This week's mail brought something that I believe is truly a rite of passage - an invitation to my 30th high school class reunion. My first reaction was, "Good Lord, I really have gotten that old, haven't I?!" As I thought about how my life has played out - especially in contrast to the comments that my friends wrote in the margins of my yearbook - I realized that the path my life has taken is far from the one I thought I would lead when I was 18-years-old and living in Appalachian Ohio. I never dreamed I would live in New York City, work every day with leaders of businesses that span the globe, or actually have a tapas restaurant on my block (frankly, I never knew what tapas were ... or is it "is"?) when I was growing up.
On the other hand, I realize that I have arrived where I am and, more importantly, become who I am because of where I've traveled and perhaps even more importantly, where I started. In the community where I grew up, people had a common phrase for this appreciation for valuing your roots - "Dance with the one what brung ya."
I was reminded of this a few days ago as I listened to a fascinating interview on NPR with Howard Schultz, President and CEO of i4cp member-company Starbucks. He described his journey from the early days of Starbucks, his rise to CEO, his departure from the organization and his decision to return to the company at the height of the recession in 2008 to help it find its way. In his new book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, Schultz describes how he left Starbucks in good hands in 2000 but, as the pressures of global expansion and the recession hit the company, it began to stray from its original, central mission of providing great coffee and great customer service.
Schultz's focus since returning to the helm of Starbucks has been to remind the company of what made it great from its beginnings and, in effect, re-teaching all levels of the company how to execute against its original brand promise. This is illustrated by Schultz's decision shortly after his return to the helm in 2008 to close all of its more than 16,000 stores around the world for three hours to conduct a global meeting and employee training session on the methods of delivering the perfect shot of espresso. The cost? A modest estimate of this single meeting was more than $10 million. However, the strategic outcome was to reclaim Starbuck's purpose or, in Howard Schultz's words, its soul.
The past few years have been hard on businesses. Who hasn't lost valuable customers because they simply couldn't afford our services any longer? Who hasn't had to face the hard facts of providing fewer benefits and career development opportunities for our employees? Who hasn't been tempted to chase our strategic tails to grapple for micro markets or latest trends? And, perhaps most importantly, who hasn't had to make tough decisions about choosing the people we keep on board to get us through the hard times versus letting go of the loyal - and often times long-term employees in order to make ends meet?
Difficult as they are, these decisions are a matter of business and we shouldn't let ourselves become distracted by second-guessing or guilt.
As Howard Schultz demonstrates, we should be reminded of the value of the "ones what brung us." That is, now that the pressures of the deepest economic recession that we have experienced in more than a lifetime are beginning to ease, we have the opportunity to take a breath, gather ourselves, and reconsider what we are doing for our customers, what overall business and human capital strategies we're employing, and how we are managing our products and people.
Of course the post-recession world is profoundly different from the one we were navigating in the middle of the last decade. Product and labor markets are different; new competition has emerged, technology has improved, supply chains have shifted, and our workforce is both weary and forward-focused on what is coming next. We cannot go back to the way things were, even if we wanted to.
So that brings us back to the challenge that business leaders and Human Resources executives in particular are experiencing. How can we move beyond the recession-driven mentality of survival, understand the realities of the new post-recession economy, and simultaneously reclaim our brands and customer commitments that brought our companies through the past recession (and others)? The key is to understand what our companies represent and what made us great to begin with.
From a Human Resources perspective, we need to grapple with the fact that new competencies, new perspectives, and a broader understanding of global markets is probably necessary to supplement the talent we had as recently as a half a decade ago. At the same time, we also need to reclaim an appreciation for the individuals who helped us build our relationships with our customers in the first place, who built our products and services, and who have served as the guardians of our institutional memory about what has made us great.
As I contemplate going back to Ohio for my 30th high school class reunion I have to face the facts that I will likely never fit into my 28-inch jeans again, that I won't ever again run a six-and-a- half-minute mile, and that I will certainly never again sport an Andy Gibb-inspired haircut. But I do understand and embrace the fact that, if it hadn't been for the people that helped raise and educate me I would not have been able to accomplish what I've achieved today. I dance with the ones what brung me.
John Gibbons is the Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development at i4cp. He has been a human resources practitioner, researcher and thought leader in human capital strategy for more than 20 years. His work has been featured in hundreds of publications and news outlets around the world including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CEO Magazine, CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).
