Conservative Book Talk

I read this book and enjoyed it immensely. I appreciated the in depth look into the culture that has made Starbucks unique.

Michelli attempts to communicate the necessity and method of creating an experience for consumers by examining the methods used to create the Starbucks experience. Michelli uses Starbucks as a positive example of what a business can do if they put forth a consistent effort at creating a customer experience. He divides the book into chapters based upon the five guiding principles of Starbucks.

In this work, Michelli argues that every business must encourage employees to own the business. Like a runner with ankle weights during a marathon, so is a business that does not encourage its employees to own the business. Companies have been slowly trending from an authoritarian structure to an approach that respects employees and encourages improvement. Currently Starbucks leads in this change and has demonstrated that this shift will improve a company financially as well as socially. (Another company with an even more aggressive employee focused approach is Panda Express.)

Further a company must recognize that everything is important. One cannot let little things go because each piece builds the complete picture. In isolation, the problem might appear too small to bother with, but each minutia works together to complete a whole picture. Every jigsaw puzzle has many pieces that appear too small to matter much, but without those pieces the puzzle will never display the complete picture to the viewer. Satisfaction will be lessened exponentially with each piece missing or marred in the picture.

Michelli notes that people enjoy receiving a pleasant surprise. Starbucks has attempted to codify this into the lifestyle of their employees. Whenever possible a Starbucks partners take opportunities to improve the life of the customers through simple surprises. These could be simply remembering names and favorite drink orders. This small effort showing that the customer matters delights and unfortunately surprises most people. Forgetting to surprise a customer could easily result in boredom. Boredom dulls the edge of the experience. Boredom defocuses the image in like manner that fog fuzzes the windshield on a cold morning. That lack of focus and clarity confuses the customer’s perception of the company.

Resistance can squelch or inhibit growth, yet it could spark improvements, innovation and growth. The choice belongs to the company. A company that fails to listen and act upon criticism will find their customers distancing themselves and moving onward. A company cannot market effectively if they do not know what the customer thinks and desires. This is cheap marketing research.

Finally companies make an impact on the environment around them. A company could focus on profits alone (for the benefit of the executives), or a company could focus on developing their employees and the environment around them.

One glaring fault leapt from the pages of this book, namely that Michelli present Starbucks as the perfect organization without faults. On the last two pages, he acknowledges their faults, but throughout the book he never addresses how Starbucks learned from failures. There is never an explanation of how Starbucks developed its ideals nor what the inevitable the missteps cost them nor how they recovered. A positive image is good, but if it does not reveals some flaws (humanness), it has limited usefulness

Further, Michelli fails to address how to map a fast food industry with low cost of goods (coffee is relatively inexpensive) to other industries. Most companies cannot afford to give away replacements for broken items (i.e. spilled drinks). While Starbucks intelligently chose to make free replacement drinks a standard practice, how does that translate to companies that do not have a low cost product?

What are your opinion of Starbucks? The other day, I stopped in for a simple coffee. They told me that they were just making a fresh pot and that if I would be willing to wait, they would give me a free cup just for waiting. This is consistent with Michelli’s view of the company and demonstrates their ideals. Unfortunately, Michelli never suggests how a company without a low cost high margin product can do the same.

Tags: Business, Coffee, Joseph Michelli, Matt Gardenghi, review, Self-Improvement, Starbucks, The Starbucks Experience

When I read Stephen Biller’s review of this book, I knew I had to read it at my first opportunity. Well, that opportunity arose and here we are. Unlike some books that I have read lately (good books, but slow going), I could not put this one down.

If you haven’t read this book, go read it next. It’s not that long and worth your time. The story though straightforward is amazingly creative. A young man receives one million dollars on his twenty-fifth birthday. That would be nice today, but in 1900, this was an astronomical fortune. About two weeks later, Brewster learns that he will inherit around seven million dollars on his twenty-sixth birthday if he can meet the following conditions:

• He must be a pauper
• He cannot have any hope of getting his money back after said birthday (No IRA’s or bonds or friends holding the cash for him)
• He cannot spend frivolously (The understanding is that he will have to spend $1,000,000 so this is subjective)
• He can’t give it away
• He can’t tell anyone about this new inheritance nor why he is getting rid of the current one.

Brewster decides that this can’t be too difficult….

In 1900, the United States did not have a consumerist economy. Nay, the world did not have a consumerist economy anywhere. The best that I can figure, I could probably spend the equivalent in today’s currency (particularly given the current exchange rates), BUT we have societies built on spending money. One amusing point came when Brewster had appendicitis. He tried to overpay the doctor (bought the best care available, hired a private nurse etc…); the bill came to $3,000.

The hardest part was when people began deserting him as his money ran out. He was mocked and scorned. Those people would come to his parties, eat his food and laugh. They wanted simply to get what they could before he ran out of cash. Then they left him like the vultures they were.
Brewster’s amazing year showed him true love and true friendship. He decided that even if he lost the challenge, that much was worth one million dollars.

And no, the story wasn’t without some turns that would catch you off guard.

Definitely worth five stars even with a couple of swear words.

But, before you go, if you lasted this long, I have a question or two. How would you spend the money today? I would assume that it would be worth at least 30-40 million today. If you didn’t have the requirements about giving, who would you give to? I’ve thought about it once or twice. I think that I could do a lot of good for some of my family. Are they needy? No, but I would love to spend on them. That’s the great thing about family. They are people to spoil.

Gutenberg text: here
Librivox audio: here
Amazon purchase: here

Tags: book, Brewster's Millions, conservative, fiction, fun, George Barr McCutcheon, historical, Matt Gardenghi, review, youth

About a month ago I joined Team Cringely, a group of volunteers looking to put a rover on the moon as a part of the Google Lunar X Prize. This group is a loose organization of volunteers who want to participate in space but haven’t the opportunity to do so. Growing up, only two careers interested me. One was to be an astronaut. I loved to see pictures of space and wistfully dreamed of space travel to see those sights in person.

I remember disappointment upon discovering that I would need to have multiple doctorates and being lucky to get a place on a NASA shuttle.

Talk about a depressing day.

Now I can live my dream vicariously through this mission. But those of us consisting of Team Cringely (and our opponents) weren’t the first to desire the opportunity to go to the moon. NASA wasn’t the first organization either. For more than a century, men like Jules Verne looked at the mistress of the night and wondered what men would find on the moon.

In this classic pair of stories, Barbicane, Ardan, and Nicholl overcome cultural and personal grievances to join forces as emissaries to the moon. It all began with the bored members of the Baltimore Gun Club. The Baltimore Gun Club consisted of men who had studied (invented and experimented) gunnery during the Civil War; now, bored, they sought a new challenge. This new challenge was to launch a cannonball at the moon. Eventually, the Frenchman, Michelle Ardan, decided that he wanted to fly to the moon and sailed to Florida to enter the projectile.

This action of Ardan, led to a prolonged discussion about the habitability of the moon and the precautions necessary for a man to travel in space. Much of the story lies in discussions about the nature of the moon, it’s past and present state of habitability, and the nature of space travel. Much of this will probably be a tad bit tedious for some, but I found it somewhat interesting. Given that hindsight is 20-20, it is easy to see the errors being made. But, when one tries to look at it from the perspective of an author writing in 1865, the science and reasoning is much less comical and far more impressive. Verne had many facts correct or at least close to correct.

As an aside, one flaw that I have noticed with the reasonings of this generation of authors is this: They made many assumptions that appeared reasonable at first blush, and never challenged them. In this work, the assumption of the three was that Selenites must exists. Ardan was very typical of the thinking. He wanted it to be so and so it was.

But, that was typical Verne. He lived in a world decades or centuries ahead of his time. Verne obviously had great respect for the Americans. Though often in a backhanded manner, Verne continuously praised the American people for their ingenuity, skillfulness and bravery. It was his opinion (as seen in this work) that only Americans would be brave and foolhardy enough to pull off an endeavor of this magnitude.

And that brings me back to the present: Can a disparate team of men and women put a rover on the moon for less than $4 million? Normal people say no. Team Cringely begs to differ.
This is not one of Verne’s better stories, but worth reading if for no other reason than that it is Verne.

Here are the links:
Amazon: From Earth to the Moon; Round the Moon
Gutenberg: From Earth to the Moon (text)
Librivox: From Earth to the Moon (audio)
Gutenberg: Round the Moon (text)
Librivox: Round the Moon (audio)

Tags: books, fiction, Google, Google Lunar X Prize, Jules Verne, Matt Gardenghi, moon, review, Science, Team Cringely