A double shot of productivity

An interview with Jim Donald, CEO and president, Starbucks.

By Patricia Sellers, Fortune editor-at-large

(Fortune Magazine) -- I'm kind of a simple guy - brewed coffee, straight black. And I do my own e-mails. If anyone in our company e-mails me or leaves me a voicemail, they get a response, quickly. I'm fanatical about communicating. We have to operate like a store. Nobody likes to wait in line. My Treo is a godsend. I get 200 to 250 e-mails a day, and I respond to 75 percent of them. I'm brief, but that's better than not responding.

I also carry a hardback black binder with me. If someone says something particularly smart or not smart, I write it down so I have actual facts to use when I coach people or give reviews.

Return calls at dawn
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Regular Joe: Donald (center) learned from Sam Walton the importance of listening to employees on the front line. He visits at least 20 Starbucks a week.
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My day in the office starts around 6 A.M. for one reason only: It's the perfect time to reach out to people. This morning I left a voicemail for 100 regional managers. I also wrote personal thank-you notes to 25 partners - that's what we call our employees. I also signed 500 birthday cards. Everybody at headquarters gets one from me. My assistant Janet keeps track of birthdays on her computer, and I sign the cards a month ahead. I'll sign more than 3,500 this year.

Limit meetings to 45 minutes

I have gotten smarter about meetings. I now book hourlong meetings and insist we do them in 45 minutes. That leaves me 15 minutes to download ideas and check messages. By paring back my meetings, I have saved eight hours a week. Rob Grady, our vice president of the beverage category, told me we could save $12 million in productivity costs if all our senior people did it. I told my SVPs, "I want you to take your extra 15 minutes to call someone you usually do not contact every day."

Don't manage time: chart it

Every month Janet catalogs my schedule and gives me a pie chart. My ideal is 40 to 45 percent travel, 20 to 25 percent time with staff, about 8 percent walking around and sticking my head into meetings, 8 percent talking with other CEOs and business partners. I started doing this pie chart because my direct reports said to me, "Hey, where the hell are you?" I wanted to prove to them that I'm here.

Stay close to customers

Store visits are my favorite thing. When I'm in Seattle, I visit about 20 stores a week. When I'm traveling, I visit about ten a day. Whenever I go into a Starbucks (Charts), I walk right to the back of the counter, put on an apron and start talking to our partners.

You can tell how a store is doing by smelling it, so I stick my nose in the pastry display. I check out the restrooms. I did this in my previous job, as CEO of Pathmark (Charts), but I really learned it from Sam Walton, who hired me to run Wal-Mart's (Charts) Supercenters six months before he died. Sam used to say, "If you want to know what's wrong with the business, ask the front line.

Macromanaging at Martha Stewart Living Top of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.