Starbucks' new CEO plans to spend time working at his company's coffee shops. Here's why every retail leader should take a shift on the sales floor.
When Laxman Narasimhan came on board as Starbucks' next CEO six months ago, he immersed himself in the brand, spending time at the chain's manufacturing plants and getting barista training at its stores.
Narasimhan's approach — not just visiting the stores he oversees, but working at them — is one that experts say is crucial to running a brick-and-mortar business. But it's fallen by the wayside in recent decades as department store chains curtail the leadership training programs that installed future executives at the store level, and fewer merchants sit at the helm of big-name retailers.
Which means leaders aren't as connected to the employees that sell their products and the customers that consume them, said Lee Peterson, a longtime merchant and now executive vice president of thought leadership at retail consulting firm WD Partners. "People in the office, they're clueless. They're looking at papers of what's sold ... they know where it's sold. But what really matters is what people say, what people think, and what people feel," he said. Anyone who's worked a retail job has probably had this experience: your manager, perhaps with a look of fear in their eye, will get a few days' heads up that the corporate brass is coming to visit your store.
But there's a big difference between your CEO and their entourage sweeping through to see if things are up to snuff and that leader working a shift in your shoes, and it's the latter that makes the real difference, Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University and the former CEO of Sears Canada,"Many people that I've observed either don't have that view, or aren't willing to do that, or they pay lip service to it," Cohen said.
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