The Starbucks Turnaround That Has Baristas and Customers Steamed; The New York Times, September 9, 2025

Julie Creswell, The New York Times; The Starbucks Turnaround That Has Baristas and Customers Steamed

"For Brian Niccol, who became Starbucks’s chief executive one year ago, the Strawberry Matcha Strato Frappuccino is a test of his turnaround strategy. Since lured to Starbucks from Chipotle Mexican Grill with a $100 million pay package (a large part to make up for compensation he walked away from at Chipotle), he has worked at a highly caffeinated tempo to get Starbucks’s mojo back.

Mr. Niccol got rid of charges for nondairy milk and brought back the coffee condiment station. He moved new people into the executive suite. The company is investing more than $500 million to add employees and develop order-sequencing technology that aims to deliver food and drinks faster. Stores are quickly being remodeled to add comfortable seating.

The goal is to provide customers in the United States — across more than 17,000 stores — with premium-priced, unique beverages in a welcoming, coffeehouse environment, but at a fast-food pace.

Some of the moves have been welcomed. Others, like the elimination of some drinks and foods, have resulted in confusion and frustration among customers and employees, according to interviews with baristas from Boston to California."

Organizing isn’t about perfection. It’s about compromise.; The Washington Post, July 3, 2018

Nicole Anzia, The Washington Post;

Organizing isn’t about perfection. It’s about compromise.

 

"Nobody’s house, including my own, regularly resembles the tidy and colorful precision we see in the media. Real life is sloppy, imperfect and constantly ­changing.

It is important to acknowledge this reality before you try to get organized. Don’t strive for magazine perfection. Figure out what works for you, and work to achieve it. If new habits have made life easier and more functional for you and your family, then that should be your measure of success."

Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else; New York Times, 2/13/16

Quentin Hardy, New York Times; Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else:

"To Mr. Stephenson, it should be an easy choice for most workers: Learn new skills or find your career choices are very limited.

“There is a need to retool yourself, and you should not expect to stop,” he said in a recent interview at AT&T’s Dallas headquarters. People who do not spend five to 10 hours a week in online learning, he added, “will obsolete themselves with the technology.”...

By 2020, Mr. Stephenson hopes AT&T will be well into its transformation into a computing company that manages all sorts of digital things: phones, satellite television and huge volumes of data, all sorted through software managed in the cloud.

That can’t happen unless at least some of his work force is retrained to deal with the technology. It’s not a young group: The average tenure at AT&T is 12 years, or 22 years if you don’t count the people working in call centers. And many employees don’t have experience writing open-source software or casually analyzing terabytes of customer data."

Humane Society boss on leave says she is victim of smear campaign; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/4/16

Madasyn Czebiniak, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Humane Society boss on leave says she is victim of smear campaign:

"Former employees estimate that in Joy Braunstein’s 13-month tenure as executive director of the Western PA Humane Society, more than a third of the roughly 60-member staff was either fired or quit.

Those seeking to get her fired say that exodus is part of the driving force behind an online change.org petition demanding her removal. The petition, which has attracted more than 1,400 signatures, also describes Ms. Braunstein’s decision “to purchase a collie puppy from a breeder who charges $1,000 per pup as opposed to adopting one of the dogs at her own shelter or another dog in need of rescue” as “the height of hypocrisy.”

Earlier this week, Ms. Braunstein was placed on paid administrative leave — a decision that she told the Post-Gazette was made to “get me out of the direct line of fire.” Against the advice of her attorney, she spoke to the Post-Gazette late Wednesday, saying that she was the victim of an online bullying and character defamation campaign and had received violent threats.

Two women, Diane Bandy and Tara Vybiral, were charged Tuesday with harassment for making threats on social media against Ms. Braunstein, who could not be reached for further comment Thursday...

Ms. Braunstein’s supporters on Wednesday started their own counter-petition in which they laud her efforts at the society, including increasing donations, outreach and community awareness, and advocacy. It also had about 1,400 signatures by Thursday."

Suffolk University’s board taking a PR hit; Boston Globe, 2/1/16

Adrian Walker, Boston Globe; Suffolk University’s board taking a PR hit:

"Ultimately, McKenna wanted to dislodge Suffolk’s entrenched power structure — which includes Regan, who has managed to maintain an outsized influence since he left the Suffolk board.

He resigned several years ago after Coakley, ironically, charged that it was a conflict of interest for a board member to also hold a $366,000 annual contract to be the school’s public relations czar. But Regan didn’t need a title to maintain his juice with the board. It doesn’t hurt that his deputy remains on the board...

Lost in the maneuvering is the fate of the school itself. Honestly, who would want to work for this board? Or become a serious donor? The guys who run Suffolk like to say all they care about is the school and its mission. But everything they are doing says just the opposite."

McDonald’s Reports Strong Earnings, Helped by All-Day Breakfast; New York Times, 1/25/16

Stephanie Strom, New York Times; New York Times; McDonald’s Reports Strong Earnings, Helped by All-Day Breakfast:

"McDonald’s surprised even the most bullish investors on Monday, reporting stronger-than-expected quarterly gains in earnings thanks largely to serving items from its breakfast menu all day.

Same-store sales, the numbers for stores open at least a year, rose 5.7 percent in the United States in the quarter that ended Dec. 31, and 5 percent on a global basis. It was the strongest gain in such sales in almost four years.

“We begin 2016 in a much better place than we were 12 months ago,” Steve Easterbrook, chief executive of McDonald’s, said during a conference call with investment analysts.

McDonald’s has been in a turnaround that Mr. Easterbrook started when he became chief executive last March. The company changed its structure to try to encourage the exchange of ideas around the globe, and it announced it would sell off some 3,500 of its company-owned stores."

CIA to Make Sweeping Changes, Focus More on Cyber Ops-Agency Chief; Reuters via New York Times, 3/6/15

Reuters via New York Times; CIA to Make Sweeping Changes, Focus More on Cyber Ops-Agency Chief:

"The Central Intelligence Agency will make one of the biggest overhauls in its nearly 70-year history, aimed in part at sharpening its focus on cyber operations and incorporating digital innovations, CIA director John Brennan said...

The 10 new "mission centres" will bring together CIA officers with expertise from across the agency's range of disciplines to concentrate on specific intelligence target areas or subject matter, Brennan said.

Competition between spy agencies and between units within agencies has led to "stove piping" of information that should have been widely shared and to critical information falling through bureaucratic cracks, Brennan and other U.S. intelligence officials said."

Corner Office: To Stay Great, Never Forget Your Basics; New York Times, 12/17/11

Adam Bryant, Corner Office, New York Times; Interview with Geoffrey Canada, president and C.E.O. of the nonprofit Harlem Children’s Zone: To Stay Great, Never Forget Your Basics:

"Q. A lot of managers go out of their way to avoid having difficult conversations. Your thoughts?

A. I call them adult conversations. People don’t want to have these conversations. They will avoid them. I am often asking people: Do you need help with having these conversations? So you’re going to talk to that person. What are you going to say to them? How are you going to say it?

It’s something that most of us aren’t trained to do. I used to think it was particularly true in a not-for-profit business, because people who come to work at a not-for-profit want to help people, so it’s harder for them to make these tough calls. But the more I have seen people in for-profits, I think they’re even worse at it.

I’m just stunned sometimes with how unwilling people are to bring somebody in the office and just say to them: “Look, you’re a good person. You know I like you. I like your family. This job is not really working out, and I’m going to have to let you go.” And so they will put people in another position, where they don’t really add to the bottom line, so they don’t have to deal with firing them. We don’t have the luxury of being able to do that. I mean, we don’t have positions that we can just sort of stuff you in."

Know Your Enemy: The People Who Block Buy-In; Harvard Business Review, 9/28/10

John Kotter, Harvard Business Review; Know Your Enemy: The People Who Block Buy-In:

"In our story, "you" receive some helpful advice in preparation for the meeting, identifying the different kinds of potential attacks and specific responses to each. With the support of others on your team, you're able to deflect the rocks and achieve a successful outcome. After the story, we discuss each of the attacks, what the underlying intent may be (for example, to kill your idea through endless delays, or with unfounded fear that it's too risky), and how best to deflect that particular kind of attack."

http://blogs.hbr.org/kotter/2010/09/know-your-enemy-the-people-who.html

Next Steps: Change at American University; American Libraries, 1/27/10

Bill Matthews, American Libraries; Next Steps: Change at American University: Managing for change and continuous improvement:

"Bill Mayer imagines a library without librarians. The way he sees it, his campus is filled with activity and he wants his librarians to be a part of the action. “Their role isn’t to simply go out and generate more visibility” he explains, “but to become more involved with everything that is going on around us.”

This vision opens up the library for new types of programming spaces. “I’d really like to see the library transformed into a series of living rooms and kitchens,” Mayer suggests. This metaphor builds on the idea that at parties, people congregate around the food and comfortable sitting areas. Libraries in this manner would become a natural place for learners to mix and mingle.

Mayer has been the university librarian at American University in Washington D. C. for two and a half years and is crafting a bold agenda for the future. This is evident in the library’s new mission statement: we enable success. Reading like a call to action, this simple statement pushes forward a powerful charge that reframes the library as an integral part of campus. “I’m not really a fan of build-it-and-they-will-come,” Mayer says. “We need to constantly scan for opportunities and fill any voids that we see.”

And just how does one make radical change happen? Mayer provides an analogy: “Change is like water on brick, with a steady stream over a long period of time, changes will occur.” Altering work culture isn’t something that can happen overnight; it is an ongoing and constant process."

http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/next-steps-change-american-university