Great post. I think everyone, myself included, has read alot into Starbucks ultimate intentions. Frankly, looking back a few weeks, I think Starbucks intentions were true — getting back to the core which is delivering great coffee with a unique customer experience. I would venture to say, Starbucks most recent CEO got lost with Wall Street’s demands to increase revenue per customer. Anyone that has been to a Starbucks recently can argue the customer experience has been overshadowed by cluttered merchandise, CD trays, and subpar food offerings such as microwavable breakfast sandwiches (I do like that parfait while rushing through the airport, though).

Coffee is the core. What Starbucks need to do now is find a way to offer products, services, and a re-energized experience to compliment the core…not overshadow it!

Amy: Right, the *way* in which this was rolled out raised the question that frontline employees may not all see it in as positive a light. The re-education event brought the spotlight on the barista and quality, almost implying remediation. However, many of the complaints were not about the ability of the barista to “…pull the perfect espresso shot…” Many were about completely different things such as long line wait, overpowering smell of burnt cheese, cookie-cutter stores, etc., that barista re-education would not address.

The “Return of the Founder” can sometimes do good, sometimes not, and it often has little to do with the founder themselves. There are of course, honeymoon effects, morale boosts, and so on. You wonder, though, how much of the vision/core values/etc. the returning founder tries to reinvigorate gets sand thrown in the gears during execution. Folks whose operational choices had negative impact on core strategic differentiators might distract attention to other, more media-friendly events.

Do you see any parallels between this and Dave Duffield’s camelot return to PeopleSoft? Can this really work?