Free Onward by Howard Schultz, Joanne Lesley Gordon Page B

shareholders so it came from me, as the new ceo, and reflected Starbucks’ new vision.
     
    I also needed to resign from my board position at DreamWorks to convey to everyone my complete commitment. I had already given up my board seat at eBay.
     
    How our partners received the news was of utmost importance to me. Without their support, we would not succeed. Many people would be very sad to see Jim Donald leave, that I knew. To temper reactions and allay uncertainty, one-on-one meetings needed to be arranged between our top leaders and myself, and a larger gatheringof partners assembled. I valued Wanda's input on our communications strategy, and a few days before January 7, I invited her to my house without explanation. Not until she entered my home and saw several unfamiliar people working around a table covered with laptops and papers did she learn about my plans to return.
     
    Together, Wanda and I crafted an open letter to post on Starbucks’ website. I wanted it to evoke our heritage, to remind everyone of how the first Starbucks store had ignited my passion 25 years ago and how that same passion fueled me today. I still believed in our original mission, but had to acknowledge our trials and convey the speed with which we had to adopt a new operational mind-set.
     
    Significant change was about to occur, and our people would want to know what it meant for them and their jobs. So the team drafted a question-and-answer document, doing our best to anticipate and address people's main concerns. We made it clear that no one employed by Starbucks would lose their health-care coverage or stock in the company. For me, that would never be an option. As for the security of their jobs, that was a decision I could not yet predict, a promise I could not make.
     
    To ensure that my intentions were understood outside the United States, I also insisted on personally reaching out to our Starbucks vice presidents and joint-venture partners, who operated our stores in 46 countries. Calls to offices in different time zones had to be coordinated.
     
    Our overall objective was to be transparent and restore confidence in the future of Starbucks, to begin to turn around the increasingly negative sentiment while simultaneously acknowledging the real challenges facing the company. Rather than looking back and casting blame, I wanted to lean forward with concrete strategies and tactics. To do so, I would introduce a plan that would become a galvanizing force inside Starbucks: our own version of the Transformation Agenda.
     
    I was not sleeping much, and in the middle of the night I often contemplated just what I would say to our people the first time I stood in front of them as the new ceo. It had been more than seven years. I had never imagined I would be here again. So much time had passed, and I really couldn't predict partners’ reactions and what the tone in our offices would be that day. I did not prepare a formal speech, trustingthat I would find the right words to strike a balance between urgency and optimism.
     
    Even with all that was on my mind, occasionally my thoughts wandered back to my parents, especially my dad. Just as the sadness of my father's work life had propelled me to pursue my own dreams as a young man, it was also, I have no doubt, partly behind my decision to return as chief executive. So many people's livelihoods and dreams—including Starbucks’ tens of thousands of partners—depended on the company's success. I could not abandon them.
     
    Finally, our team reviewed what seemed like dozens of documents and finalized the hour-by-hour schedule of events that would soon unfold.
     
    The first domino would fall Sunday afternoon.
     
    Despite the hurdles ahead, I felt ready for the job. I believed that Starbucks had an enormous potential to return to greatness, that the company had yet to be as good as it was going to be. I believed in the power of the brand, in our founding mission, and, most of all, in our