“Leaders who lust for success have an unstoppable need to achieve.” (From Barbara Kellerman and Todd L. Pittinsky, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy.)
This week Starbucks announced the company’s founder and former CEO was coming out of retirement again to take the helm. Howard Schultz lusts for success, which explains why he is coming out of retirement to retake his leadership role not for the first time but for the second.
After stepping away as chief executive officer in 2000, he returned as chief executive officer in 2008, remaining in place until 2017, purportedly once more to retire. Now here he is again – CEO of Starbucks for the third time.
What’s going on here? Is Schultz the only person on the planet who can do the job? Or is he unable to let go? Is he drawn like the proverbial moth to the flame, in his case straight back to Starbucks to right the ship?
The company is having some problems. Most obviously with employees who have the temerity to try to unionize, and who accuse Starbucks of retaliating against them by using “aggressive union-busting tactics.” This is unsettling not only those who work at Starbucks but those who invest in Starbucks, shareholders who do not like what they see.
For Schultz, there is a special irony here, a sad one, because for decades he positioned himself as an especially beneficent leader, a thoughtful, even kindly boss whose employees were not underlings but “partners.” One might think that what turned out a yawning gap between Schultz’s rhetoric and Schultz’s reality would disqualify him from stepping into the company’s leadership role for the third time. Guess not. Guess he badly wanted to be Starbucks’ czar yet again, and yet again those around him were unwilling or unable to say no.
This week was another announcement, a related one, this one by football icon Tom Brady, who revealed on social media that he had reversed himself. He would not do what he said he would do just two months ago – he would not retire from football. “These past two months,” said Brady, “I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come but it is not now.” Sounds like Schultz.
Those who read my posts who also read my books will know that Tom Brady was one among the 12 leaders featured in Leaders Who Lust. About Brady we wrote that his lust for success was independent of financial rewards or material goods. Rather it was driven by the need to stand out – to excel in the game into which he had invested every fiber of his being.
Brady has been insatiable, willing to put himself through an almost unimaginably punishing schedule, a supremely arduous workload, and the severe psychological stress that is part of the overweening need to win. But Brady’s goal is to be at the pinnacle of success. Nothing less will suffice. Which is precisely why, come summer, he will, at the ancient age of 45, be back. He’ll be back to a grueling, grinding schedule, training with the Buccaneers.