Coffee with Love

This is what we get when things are done with a heart and soul through the mind.
Can you imagine how Starbucks positioned their customers? I can feel as they treat us as good friends, judging from the act of taking the trouble to inform us on the outlet closing or re-location, with a meaningful message. I'm touched!

This is great example when a business successfully invested in People, to Perform and eventually generating Profits! When a company tries to skip the People part and jump straight to Performance and Profits, most of the time, the employee retention will be low. As people don't feel appreciated and the sense of belonging is shallow. Therefore, resignation letters are flying here and there!

Some management implement a policy where "I set the rules and if you don't play by it, take a flight and leave!". Guess what, employees will do accordingly to grant your wish.
How can one rule, conquers all? Imagine one medication to treat all kinds of disease.
People are different and we are an organic human being that are suppose to be emotional, don't we? We are not cows or chicken! We have moments of celebration, moments of achievement and moments of dissapointment as well. At the end of the day, what is so great about money if it doesn't enrich or uplift someone's life?

If we want a harvest of a year, grow wheat.
If we want a harvest of 10 years, grow trees.
If we want a harvest of a lifetime, grow people.

Eventually, People will grow your empire!

Coffee-Business serving People or People-Business serving Coffee?

What an amazing book from the former President of Starbucks which contains nothing about coffee!
It is about how Starbucks focuses on People over Profits!
"There can be no coffee without people!"
That is the true essence of Starbucks.

Some companies believe that building a system, the system will build the business.
But Starbucks believe that building people, the people will grow the business!

I personally like one of the sayings in this book:
"Think Like A Person of Action and Act Like A Person of Thought".
Wow, simple & yet powerful stuff!

It is sort of the Yin & Yang between the Thoughts & Actions.
At times, we need to Think first before the Action. But sometimes, we need to Act first, then Think later.
This is very true especially a new opportunity arises.
When we analyze from A --> Z before taking actions, we could have miss the boat. And sometimes the boat doesn't return!!
But we can't be recklessly doing and running like a bull as well and be stubbornly positive about a hopeless projects. Persistency has to be coupled with Flexibility.
Imagine someone still persistently having faith & thinking positive about the growth of cassette industry in the year of 2011!!

Another empowering principle that I like from the book as well:
"The person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom!"
Some company truly believe human beings are capable of independent thinking if certain rules are removed.

Should we follow rules or should we fulfill the needs of people? The rule tells people "how-to-do" instead of explaining "why" & "what we are trying to achieve".

At Starbucks, they believed that they're in the Human Service Business, not the Customer Service Business.
As long as People are not being treated as Assets or Labour Costs alone, they can flourish in the environment of Encouragement, Appreciation, Reward & Respect.

Eventhough nowadays, consumers tend to go to Oldtown, Newtown, Georgetown or whatever Town kopitiam, I do prefer Starbucks off & on as I like the feeling of being greeted as a "friend" than filling up order number in kopitiam and passed it to a foreign worker who sometimes doesn't understand my extra request. I am saying this with all my respect to the foreign workers who contributed to the lack of workforce in the F&B industry. But sometimes it is good if we can understand them and vice-versa.

Let's learn to be a Logical-Person, Emotional-Person & a People-Person.

Employee ah, employee....what do you want?

Last month & this month, my current company encounters a total of 6 people resigning. Another 3 thinking of resigning....That's really bad.

I've worked in multiple sizes of company before; small, medium and big.
Some with proper system and some without.
Some are doing competitively great and some are on the sun-set industry.
Some are managed by caring bosses & managers and some are just taking advantage of employees.

Well, finding talents is a difficult task today. Retaining them is even more difficult.

Out of my own journey talking to people as an employee, I've summarised what normally employees are looking for when they work in a company; it doesn't matter whether it has system or not, big or small.

1) Career path - Nobody wants to work forever as an executive or trainee level. The issue is whether the company has a plan to move up the employee on a career ladder or they just want to maintain the "tradition". Another issue is whether the employee is equipped with the skills for the new tasks. Budget allocation from a company in training might be a good idea!

2) Leadership - Manage by using our Head, Lead by using our Heart. Management is more on a Left-Brain area while Leadership is more on a Right-Brain stuff. We have to balance between;
- Looking at the big picture vs. Looking at the details.
- Task-oriented vs. People-oriented.
- Intelligence vs. Imagination.
- Instincts vs. Analysis
- Influence vs. Authority

Can we learn something from the managers / directors or we are just merely working like a robot?

3) Reward - Can you imagine cost of living keep going up and the range of salary remain the same today as compared to 5 - 10 years ago? Nowadays even a chicken rice / economy rice costs around RM4.50 - RM5.50, depending on the location. A typical malaysian car costs around RM40k - RM60k and people normally can afford to buy if the repayment period is drag up to 7 or 9 years. A mid-class apartment / condo costs around RM200k - RM300k....developer's price! Upon completion, perhaps rising up to RM300k - RM400k.....for an empty units excluding furnishing, renovation & decoration.

To me, salary comprises of 3 parts;
- Costs of Living
- Employee's ability
- Employee's performance

We can't just pay a standard rate for fresh graduate RM1,500 - RM1,800 / mth as if it is the same as 10 years back!

4) Appreciation - this is the most significant factor. Being acknowledged and felt we are part of the organisation is most important. Confront privately, compliment publicly. I've seen a boss that wanted to cut short a meeting duration by telling the employee, "Just tell me the bad news or problems faced, skip the good news!". Or "I don't care what are you going to do, just get it done!"

Well, that boss definitely save lots of time but not realising in long term, he is wasting more time by not listening & appreciating staff as he needed to train, re-train, train & retrain due to the frequent movement of people leaving & people coming in. The worst thing happen is when the employees felt they are a commodity instead of human being!

Whether a company wants to keep hiring new people or maintaining the talented employee for future growth will depend largely on the company's direction, mission & culture.

When Starbucks re-define their company mission from:

"WE ARE NOT A COFFEE BUSINESS SERVING PEOPLE....BUT A PEOPLE BUSINESS SERVING COFFEE!", whatever they do or decide will be more people-oriented and not coffee-oriented.

Eventually, it boils down to the Directors or Founders mindset of setting up the business.

What's the purpose of a particular business is being set up?
I've wrote another note on The Purpose of Building A Business.