Howard Schultz Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Howard Schultz - Essay Example It was at this point that Howard identified an opportunity at Starbucks, and he explored the company’s prospects before joining it. He internalized Starbucks’ objectives, while working as the organization’s departmental director and developed an entrepreneurial vision, but the company’s founders did not share in his expansion, prompting his departure. He established his own business but later purchased Starbucks and merged the two. He has since improved prospects of the company and his, to become global success. By the year 2012, Starbucks owned more than 1700 stores in almost 40 countries, with a net worth of about $ 35.9 billion and customer turnover of about 44 million people per week. His success from a humble background, arising from his vision and dedication, which identifies and exploits opportunities, together with his focus on targets; identify Howard as a leader, a visionary leader. The leader influences a wide range of followers such as investor s, workers, and customers, as is evident in his professional and entrepreneurial experience. He also influences policy makers and special interest groups, in his activism role, and his visionary and determination cause the influence (Bio, 2014). The discussion analyses the leader, based on covered concepts from the course. As the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz is seen to be one of the most successful and inspiring leaders of his generation. Schultz was part of a poor family. He grew up watching his father try to support the family with jobs that provided no employee benefits. This made an especially difficult toll when his father was injured with no health insurance or compensation to cover the damages that had been done. This is something that eventually impacted the way that Schultz would run his company. Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker added Schultz as a part of their company, Starbucks.

Communicating with a Diverse Audience Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Communicating with a Diverse Audience - Essay Example By diversity we are not only referring to ethnic differences but also other demographic factors such as age, gender, social class and religious beliefs. Therefore in our firm, we never use language that seems to target any particular group nor do we allow jokes that might accidentally offend someone's religious or cultural beliefs. Communicating with our employees and other stakeholders is however extremely important and critical to company's success. Over the years, we have learned that the more the communication, the better the understanding people have and the less confusion and conflict we face. Communication is regular done in form of both internal and external messages. We have an intranet that allows horizontal as well as vertical communication. The company website has a bulletin board where important messages are placed and there is a forum that allows for comments on new happenings. Change is the essence of business success today but it is change that generates most resistance. In our organization, we know that whenever any change is being introduced, people refuse to accept it readily at first if they fail to understand its significance. Thus, we have developed a culture of communicating about change before it is brought into the organization. To communicate after change has been introduced can often backfire. It is important to prepare the employees and others for change when it is being anticipated. This helps in reducing resistance, which can make the change process easier. We realize that whenever change is to be introduced, people must be taken into confidence not only so they can be informed but also to tell me how they can benefit from this change. Audience benefits are very critical to success of communication and thus we keep that in mind every time our organization is planning change. One key example of our organization's commitment to its employees is the time when we were planning to introduce robotic technology in our production unit. Organization understood that this was a big change and could result in serious resistance. But it also meant improving productivity by 65%, which could lead to lower costs in the long run. The firm however refused to let this change affect employees in a negative manner. We were more concerned about our employees' welfare than anything else. We knew that we had to improve productivity and our plan for introduction of robots could bring in serious improvements but we didn't want this to affect our employees. The organization first identified the way in which this change could affect our people. We realize that some people in the production department will have to be moved. We also knew that many people might not know how to adopt the new technology so training had to be arranged. Third, we had to find way to convince the audience of the benefits of adopting this new technology. But these benefits had to be audience benefits not organizational benefits. This was a critical task and failure to communicate properly could produce negative consequences. The first important step we took was identifying the ways in which we could accommodate the surplus staff. We didn't want them to leave but some of them had to be moved to other departments. We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of our staff and then decided what would the next most suitable position for them.