On the Suitability of Starbucks’ CEO Triggering Conversations on Race

Should a company’s CEO use the vast tentacles of the local retail stores to prompt public discourse on race in America? Even though improving race relations is a good cause, extending a CEO’s personal influence beyond the products societally requires its own justification. For a week in March 2015, baristas at 12,000 Starbucks coffee shops implemented CEO Howard Schultz’s intent to “spark customer conversation on the topic of race.”[1] Schultz even made a video in which he told the baristas how they should steer their respective conversations. If this sounds a bit like George Orwell’s Big Brother in the novel, 1984, the question may be whether such societal influence is legitimate from a position of management in business.

The full essay is at “Starbucks: A Shaky Management Wading into Social Issues.”

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1. Bruce Horovitz, “USA TODAY, Starbucks Tackle Race Relations,” USA Today, March 17, 2015.

Leadership as Defined in a Mega-Church

Leadership is influence. This is the definition that the pastor of an evangelical Christian mega-church enunciated in a sermon that took up nearly the entire service on the Sunday morning of my visit. Parents, teachers, students, and artists—all and many others—the cashiers at Walmart—are leaders, according to the pastor. “You need to get over the hurdle,” he charged, “of thinking that leadership only applies to kings and people on stages.” As influence, leadership applies to virtually anyone—all of us. Populism was the real message. “A kingdom is actually any place of influence,” he added. Everyone is a king in his or her own kingdom by virtue of simply having influence.

The full essay is at “Leadership Is Influence”