Pour Your Heart Into It

Coffee without people is a theoretical construct. People without coffee are somewhat diminished as well.

Dave Olsen

I was watching a documentary on how Starbucks nearly collapsed and made a come back by going back to basics. That led me to search on my Kindle and found the book written by Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks.

Below are the quotes at the start of each chapter, a total of twenty-four chapters, which are great reminders on how to live our life with intent.

Imagination, Dreams & Humble Origins

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, What is essential is invisible to the eye.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

A Strong Legacy Makes You Sustainable for the Future

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.” — Albert Einstein

To Italians, Espresso Is Like an Aria

“Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and say ‘Why not?’ ” — George Bernard Shaw

We’re not in the coffee business serving people. We’re in the people business serving coffee.

Howard Behar

Luck is the Residue of Design

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” — Peter Drucker

Naysayers Never Built a Great Enterprise

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Imprinting of the Company’s Values

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” — Martin Luther King, Jr

Act Your Dreams with Open Eyes

“Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of day are dangerous men, that they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.” — T. E. Lawrence

Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Don’t try to fit the system. If you do what’s expected of you, you’ll never accomplish more than others expect.

If It Captures Your Imagination, It Will Captivate Others

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, . . . . begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” — Goethe

People Are Not a Line Item

“Wealth is the means and people are the ends. All our material riches will avail us little if we do not use them to expand the opportunities of our people.” — John F. Kennedy, State of the Union, January 1962

A Hundred-Story Building First Needs a Strong Foundation

“The builders of visionary companies . . . concentrate primarily on building an organization–building a ticking clock–rather than on hitting a market just right with a visionary product idea.” — James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built To Last

Don’t Be Threatened by People Smarter Than You

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men [and women] to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” — Theodore Roosevelt

The Value of Dogmatism & Flexibility

“The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business.” — Thomas J. Watson, Jr, “A Business and Its Belief” as quoted in Built to Last, by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras

When you encounter difficulties and shortcomings, you should deal with them in a way that is forthright and consistent with doing better in the future.

Wall Street Measures a Company’s Price, Not Its Value

“There are only two guidelines. One, what’s in the long-term best interests of the enterprise and its stakeholders, supplemented by the dominant concern of doing what’s right.” — Robert D. Haas, President, Levi Strauss & Co as quoted in The Corporate Conscience

As Long As You’re Reinventing, How About Reinventing Yourself?

“The difference between great and average or lousy in any job is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.” — Tom Peters, The Pursuit of WOW!

Don’t Let the Entrepreneur Get in the Way of the Enterprising Spirit

“No organizational regeneration, no national industrial renaissance can take place without individual acts of courage.” — Harvey A. Hornstein, Managerial Courage

Seek to Renew Yourself Even When You’re Hitting Home Runs

“To stay ahead, always have your next idea waiting in the wings.” — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Crisis of Prices, Crisis of Values

“It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.” — James Russell Lowell, “Abraham Lincoln”, printed in North American Review, January 1864

The Best Way to Build a Brand is One Person at a Time

“What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk

Twenty Million New Customers Are Worth Taking a Risk For

“Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” — Helen Keller, The Open Door, 1957

You Can Grow Big & Stay Small

“The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organization.” — E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, 1973

How Socially Responsible Can a Company Be?

“The evidence seems clear that those businesses which actively serve their many constituencies in creative, morally thoughtful ways also, over the long run, serve their shareholders best. Companies do, in fact, do well by doing good.” — Norman Lear, Founder The Business Enterprise Trust, in Aiming Higher by David Bollier

How Not to be a Cookie-Cutter Chain

“Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.” — Mark Rothko, in The New York Times, June 13, 1943

When They Tell You to Focus, Don’t Get Myopic

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!” — Runyard Kipling, “If”

Lead with Your Heart

“Leadership is discovering the company’s destiny and having the courage to follow it. . . . Companies that endure have a noble purpose.” — Joe Jaworski, Organisational Learning Center, MIT

The closing of the book resonates very well with me — Run the Race as a Team and Win as a Team. Quoting the last few paragraphs of the book:

“Remember: You’ll be left with an empty feeling if you hit the finish line alone. When you run a race as a team, though, you’ll discover that much of the reward comes from hitting the tape together. You want to be surrounded not just by cheering on-lookers but by a crowd of winners, celebrating as one.

Victory is much more meaningful when it comes not just from the efforts of one person, but from the joint achievements of many. The euphoria is lasting when all participants lead with their hearts, winning not just for themselves but for one another.

Success is sweetest when it’s shared.“

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