Starbucks founder and three-time CEO Howard Schultz recently recalled his meeting with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs during an episode of the podcast ‘Acquired’. Schultz recalled the moment when Steve Jobs screamed in his face to fire his whole leadership team, and that how right he was proved a few months later.
For those unaware, Howard D Schultz is the founder of Starbucks.He was chairman and CEO of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000, from 2008 to 2017, and interim CEO from 2022 to 2023. In March 2023, Schultz handed the reins to his permanent replacement Laxman Narasimhan, former PepsiCo executive, and pledged that he wouldn’t return.
When Steve Jobs told Starbucks CEO to fire his entire top leadership
Talking about the incident, Schultz said that in the year 2008 there was a meeting scheduled for Starbucks and Apple around mobile order and other things. The Apple founder had invited Schultz to Apple Campus and the two were said to be taking a walk around the campus courtyard to discuss the matter.
“[Jobs] had a whole thing about walking,” Schultz said on the podcast. “He would go out and walk around the building. And so I went down there and basically we took a walk. I just told him all my problems — everything that was going on. He just stopped me and said, ‘This is what you need to do.’ He looked at me and said, ‘You go back to Seattle and you fire everyone on your leadership team.’ I thought he was joking.”
Schultz reportedly said he pushed back: “I said what are you talking about, ‘Fire everybody’? He said, ‘I just told you. F–king fire all those people.’ He was almost screaming at me in my face: ‘Fire all those people, that’s what I would do.’ I said, ‘Steve, I can’t fire all these people. Who’s going to do the work?
“He said, ‘I promise you, in six months, maybe nine, they’ll all be gone.’ And Jobs was right. Except for one, the general counsel, they were all gone.”
When Jobs and Schultz met again during an event, Schultz told Steve Jobs how right he was. I talked to him after that. “We were on stage together at an event, and I told him, ‘They’re all gone.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re six months, nine months late. Think about all the things you could’ve done.”