Starbucks The Aftermath, 3 Lessons For The C-Suite

As a performance export author and speaker I’ve been fortunate to advise corporate leaders, athletic department administrators coaches and teams, and the administrations at some of the nations leading colleges and universities. In so-doing I have met some phenomenal leaders, some transformative managers, and some that made me wonder, “How did they make it this far?” The one thing that they all had in common was an interest in making their institution be and function at it’s best. I offer these strategies to those C-Suite members who want their companies, institutions and teams to function at the highest level possible. 

By now everyone should be familiar with the Starbucks incident where two Black men were arrested while sitting in a Pennsylvania Starbucks after having tried to use the bathroom without making a purchase. The police were called and the arrest captured and shared on social media. Now what? That’s the question every member of the c-suite should be asking, and that I am going to answer for them. Lesson number one for C-Suite members is for every action there has to be an equal and opposite reaction. If an employee commits an act against a patron of your business then the response to that has to be for the company to commit an act that counters the offense. The truth is the company can and should have an action that is more than equal to the offense. In this case the offense was not only against the two men who were embarrassed, arrested and had their business meeting interrupted, the offense was against the African-American community, and the companies values. The C-Suite response has to address all that were offended and it has to be just as strong or stronger than the original offense. The appropriate response to acts of intolerance, racism, prejudice and stereotyping has to be a multi-prong approach because the offense was a multi-prong offense. Apologies, training, punitive action against the offending employee as well as a strategy for promoting the companies true values are all acceptable responses to the incident. However, there is one additional response that has to be committed to by the C-Suite in order to make the response equal to the offense. 

Love has to be the basis of the response. The old adage goes “you can’t serve the people if you don’t love the people”. Ultimately we who occupy chairs in the C-Suite have to love what we do, love the people who we hire and trust to do what we do, and love the people who we provide a service and product to enough to own our mistakes. We have to do this not because it’s good for our brand but because we love our company, our employees and our customers. We love what our being leaders of this company allows us to do with, and for the people we work with and for. 

Lesson number two, the C-Suite has to be in the decision making business, not the lets wait and see business. The timing of a response to incidences of this nature can make or break a company. If you want to be seen as genuinely concerned about your customers you have to be immediate in your response. You can’t wait for more research, you can’t wait until the boycott begins, you can’t wait for whoever has a certain title to address the concerns of “those people”. Real life does not work that way. People who spend their money with you expect more of the C-Suite. people who work for the company but are not in the C-Suite deserve leadership that leads under pressure instead of cowering and making excuses. I tell my clients and students that “excuses never explain and true explanations never excuse”. The C-Suite has to act so that people believe in them, the mission, and the values of the organization. When the C-Suite fails to act chaos results, trust is lost and the value of the brand is diminished. 

The third and final lesson for the C-Suite is, training after the fact should also be looked at as an opportunity to review and repair whatever front end process that got us here to begin with. In the case of the Starbucks incident referenced above the training addresses the behavior of our employees, but t does nothing to answer the question how did a person who does not buy into our company values of love, respect, and equity get past our screening process? What is it about our company that made this person believe they were carrying out our will or that it would be ok for them to call the police on two Black men? The C-Suite cannot just say we are providing unconscious bias training for our employees without simultaneously examining the other systems within the company structure that had to fail in order for the problem to be created to begin with. The C-Suite is positioned to examine the issue from a variety of viewpoints in order to produce the best outcome and ensure that this type of incident will never happen again. Finance executives can ask about the cost of proper vetting, legal executives can contribute judicial guidance around the new questions and background measures that need to be in place. Human resources executives can discuss new initiatives in recruiting and best practices in interviewing techniques that result in more accurate screening. The point being a complete team approach is needed instead of us just turning to the Chief Diversity Officer and saying, “Fix this”. After all, there is no I in T.E.A.M. and “Together Everyone Accomplishes More”. 

Bryant K. Smith is a performance export, author, speaker, "Thee Human Potential Specialist". Additional information about him and his work can be found at Smithcan.com.