Leadership and organizational structure

Leading Organizations -- Starbucks in a local Airport

The hectic nature of coffee shops in airports is an excellent location to validate or refute a given company's stated vision, mission and values. Starbuck's has built one of the most valuable brands globally by balancing their exceptional focus on sustainability and concern for the environment on one hand, and their continued emphasis on customer service and unique drinks, both hot and cold, always being available and customizable to any customers' requests. In observing a Starbucks in a local airport during a recent very hectic Saturday morning, the vision, mission and values of the company and its culture became very clear.

While this Starbucks, tucked down at the very end of an airport concourse, did an excellent job of managing and fulfilling orders, it was obvious it was too thinly staffed for the location and traffic. This immediately became apparent when the young man taking the orders was also alternating with a barista and cashier role while two other ladies continued to take orders and fulfill coffee orders. It was evident that in the Starbucks culture the perception of lost time with customers is heavily stressed, as no customer waited more than a minute before being acknowledged, even during peak periods. The cultural values of responsiveness, respect for the customer, efficiency and speed of process came out during the most stressful times of the morning. What also became apparent was that training had been exceptionally strong at this specific Starbucks as the young man acting as a barista knew exactly how and when to start and stop blenders, espresso machines and grinders, orchestrating up to three different tasks at the same time. The culture of training was also evident in how quickly each of the workers could quickly substitute into a process that was underway while another workers was on another customer order. All of these seemed orchestrated, yet as the morning went on it appeared that this team had worked for hours together and intuitively knew how to support each other.

At the peak of activity around 8:40am the team was clearly stressed out from having worked very hard all morning long. Yet instead of whining and complaining in front of customers, a woman running the cash register and front counter made a call to their supervisor in another part of the airport. She asked for two people to come in and help explaining the lien was getting too long for the three of them to manage quickly enough. She said it loud enough so everyone in line could hear, in effect acknowledging their presence and the urgency the had about getting coffee and on their flights. Still, customers were sending body language cues that they were getting impatient and even angry. One women stood with hands on her hips and stared at the women making the call, and then even pointed at her watch. The Starbucks employee smiled and waved, saying over the phone that help was on the way.

As the line started moving again when the Starbucks' employee hung up the phone, two young women showed up in their barista aprons and immediately started working on orders. It was evident these two young women had years of experience in making complex drinks -- they knocked down the backlog of custom drinks in about seven to ten minutes. It was impressive to watch. The line was steadily moving at this point and even the lady who had pointed to her watch and given a very defiant look smiled. By 9:30am the first and second wave of flights had left the concourse and the line dwindled to between three and five customers, then none. At 10:00am the third wave flights were out and the concourse was nearly empty. The two baristas made themselves cappuccinos and the two women working the front gave each other high fives while the young man worked to restock the front cabinet of pastries. The baristas had a short break and started cleaning the area of their coffee machines, grinders and steamers. By 10:30am it was time to catch my flight.