Its not about the Coffee
The seven times Tour de France cycling champion, Lance Armstrong, wrote an autobiography called, ‘It’s not about the Bike’. I think that is a great title. It takes something that is indelibly linked with him and says, actually, you’ve got it wrong … its not about what you see … its about what lies behind that … what motivates what you see.So, when you read Armstrong’s autobiography you certainly read about a lot of bike rides, but you do soon see that the bike riding is a chosen means to a much bigger end. Lance Armstrong is about courage in the face of death and danger – on and off the bike, having recovered from cancer – its about perseverance, about focus, about the will to win and to be willing to put in the mental and physical fitness regime that fuels the engine for success.
It is no surprise that even in his short retirement, he started a charitable foundation and is a successful businessman, and has been involved in pioneering new innovative ways of going faster on a bike or becoming fitter while on it. He was a winning Triathlete before he became a winning cyclist … and in his ‘holiday’ from competitive cycling, he became a top marathon runner.
Motivations are sometimes not what they appear at first sight.
Another example would be Starbucks Coffee. Its name, the name of Captain Ahab’s first mate from Melville’s Moby-Dick about an American Whaling Ship, conjures up adventure and ‘bigness’ and would have been known to many of the first coffee drinkers in 1970s Seattle. You’d think it would be about the coffee, or at least about the money made from the sale of the coffee. Starbucks demonstrate a new way of doing business … its not about the coffee, although it is … and its not about the money, but it is … but its much more than that. They are regularly featured in the Best Place to Work stats in the countries where their 15,000 outlets are. So, its about their ‘partners’ (not workers) … well it is … but it is also about the communities where they reside.
It is about all of these things … and more … who would have imagined that a coffee shop’s mission statement would have at its spearhead, ‘the human spirit’?!
To inspire and nurture the human spirit – One person, One cup, and One Neighborhood at a time
So, its not about the coffee … but it is. Its about having a vision to achieve something great and motivating. And a vision usually resides with a person. Starbucks was a well known place to hang out and have a coffee in the 1970s … in Seattle. It wasn’t really until Howard Shulze joined the company in 1982 that they began to look up across America and over the seas. Starbucks have always had a vision to make great coffee … but they didn’t always have a vision to use the coffee to ‘inspire the human spirit.’ … and to do that on a global scale.
Like people associate Armstrong with a bike, I am known for my love of coffee and the frequency with which a cup of it is seen in my hand. However, I’d like to think that for me … like Starbucks … its not about the coffee.
Rob Wood
