The "I" in choice

Historians, as you probably know, are prone to fight at the drop of a three-cornered hat. Just mention the Strong Man Theory, for instance, and you’re likely to see a headlock here, an eye jab there. Before long, medieval curses will be flying, and enough tweed will be ripped to make James Lipton wince. Still, even after all the bloodshed, one faction will insist that history is driven by extraordinary individuals acting on personal agendas. And their opponents will refuse to budge from the conviction that circumstances, not strong men or women, are what change the path of human development.

So, please, if you’re holding a kegger this weekend for that rowdy bunch from Elizabethan Studies, do not mention the latest initiatives from Starbucks or Danny Meyer.

After all, USA Today’s exclusive on Starbucks’ latest menu overhaul left little doubt the chain is adopting more healthful choices because of developments in the life of CEO Howard Schultz. The article recounted how Schultz discovered during a physical that his cholesterol was too high and that he needed to pursue a more healthful lifestyle. He changed his ways, the story noted. And, at virtually the same time, so did Starbucks. First it rolled out its new healthful smoothie line. Then, Schultz disclosed to USA Today’s Bruce Horovitz, it drafted the new reduced-fat, higher-fiber breakfast array that’ll be introduced on Tuesday.

A coincidence? Ask anyone historian with a well-thumbed copy of “Julius Caesar: The Early Years” on his or desk.

Then there’s the new diversification by Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. The operator of such fine-dining shrines as Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café is planning to open restaurants in the Mets’ new stadium, Citi Field, when it opens in Flushing, Queens, next year. Nation’s Restaurant News broke the story after speaking with Meyer, who acknowledged that this is more than a cold, calculated business decision. “We think Citi Field is a great opportunity in which to parlay our love of sports and launch a new division,” he told NRN’s Elissa Elan.

Clearly, neither businessman is stepping outside himself to look with complete detachment at possible new directions for their businesses. Yet both have repeatedly demonstrated they’re no Dan Quayle when it comes to spelling out opportunity. These are some of the most respected figures in the business, if not American commerce. Does that mean those of us yet to climb Mr. Olympus should consider a little more Yoda and a little less Peter Drucker? Should we indeed yield a little more to The Force we feel?

The record is at best murky. In the late 1980s, a businessman named Victor Kiam decided he really appreciated a certain type of electric shaver. “I like it so much I bought the company,” he famously told consumers in a long-running TV campaign for Remington razors. That bit of strongman business savvy worked well for Kiam; he would grow the company and remain its chairman until his death in 2001.

But personal preference also led him to buy the New England Patriots football team. It was a financial disaster for him.

Less ambiguous are the bankruptcy notices for restaurant and after restaurant that were opened because the entrepreneur liked the idea of being in that business, or really enjoyed cooking, or loved hanging out in star-studded establishments. Ego equaled disaster in those instances.

Of course, those decisions were often based solely on bias, not on business sense. Schultz and Meyer probably couldn’t have suspended their commercial intuition if they had wanted to do so.

So my bet is they’ve made good decisions, even if each choice may have been more influenced by personal criteria than other moves they’ve made.

We’ll certainly see. Perhaps starting on Tuesday.

'There goes the free Starbucks'

The worst part about getting fired from the CEO’s job at Starbucks is having to tell your mother, according to Jim Donald, who found that out for himself in January. Four months later, he was willing to talk about that day with a Fortune magazine editor, who convinced him to join two other victims of high-profile sackings for a joint soul baring of what they’d learned.

But it was far from a pity party. “This is what happens in the big leagues,” Donald remarked during the four-party Q&A with Fortune’s Patricia Sellers. He and his fellow boardroom casualties—JetBlue founder David Neeleman and former Motorola CEO Ed Zander—offered a dry-eyed assessment of why they were deposed.

Donald, for instance, said he should’ve pushed for faster international development. “The international markets don’t have as quick returns as the U.S.,” h said. “But if I’d known the U.S. economy was going to crash, I would have invested earlier.” His replacement as CEO, board chairman and former head bean Howard Schultz, has pledged to accelerate Starbucks’ development overseas while shutting weak U.S. outlets.

It was Schultz, Donald said, who actually wielded the axe, and he did it after giving his one-time protégé a hug. “It was on a Sunday evening, at Howard’s house,” Donald told Sellers and his fellow topple-ees. A greeting was followed by an embrace, then the news that Starbucks’ board had decided to make a change. Donald made it sound as if he didn’t have time to put his latte down.

The 54-year old said he headed home, where his wife expressed surprise that he’d was back already. “Laura said, ‘Wow, that was a quick meeting. Did you lose your job?’ I said, ‘As a matter of fact, I did.’”

The one-time head of Wal-Mart’s grocery operations said the most painful part of the experience was calling his mother the next day. Indeed, he said, that experience “probably” made it “the toughest day I’d ever faced, ever. Ever, ever, ever!” But, he indicated, she took it well.

Donald expressed no resentment about what happened to him. Nor did he speak of Schultz in anything but a neutral tone. Sellers asked Donald if he’d ever work again for a company’s founder, as he did at Schultz (a nit-picking point: Schultz founded Starbucks Corp., but not the Starbucks brand).

“Founders have a way of being engaged in the business, being emotionally connected to that brand or to that product,” he responded. “So would I work for a founder? Yes, absolutely.”

Schultz tries to foster Seattle's fortunes, too

You’d think Howard Schultz would be jittery enough without a court battle on his hands. But the Starbucks CEO filed a lawsuit Tuesday against fellow tycoon Clayton Bennett to scuttle their Seattle SuperSonics deal. Schultz agreed in 2006 to sell the pro basketball team for $350 million to a group led by the Oklahoma City financier. But when Seattle balked at building a new arena for the Sonics, Bennett alerted the National Basketball Association that he was relocating the franchise to his home town. Seattle restaurants of all stripes—including a few, presumably, in Starbucks green—have warned that the relocation would starve them of much-needed nighttime business.

Schultz may have grown up in Brooklyn, N.Y., but he’s loyal to his adopted hometown. He’s asked a U.S. District Court to un-do the deal because it was based on the assumption that the Sonics would remain in Starbucks’ home base. The team would still be sold, the complaint reportedly states. But Schultz would like to find an “honest buyer” who’d keep the Sonics in the only city the team has ever known, the Associated Press reported this morning.

Bennett, meanwhile, could end up as the trial lawyers’ poster child of 2008. He’s also being sued by the city of Seattle and fans who bought season tickets to the Sonics for future years.

Bennett has already agreed to give up the Seattle SuperSonics name, clearing the way for Seattle to secure another franchise. But he seems to be proceeding with his relocation plan. The NBA gave him a green light Friday to make the move, pending the outcome of his court fight with Seattle.

A grande serving of what?

There had to be a secret message encoded in Howard Schultz’s presentation yesterday, because even Mike Tyson would know better than to pin Starbucks’ turnaround to rickety measures like adding a new coffee roast or installing a newfangled coffee maker. And let’s not forget the pledge to do more for the environment and the startup of a social-networking site. But maybe the real message of his address to shareholders was blurred by all the specifics. If you step back and view the elements as a package, it’s clear Schultz is taking a bold gamble. The one-time coffee-carafe salesman is trying to infuse the brand with more showbiz than the industry has seen since the heyday of eater-tainment.

Schultz described Starbucks’ purchase of a company that makes a new type of coffee brewer, a device called the Clover, as the most dramatic of the steps he and other execs detailed for investors. The machine supposedly makes a cup of coffee superior enough to justify a price of more than $2.50. Schultz said he saw it being used by a place in New York that charged $7 a cup. But how it generates the nectar of the bean may be as important as the quality of finished brew. Starbucks described the machine as a cross between a French press pot and a vacuum-style coffee maker, which provides a bit of a show with every cupful that’s produced.

Similarly, Starbucks disclosed that it’s rolling out a new espresso maker that gives the baristas more control over the coarseness of the coffee grind and the way the milk is steamed. Not coincidentally, the devices are not as high as the machines currently being used, which will allow patrons to see their drinks being made, and possibly even interact with the coffee maker.

Even the new frequent-guest program has some dazzle to it. Guests present their cards to be wowed a little by the service they’re then given. The benefits rendered don’t sound that amazing. Free half-and-half or soy milk? Whoa. But the give-and-take about the freebies does give the counter servers and baristas a chance to strut their stuff a little.

The bland-sounding moves that Schultz disclosed yesterday may prove anything but. It’s a bit of razzle-dazzle from someone who could prove to be a very adept ringmaster.

Howard Schultz's cup of tea

Now that the steam has cleared from Starbucks’ recent changes, a few conclusions can be drawn about Howard Schultz: The Second Cupping. For one thing, memo writing may be entering its heyday. The Brooklyn native’s reliance on the TO:/FROM: format is the stuff of “Dilbert.” Within hours of replacing Jim Donald as top bean, Schultz was posting notes to customers, employees and investors via Starbucks’ website. The messages echoed the themes he’d sounded in the Jerry Maguire-esque memo that was sent to management last February, urging the chain’s handlers to re-find their souls and save the specialness of Starbucks. The minute it was leaked to the world via http://www.starbucksgossip.com/, Donald should’ve started punching up his resume.

If Donald is smart, he’ll appreciate what Schultz was demonstrating with that fit of keyboard pounding last week. Schultz promised each constituency a basket of changes that amounted to reconnecting with each. The adjustments he previewed—in essence, paying less attention to bean counters to focus more on the beans—were reassurances that Starbucks hears their gripes. His high-communication style put some steel in the promise of re-forging a strong relationship, the foundation of what Schultz reverently calls the Starbucks Experience.

Contrast that stance with Donald’s approach. If his public appearances and interaction with journalists were accurate lenses, he absorbed his candor and interactive skills from Richard Nixon. A fellow veteran of the media said her interview with Donald was the most boring one in her considerably long career. The time I saw him address an industry group, he came across as a suit in casual clothing, carefully following a Communications Department script to profess his daring New Age convictions.

I’ve also had the privilege of hearing Schultz speak, some 10 or 12 years ago by now. A side effect of being a business journalist is attending conferences where the celebrity draw could be anyone from Gerald Ford to Dennis Miller to Dolly Parton. None of them came close to Schultz in inspirational quality. Because keynoters of that wattage seldom deliver news fodder, their speeches are usually the times when you check phone messages or raid the break tables outside the lecture hall. Indeed, I’m not sure I would have hung around to hear Schultz if it hadn’t been for the draw of Starbucks coffee being available while he spoke.

But once he started explaining how his father’s miserable experiences as a diaper-service driver had shaped his strategy for Starbucks, there was no leaving the ballroom, by me or anyone else. He spoke passionately about the need to balance business needs against doing the right thing for employees and cultivating a culture of which you can be proud—the same themes he’d thump in the February memo.

If it was an act, as contrived as any performance on the high-ticket speakers’ circuit, it was of Daniel Day Lewis quality. And any skepticism was completely dashed when I saw Schultz’s handlers lead him down the stage and straight toward the doorway next to which I was standing. I stepped out, stuck out my hand, and blurted, “That was great.” Then I noticed he was sweating a bit, and seemed a little quivery. He stopped dead.

“Do you really think it was alright? I sounded okay? I was kind of nervous,” he rattled.

I gaped at him, wondering for a second, Is this really him? Did I stop the wrong guy, maybe a speaker from an earlier session? Nope, definitely Howard Schultz.

“Yeah, you were great. I really mean it,” I assured him.

He broke into a huge smile, vigorously shook my hand, said, “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” and was yanked away by his handlers.

I went from there to a book store to look for a copy of his autobiography.

Persons who have worked for him have since advised me to remember that he started as a salesman and is a businessman before all else. Take him and his change-the-world manifesto with a dash of skepticism, they advised.

But, as they readily acknowledged, demythification doesn’t detract from his unique approach to running a business, nor from the specialness of Starbucks’ culture during his first go-round as CEO. Even his handling of last week’s coup was a marked departure from the usual deposing of a big-company chief. With the blandness fostered by Sarbanes-Oxley and the threat of shareholder lawsuits, you can only hope he indeed proves to be the Harry Potter of the restaurant business.

But just to make sure, I think I may head back to that book store. Maybe I can buy him an inspirational book about Steve Jobs.