he live his life trying to serve others, even though he wasn't always successful and didn't always live up to that? That's how I want to be evaluated. And if the answer is yes, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. It's not did I make more money? I have plenty of money, but it's never been the driving force. Money has always actually scared me, more than made me secure. But that's my work. And so you allow me with this to do that work. I couldn't do it other way. If you don't invite me, I give lots of speeches and I do, but if you don't invite me, I don't get to do my work. I do it by coaching others. When Starbucks I'm retired for a long time and I kept during COVID I was getting one call after another from district managers, regional vice presidents. If I could do what we call open forums on zoom to talk about the things that I believed in. And I would say nothing has changed at Starbucks. We're still only about the people. Don't let this other stuff frighten you. Don't let the COVID and don't let the leaders in the organization take you away from the idea that it's all about the people. Fight for it. Be willing to bet your job.
- [70:25]
Dart Lindsley
Did your mother and father get to see you as a business leader? Did they get to see that?
- [70:31]
Howard Behar
My dad died 54 years ago. I was 26 years old and he was 74. He was born in 1895. My mother, she saw some things. My mother and I had a different kind of relationship. My mother could never understand why I like to work and my mother never understood why I worked so hard. And here's the story behind that. My mother was the Last born of 13 children. Came from Latvia. She was the baby. And my mother was a hard worker. She worked hard, but she was family work. She helped my dad in the grocery store, but my mother would iron my underwear. To give you an idea, I was not very driven as a kid. I was insecure. I was not a very good student. I could barely read. And I was not an athlete. And I would say, I wish I could be an athlete. And my mother would say, howard, not everybody can be about anything that I dreamt about. And I internalized that as if I wasn't capable. And it did real damage until I finally got mad at myself first. And that was in my 20s. It took that long to where I said, you know, I don't want to hear that anymore. And she would say it to me. She was very old at the time. Why do you work so? And I used to yell at her, say, mom, because I like it and I'm capable. And it took me a long time to get to really believe where I was capable. And that's when I really grew, when I finally believed that I was capable. And it was because of somebody else that gave me that book, the Servant as Leader, and taught me how to set goals and taught me about my values and taught me that I was capable.
- [72:12]
Dart Lindsley
It's interesting how many of our institutions teach us were not. Yes, what does your work cost you?
- [72:20]
Howard Behar
I am a emotional guy. I've had depression. I've had anxiety since I was a little kid. I didn't understand it. I was all in on my work, and so I was anxious all the time, and I had depression during my work, and I had to fake it. I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't know how to get help until I finally retired. And I'd gotten help before, but I finally retired, and they finally put me on some medication, which really helped me. But it cost me some mental illness. But I don't blame that on anybody else. That was because I didn't know what to do. I had all the tools to my avail, and I didn't use them. So it did that. It cost me some family stuff, but not too much there, because we have a nuclear family. I had a daughter born from another marriage. My wife had a son. So we kept that together. It wasn't always easy, but I was traveling a lot, traveling out. But I loved it. I gotta admit. I loved. I loved. The best job I ever had in my whole life was Starbucks International. I learned so much. It was so much fun and challenging and interesting. It was Just incredible time.
- [73:35]
Dart Lindsley
I can't imagine anything more fun.
- [73:38]
Howard Behar
I was traveling, I was tired all the time. I'd come home and the only thing I wanted was my wife to give me the mail. It's a strange thing, but it gave me control over something. You know, she'd want to go to a play or out to dinner and I couldn't keep my eyes open, you know, but she was understanding it sometimes, not all the time. So I would say it cost me a lot of emotional well being and some mental health.
- [74:04]
Dart Lindsley
It might be the risk of focusing so much on others that you are passionate about that at the expense of oneself.
- [74:13]
Howard Behar
I never have felt that. Never have I felt that because my internal rewards were about that. When you treat people with respect and dignity, they treat you back that way most of the time, not always, but they honor you. I used to send out birthday and anniversary cards to everybody in the company till we hit about 10,000 people. I'd take boxes of cards on airplanes or home with me. I hand signed every one of them and I got as much reward out of that as I gave. People loved it because they were recognized, right? And they loved me because I did it. So I'm not here to tell you that it wasn't. There was some greed in me and that greed was about people respecting me. And I loved it and I still love it today. But I never, ever felt, even when I didn't get recognized for it, because most of the time you don't. When I helped somebody, maybe it was one out of a thousand that would come back and say thank you, but it was for me. So I never once felt that way, ever. I've never felt used.
- [75:21]
Dart Lindsley
Where can people learn more about you, about your work, about these principles?
- [75:26]
Howard Behar
I have two books. One is called It's not about the Coffee and the other one, it's the Magic Cup. But here's what I'd like to do. So I'd like to give everybody in your audience my cell phone number and my email address. So Here it is, 206-972-7776 and my email address are my initials hbowardbehar.com I will respond to everybody just want to call up and complain about your boss. I'll listen. If you want to call up with an issue you want to talk about, I'll listen. That's a way of me living out my mission. I want to serve people. It gives me an opportunity to do it. You know, if I don't have the answer, I'll tell you. I'm not your guy. Here's where you might think about going to get the help. So there you go.
- [76:14]
Dart Lindsley
Thank you very much for coming on the show today. This is really deep and inspiring. I appreciate it.
- [76:22]
Howard Behar
Well thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. I really appreciate it.
- [76:29]
Dart Lindsley
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it, believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and is high standard for quality. Final note, the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.