September 20, 2013 (Ashford, Washington):
We’ve all been to Starbucks. Some of us on a daily basis… Wherever you go in the country, wherever in the world – you know you’re going to receive great service and exactly what you’ve come to expect in terms of product quality. Did you ever wonder how that happens?
Starbucks has more than 17,000 stores (with three new ones opening each day) and makes over 70,000 deliveries each week. Do you see the complexity in delivering great service and products on that level?
Of course you do. And the Starbucks Global Supply Chain Organization is a key element of dealing with the complexity and making it happen. Every day. Everywhere.
Check out this video from the Starbucks Coffee You Tube channel of this amazing team in action:
I think everyone can agree that it takes individual excellence, teamwork, and a commitment to working together to make this happen. This is one of the reasons we were so excited to have 20 of the top leaders in Starbucks Supply Chain Operation join us this past September in Washington’s Mt. Rainier National Park for Starbucks’ Call to Adventure.
A Call to Adventure’s mission is to help people discover the “hero within” and to create an ethos that drives a commitment to excellence and behavior on a personal, interpersonal, and community level. We use the mountains and the mountain environment as a metaphor for life’s challenges and a place to build experiences to make the most of these opportunities.
When our expedition team assembled at our mountain cabins, they were ready to take on their challenges. They live these challenges every day. We discussed some of the specific challenges and opportunities and then framed the expedition by explaining the parallels to the Heroes Journey in both business and life. The team committed to developing an ethos over the next four days that would drive them via “acts of meaningful change”.
On the morning of Day 2, we began our summit expedition with a challenging ascent of Pinnacle Peak on the flanks of Mt. Rainier. In addition to the physical challenge, the team used this time to take a personal inventory of their peak moments in life, the strengths and liabilities exhibited, and to categorize them into four key elements. Near the summit, the challenge got even more technical and some fun scrambling and rope work was required to complete the final summit push. While the final ascent was done with complete safety at the forefront, it still pushed some of the participants outside of their comfort zones. Everyone rose to the challenge! After the physical challenge of the summit, the team further pushed themselves mentally as they considered their futures, what they wanted them to look like, and how the people closest to them would view them. On the descent, the team paired off to discuss these outcomes and share a bit of their individual selves.
Day 3 was our “team challenge” day and our participants (all of whom leaders of teams) rose to the challenges posed. First and foremost was the “bucket brigade” drill designed specifically for Starbucks by Bruce Jackson to represent the types of challenges a supply chain organization faces on any given day. Our team was on this one. Innovative solutions, pushing the envelope, harnessing adversity, assigning roles, sometimes leading, sometimes being led… this team was inspirational. They did the drill twice and refined their performance so well that they ultimately moved more “product” in half of the original benchmark time.
In the afternoon, the team ascended the mountain again for our classic Call to Adventure rope team challenge. Designed by Jeff Evans, this challenge is geared towards identifying “who is on your rope team” and how that affects you and your ability to perform. We added specific environmental challenges to these exercises to increase the level of adversity as well as the need to depend on one another for success.
Both of these drills help the participants understand how they operate on a team/family/community level. It also helped to clarify what elements are most important to them in these settings and where their individual “assets” and “liabilities” arise.
In the evening and the morning of Day 4, the team refined this data into their own personal “heroes ethos” which they shared with the team. An extremely powerful time and one that was further enhanced by individual commitments to a “single act of change” through which they would begin to live their ethos back in the “real world”. With that, some may have viewed this as the end of the expedition. Hardly. This was actually the beginning of their heroic journey that continues to this day!