Introduction
CEOs have the greatest responsibility in any organization as the lifeline of the business lies in their hands. A CEO gives strategies that should enrich the business, they are in charge of the way operations run, and every decision they make is final and pivotal to the business. Starbucks as one of the biggest American coffee company and coffee houses all over the states is definitely on top of their game due great management and direction from their leaders. If there is to be any change from the current CEO Howard Schultz who is a visionary leader who is considered the Steve Jobs of coffee it may be a tough call (Sorkin, 2016). However, Howard feels like it is his time to pass on the mantle to a more equipped person that is Kevin Johnson. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to discuss the new prospective CEO of Starbucks Kevin Johnson. We will be looking at his background, leadership skills he possesses, interesting things about him, what he might bring to the Starbucks brand, and any possible changes he may want to bring.
Kevin Johnson is an American businessman who is currently the Chief executive officer of one of the leading coffee companies in America, which is Starbucks. Before the big opportunity to be the Chief executive officer of Starbucks Kevin Johnson was its Chief operations officer. In his journey in the world of business, Johnson has had a lot of diversity from years of working in the field of technology to finally being able to lead one of the greatest coffee companies (Bishop, 2015). Johnson before joining Starbucks on any level was the CEO of Juniper Networks a Silicon Valley computer networking company and a fierce rival of the Cisco Systems (Stewart, 2016). Johnson earned a bachelors’ degree in business administration from the New Mexico State University, he, later on, became an IBM’s system integration and consulting systems developer. After eleven years of system development, Johnson joined the Microsoft team where he was involved in a lot of executive decisions and projects which catapulted him to group vice president of the Microsoft sales all over the world (Bishop, 2015). He, later on, became the president of Windows and online services division after the retirement of his co-president Jim Allchin. Johnson left Microsoft on good terms as he went on to become the CEO of Juniper Networks and Shaygan Kheradpir succeeded him in the year 2014 (Bishop, 2015). Having worked at Microsoft for over sixteen years, Johnson has gained a huge amount of skills on being a leader a manager and even a worker seeing as he worked himself from the bottom to the top of Microsoft (Stewart, 2016). With Johnson as the new CEO, the Starbucks Company will be marking an incredible phase in their journey from a traditional retailer to a technologically driven business (Stewart, 2016).
It is interesting to know that Johnson’s background in information technology has helped bring a new era of the global business operations. Under him, Starbucks developed its loyalty program and mobile app into a huge revenue source for them helping their sales to go up (Cox, 2016). Johnson while at Microsoft natured innovation by creating a program where employees were able to submit an application for funds for their projects (Cox, 2016). Johnson has interests in the initiative for social good just like his predecessor Schultz, his involvements in a nonprofit organization’s Johnson will carry the torch of conscious capitalism as good as Schultz did as the CEO of Starbucks. Johnson has shown great commitment to his organization, having made eight million in 2014, Johnson at times would even slash his pay when the company had tough times (Cox,2016). It is also interesting to know that a former co-worker of Johnson called Brooks confessed that Kevin Johnson is one of the people you can go to war with (Cox, 2016). Johnson’s reliability and leadership skills were well known to all that had worked with him on their sides, and they always recognized him. As leader reliability is paramount, businesses go through ups and downs all the time. Knowing that you have a leader who will always be there breeds both employee and customer confidence on a brand and that is what Kevin Johnson will also be bringing at Starbucks (Patton, 2016). Kevin Johnson is the kind of leader that shows by being an example his ability to collaborate well with others has seen him bring growth for Starbucks globally in over seventy countries (Starbucks Newsroom, 2016). Johnson’s prospective plans for Starbucks include a five-year strategic plan that outlines seven core strategies for growth that will enable Starbucks to capture the global market that is before them (Starbucks Newsroom, 2016). It is evident that a lot of the changes that Johnson will be bringing include a lot of technological advances; this shows just how much potential Starbucks has as a company as technology is the future. Johnson’s stirs confidence for the employees, customers, and partners of Starbucks as his reputation to always deliver him.
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