Balancing Culture and Growth at Starbucks

Starbucks' culture is mainly to be the "third place" for an individual after home and work. This kind of mind set explains a lot about what Starbucks wishes to represent for a customer. Starbucks wants to be part of a customer's life, immersed in his/her everyday routine. Part of Starbucks' culture as well is building a common vision for its employees so that they would share the vision and purpose of self-esteem and self-respect. These kinds of values all contribute to well-known Starbucks culture that is familiar to any Starbucks customer worldwide.

These help and motivate Starbucks' growth strategy as employees are driven to maintain the organizational culture in the face of rapid growth. Rapid growth is what Starbucks' strategy is all about but it is also important for them to maintain their culture. "I want to grow big and stay small at the same time" said Donald, CEO of Starbucks. Many companies struggle to keep their core values against changing and growing and not many succeed in doing so.

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The reason Schultz was attracted to this industry was the cozy feeling he had when he first visited the espresso bar in Milan. What his company was able to do is emulate that feeling across all branches worldwide. A customer walking into a Starbucks in Kuwait would get the same feeling and service as walking in a Starbucks in France. Even in his memo Schultz finishes it with "Onward…" as a motivation for his employees to put in that great amount of effort that got them where they are and motivate them to keep the culture that has held it steady during all this rapid growth.

2. Normally rapid growth inevitably undermines a company's culture and I believe that it did so in Starbucks. Schultz's memo was written with a fear of losing that culture, "stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store" Schultz wrote in his memo. He clearly expresses fear of not being able to keep the culture against the push of rapid growth that leads a company into the ice cold world of corporates.

And that’s when he felt a change was needed in order to maintain core values that are ever so important for Starbucks and its success because in the end it is what drives the company's strategy of immense growth. I believe Schultz was very successful in recognizing the opportunity and need for change before it was urgent to change and before it affected the company. In another article titled "Starbucks' Own Good idea" it shows how Starbucks adapted quickly to external factors which were technology, and were capable of immersing social media within its culture.

The reason why this is both relevant and import is that the key word in social media is Interaction this shows part of their action against immense corporate growth to stay in touch with their customers, social media has enabled customers to offer feedback through social media websites such as Facebook. com and Twitter. com and as the president of Starbucks Canada said: "People have seen tangible results from providing us with feedback".

3. I think that Starbucks is on the right track of maintaining its culture while gaining rapid growth.

Starbucks was able to maintain an international culture that was based on a local culture of running any shop with "soul". Constant delegation of the core values is always important of creating a sustainable culture that can stand the test of going global. Schultz was successful in being able to recognize the need for change before it arises and that was a key to the success of the Starbucks culture. Also following the trend of social media was a good choice of expanding the company's culture throughout the internet and provided yet another way of customer interaction and getting feedback to further better their service. Read What was the culture at Lehman Brothers-like

Closing down underperforming stores was also a clear message that this was not about pure economic growth but about growing the way they want to, growing with same culture that they have started off with, the "Third place" culture. Future steps might include training new employees about the culture by creating the kind of nurturing environment for them, these employees are the ones on the frontline that pass this culture along to customers, so training them would be very important of maintaining the company's culture.