Onward

How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul

This week’s book review is Onward by Howard Schultz.

Schultz artfully weaves the story of Starbucks from its humble beginnings, through it’s astronomic growth, it’s desperate decline, and it’s eventual reinvention and re-invigoration. The main focus of the book is the process he led to turn Starbucks back into the customer focused, coffee centered, culture forming icon that it is today. The book is packed with great stories and profound business wisdom.

My takeaway from this book is summarized by a quote from Schultz’s friend, and leadership guru Warren Bennis; “A core capacity of leadership is the ability to make right decisions while flying blind, basing them on knowledge, wisdom, and the ability to stay wedded to an overriding goal.”

 

Note that I have previously reviewed the following books in 2017:

  1. Les McKeown’s Predictable Success
  2. Exponential Organzations by Salim Ismail, Michael S. Malone and  Yuri van Geest
  3. Smart Thinking by Art Markman
  4. Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution
  5. RG LeTourneau’s Mover of Men and Mountains
  6. Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable
  7. Ram Charan’s The Attacker’s Advantage
  8. Jeff Goins’s The Art of Work
  9. Ron Karr’s Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way
  10. Timothy Ferriss’s Tools of Titans
  11. Dr. David Perlmutter’s Grain Brain

 

Download a free copy of my new Ebook: 12 Steps to Business Transformation. If you would like a business assessment to help kick off your business transformation, contact me at info@thinkingbusinessblog.com or at 587-227-5179.

Be sure to sign up at www.thinkingbusinessblog.com for weekly blog updates delivered to your inbox.

 

 

 

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.