Starbucks store managers gather for unprecedented Leadership Experience in Chicago

A letter from Kevin Johnson, Starbucks ceo, to all partners

Partners,

The energy here in Chicago is palpable as we welcome our store managers and field leaders from around the US and Canada for Leadership Experience 2019!

This is the largest partner experience in our company history, and a signal of our commitment to store managers and field leaders who are well positioned to lead us forward.  What Rossann Williams, Francesca Peri and the entire Leadership Experience team have designed for these few days is unlike anything I could have ever imagined, and we will share this special experience to boldly reimagine an exciting future for Starbucks Coffee Company.

Over the past two years, we have all been on a journey to transform the partner and customer experience, as we build an enduring company for generations to come. We have reset our leadership team structure, reimagined what it means to create a third place, tackled many of the social issues that affect us as partners and as communities, and outlined an agenda for growth at scale that is grounded in Our Mission and Values. Our work is beginning to pay off, and it’s because of you. Together, our best ideas and boldest aspirations will allow us to continue doing what we do best: stay true to Our Mission and Values, challenge the status quo, and dream bigger than ever before as we look to the future. 

It has long been our belief that when we put our partners first, the result is an elevated Starbucks Experience for our stores, our customers, and our communities. “This Moment” in Chicago will be a defining milestone on our journey. We’re going to use our time together to have an honest conversation about the things to support you showing up as the leader your partners and customers need, and we’re going to deliver on a set of major commitments to help you on your Starbucks journey.  Our store managers and field leaders will leave stronger and more equipped to carry Starbucks forward.  This week, we will:

• Recommit to the Heritage of Coffee: Coffee is our core. This week, we’ll immerse in the traditions and rituals that have brought us together for decades, while further defining our role in securing a more sustainable future for coffee and farming communities around the world. Our store managers will learn more ways to engage partners and customers in the story of Starbucks coffee, from bean to cup. 

• Empower Store Managers: We will invest in support of store managers as they lead partners, elevate the customer experience and ultimately growing engagement.  Through strategic, long-term investments in labor hours, training, and streamlining tasks and processes critical to running a store, we will work to alleviate some of the pressure and stress that often limits our store managers to lead and grow. The goal: create more time and space so every store manager can lead their business to higher levels of excellence in the third place experience and business performance.

• Break the Stigma Around Mental Health. Mental Health is a complex and difficult problem in society today that we are committed to addressing over time.  In Chicago this week, our store managers and field leaders will experience a Mental Health Matters session with a clinical psychologist that will introduce emotional first aid, followed by a discussion about what it means to thrive and develop self-awareness.  This is just the beginning, and we are excited and optimistic about what we will do in this regard.  Look for meaningful changes to be rolled out over the next year.

• Strengthen our Communities: We are pleased to share that while here in Chicago each store manager will have an opportunity to nominate a local non-profit organization to receive a grant from The Starbucks Foundation. This builds on yesterday’s day-long Strengthening Communities session, when store leaders had the opportunity to connect with dozens of organizations and resources, learn about new tools, ideas and actions, and redefine their role in building and strengthening communities.

• Lead in Sustainability: We have heard your passion for this topic and assure you we will continue to build on our legacy and lead in environmental sustainability efforts.  We will share early thinking with our store managers and field leaders this week about our bold and meaningful aspiration and commitment on this topic which we all so deeply care about.

Leadership Experience 2019 is a galvanizing moment for all of us. No matter your role at Starbucks, we are all united in a common Mission as we embrace the next great chapter of our story. At this transformative time for the company, we must continue to have the wisdom to honor our heritage and stay true to our Mission and Values, while at the same time have the courage to boldly reimagine the future of Starbucks.

Proud to be your partner,

Kevin

At the conclusion of Leadership Experience 2019, Rossann Williams, executive vice president and president of U.S. Retail, shared this letter with partners

Dear partners,

We just wrapped up an unforgettable Leadership Experience here in Chicago. It was a true celebration of the power of more than 12,000 Starbucks leaders coming together to reaffirm Our Mission and completely reimagine what’s possible. To the store managers, field leaders and support partners with us in Chicago… THANK YOU for making every moment count.

We have been on a journey over the last two years to transform the customer and partner experience in every store and in every community. Your honest feedback through store visits, open forums, Workplace, and Partner Perspectives has helped inspire some much-needed changes like new laptops for store managers, improvements to our scheduling software with Teamworks, Clean Play, digital incident reporting, a way to print all on your Playbuilder updates, and more. These improvements, combined with your leadership and commitment to Our Mission, have allowed us to reach record performance.

From our conversations, I know we can do more. Our stores and communities are constantly evolving, and we now serve 75 million customers a week! The Third Place is more necessary, yet more complex than ever before. Our roles might never be simple, but we need to reduce complexity. We have listened and learned so much from you and have some important decisions to share. This week, we made a series of commitments at the LE19 General Sessions, including:

• Adding up to 8 hours of labor to your forecast: Our store managers have asked for more time so they can coach partners, run the business, and connect with customers. These incremental hours will be available for schedules written the week of October 14, with more information coming in the Holiday PPK.

• Reducing 17 hours of complexity: We’ve identified additional tasks that we will automate, reduce or eliminate in FY20. We’ll have some exciting new updates starting this January, including the new MyDaily app for in-store communications, a new shift swap feature in TeamWorks, and a new Pull-to-Thaw app that’s going to make in-store inventory management much more efficient.

• Taking a stand to break the stigma on mental health: The mental health crisis is a complex problem, with 1 in 5 adults experiencing a mental illness each year. Many of you have shared that it is also a top concern for your partners and communities. This week, we brought 12,000 store leaders together for an unprecedented session on mental well-being and emotional first aid. That was just the first step in a new long-term initiative to take a stand, help break the stigma around mental health, and get even more partners and their loved ones the support they need. Look for meaningful changes coming this year, including:
  • An enhanced Employee Assistance Program (EAP) co-created with partners and qualified mental health experts to connect more partners to quality care that meets their specific needs.
  • Training for store mangers inspired by Mental Health First Aid in Q2.
  • Powerful partnerships with organizations such as the Born This Way Foundation and Team Red White & Blue to help break the stigma around mental health.
  • An app solution for all U.S. and Canada partners to help promote mental wellness. We're on track to offer Headspace subscriptions by January.

• Safer transportation: We want partners to feel like they can get to and from work safely. By the beginning of Q2, we will launch a rideshare option for baristas and shift supervisors opening and closing stores. We will start with 2,000 stores in select cities so we can learn and adjust as we go.

• Starbucks 411: We know there’s a much better use of your time than sitting on the phone calling into 4 different help desks, waiting for help. By the end of the year, we will launch a single number called Starbucks 411. And better yet, the 2 help desks you call the most, Facilities and EHD, will be digitized by the end of 2020.

• Fixing things when they break: Starting in October, we will end deferred maintenance as we know it. When something breaks, we’re going to fix it. And in Q2, you will even be able to track your requests digitally.

• Starbucks Coffee Academy: We know you’ve been asking for more and better coffee education that any partner can use, at any point in their coffee journey, and we’re excited about this rich, comprehensive program, available at StarbucksCoffeeAcademy.com, to help ignite or reignite partners’ coffee passion.

We’ll have more in the Sept. 9 Weekly Update. We’re only just getting started. We will listen to your feedback to make sure we get it right, so you can be the very best you can be in your role as store leaders. And as we do that, we will continue to lend our voice to the most important issues affecting our communities, while creating opportunities for you to lead. As shared at LE19, these include:

• A bold new vision for sustainability: As Kevin shared with us earlier today, we are preparing to declare our boldest vision yet around environmental sustainability, one that will guide and shape our next 50 years as a company and completely revolutionize how we operate our business. We’ll have more to share in the coming year.

• Empowering you to be a community-driven leader: At LE19, store managers nominated more than 500 nonprofit organizations to receive Neighborhood Grants from The Starbucks Foundation, creating immediate impact in their local communities. This week, we also unveiled the full To Be Welcoming anti-bias curriculum on the Starbucks Global Academy in partnership with Arizona State University, building on our Third Place Development Series, Pour Over Sessions, and May 29 trainings.

The day we all get back home will be the most important day for our future as a company. As leaders, how will we show up differently for our partners? How will we pour as much love as we can into our customers? How will we lead our stores differently? With Our Mission and Values at our core, we now have everything we need to reimagine what’s possible, starting right now. You are in charge, and we are here to serve and support. You hold the keys to our future, and we want you to truly feel valued, loved and proud of what we are all building, together.

I leave Chicago knowing there are true heroes amongst us. They are our partners in green aprons, with dreams and aspirations bigger than ever before. They are our customers, who come to us for that great cup of coffee and a place that makes them feel welcomed with love and respect. They are the individuals in our communities working tirelessly to make a real difference in the lives of others. And they are leaders, like you, who are going to change the world by nurturing and inspiring the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.

As I reflect on our time together this week, I am reminded of Kevin’s words: to build an enduring company, we must always have the wisdom to know what to honor and preserve from the past, and the courage to boldly reimagine the future. Standing here in Chicago with all of you, I feel so proud to work for a company that has the courage to dream big… and then, to dream even bigger! Chicago will forever be a defining milestone in our nearly 50-year history of living Our Mission and Values, and the starting line for what comes next. We’re all in this together. We will need to be more courageous than ever before. We are the leaders our partners, our customers and our communities are waiting for.

Thank you for being on the journey. Thank you for being you.

Rossann