Tastes as good as our original coffee.

 I am sitting in a Satrubucks writing this blog post and I am watching people take the "tatse test." They are trying the new Via coffee packets and comparing that to the regular coffee they are used to shelling out the big bucks for their fix. Will it work? I don' tthink so.

As I spoke with the employees (baristas) the only training they got was how much the Via costs and what its availability is going to be. Talk about a bold and dangerous move. If the person who is used ot dropping the large doillars on their coffee believes they can get the same great flavor from a packet that they drop in a cup in thier house, they will stop making the trip to the store. And the employees were not trained to deal with this.

This is the same company by the way who is testing selling alcohol in some Seattle stores.

Here is the challenge. You rise to a size of revenue and profit that you now start making decisions for your shareholders versus your customers. You have to build revenue - even if you are profitable at lower revenues. Its insane, but Wall Street runs our companies these days and not the ELT. How do you protect your culture and appease Wall Street? You don't. You change your model and damn the culture to make the analysts happy. Then you fail becasue you went against what got you there in the first place. Turnover, which up until now was never an issue, now becsomes your plague. After all, can you blame the employees? They worked for you becasue of the corporate culutre you created and now you are throwing that out.

So then the cycle begins. Companies rotate leaders and the leaders "reinvent" the business. It works for a short while and then they are gone and the next guy tries.

Here is the rub. When you read about corporate turnarounds that actually stick and work, notice how the new leaders all cite the return to their roots; a return to the orginal culture that got them started. Think about it. Is it really worth destroying your culture to make some analysts happy?

I remember sitting in the office of Howard Schulz (CEO of Starbucks) and asking him what he thought his biggest fear was for the future of his company. "Culture," he said. "I am worried about how we are going to maintain our culture and grow the company at the same time."  Wise man. he said it right. Let's see if it goes right for Starbucks.