Howard Schultz Brought Americans Together at Starbucks, Can He Do the Same in the White House?

If you get the opportunity to have lunch with Howard Schultz as I did recently, one aspect of your conversation with the former Starbucks chief executive and possible third-party presidential candidate is likely to stand out. He has a habit of spending more time listening to people answer his questions than he does talking.If it seems unlikely that a third-party presidential candidate could win the White House, it's also worth considering that Schultz would be an unusual candidate for high office during an unusual time in American politics. The son of Jewish parents, he grew up in the rougher side of New York City's urban landscape. When he was young, his parents were on the losing side of the financial struggles that would plague their adult lives. Facing eviction, they moved into public housing and never seemed to be able to step out of poverty's shadow during Howard's formative years. Inside that darkness came embarrassments, shame, and something short of a happy home life.For some, such an upbringing may have hobbled future ambition or inculcated a destructive approach to life. But for Schultz, his background seems to have left him with a valuable asset for building an innovative company and, perhaps, winning support for high office. Looking across the stretch of his life from childhood to now, what emerges is his display of empathy and compassion for others even while driving toward ambitious goals.If that seems amorphous or incongruous for a corporate executive, you might be missing an essential value proposition of Starbucks. Before the coffee juggernaut came along, coffee was largely a cheap commodity. Consumers were accustomed to drip coffee priced in cents rather than dollars. Starbucks burst onto the scene offering lattes and all manner of caffeinated drinks many Americans had never realized they even wanted to buy. That the chain took off is well known.Why it took off is worthy of discussion. I'm not alone in contending that the secret ingredient to the chain is likely that America was in need of a "third place" outside of work and home to socialize and build a sense of community. Someone I knew once summarized Starbucks as a great place because it's where you buy dessert as a drink to take with you. And selling sweet things to Americans is a good business model. But for millions of Americans, the coffee shop — with an atmosphere that invites you to linger — is something deeper and more significant.Long before everyone else was doing it, Starbucks proved that Americans wanted a place where they could go and read the paper, work remotely, sit with friends or meet new people. In an increasingly isolated tech-driven world, Americans appreciated a place where the barista — as the old show Cheers used to say — "knows your name."Reading through his book From the Ground Up, it seems clear that Schultz understood early that he was in the coffee business, but the real value he was unlocking was the creativity of people. He built a company that took the long view, that sought to facilitate that all-too-infrequent human interaction between people who otherwise might never meet, might not ever have people encourage them on tough days or rough patches of life when it is crucial to have courage to build a career, return to school, or otherwise take on life.As part of that realization, Schultz offered health insurance to a workforce that the investing world encouraged him not to insure. He also launched a series of initiatives for Starbucks to engage in a national conversation on race, offered stock to retail employees (another benefit he was discouraged from offering), helped American military veterans rotate into the civilian workforce, sought to grow jobs in America, and tried to foster a broad sense of compassion for others.Not all of these initiatives worked out the way Schultz had hoped, of course. But rather than the missteps, what will be relevant in 2020, if Schultz does run for president, is that each of these initiatives accomplished two things.  Continue reading...

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