Starbucks at it again: When people throw lemons at you, make lemonade!

Leaders aren’t those who never make mistakes. Leaders are those, who make mistakes, accept them and learn from them to make better decisions in future.

Does the recurring issue with Starbucks over sensitive topics like race and sexual orientation reflect a flaw in its corporate culture and leadership? Or the way these issues are handled by the company makes a case for a sensitive, progressive and forward looking organization?

While there can be arguments on both sides, it for sure will be biased towards latter. This for a simple reason that these issues have not kept Starbucks away from standing for what it believes in. Also, it has always responded to controversies with a calculated yet sensitive actions which make it the company people look up to for its values.

There have been multiple stories about Starbucks being the vanguard of progressive workplace values in this new service world. Its initiatives like health insurance to part-time workers and to hire 25,000 veterans were path breaking ones in the industry. It was also one of the earliest organizations to support the cause of gay marriage in spite of resistance from some of the investors.

Its employee friendly policies came to light again when after the corporate tax cut in the US, Starbucks expanded benefits to its employees in terms of monetary support and family leaves. Its coffee procurement policy and practices across the world have been much lauded for empowering local farmers.

It is surprising then, that such a progressive company, consistently finds itself on the wrong end of controversies on very sensitive topics. While Its failed #RaceTogether campaign in 2015 and the ‘Holiday cups’ controversy in 2017 were more on symbolic aspects, the recent controversy where cops were called on two black men waiting in the café, was more serious in many ways. This because a store manager was involved in supposed racial profiling and then a knee jerk reaction of calling cops on these men. Her actions were said to be prejudiced due to the race of the men in question. Unlike other incidents, where Starbucks found itself in soup due to miscommunication or mis-perception of its proactive initiatives, this time it was in controversy for actions that went against its self-proclaimed ethos and values of equality.

However, like always, Starbucks has come out with utmost humility and accepted its mistake graciously, which in itself is a mark of excellent corporate values. Not just that, they did something which was unheard of till date. In response to the incident which laid bare the unconscious racial bias which some of its employees may carry, all Starbucks owned outlets in the US, 8000 to be precise, were shut and the employees were engaged in a four-hours racial-bias training on 29^th of May 2018. Starbucks created the curriculum and the video for this training, which is now available for everyone.

Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz in an interview said, "I don't know of another company in the history of American business that's done anything remotely close to this". While this step was seen as being transformational by him, many people doubt the credibility of a four-hours training to be able to change racial bias in people. Virtual Training in itself, is considered a weak tool for achieving behaviour change. While this may be true, but two strong benefits of this response by Starbucks are – 

•          Starbucks’ response has created a template for service recovery for other comapnies across industries to follow. This also becomes now a more of a hygiene response to address such issues in future; and
•      This has again brought to fore the sensitive discussion about racial profiling and bias in businesses which needs a consistent acknowledgement and addressal

Starbucks in particular, after their call for this action, has established itself as a truly progressive company while also accepting that it does have flaws too but it is ready to accept them and work on them to be better. It has also showed that being socially conscious is not about one initiative here and there. It is about imbibing this behavior in your core values and be ready to take the pain that comes with this promise.

Starbucks has done that with utmost brilliance time and again, and it has been able to do this because it doesn’t push its mistakes under the carpet, but accept them publicly and promise itself and its stakeholders to be better in future.

Customers love companies who act like good human beings. That is companies which are kind, moral and ethical in conduct and most importantly, aren’t scared of their flaws and being vulnerable. Customers love companies which are like them, not perfect but committed to be better. That’s why they love Starbucks!