The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (51 page)

5.14
They sponsored weight-loss classes
In a fact-checking email, a Starbucks spokesman wrote: “Currently, Starbucks offers discounts at many of the
national fitness clubs. We believe that this discussion should be more around overall health and wellness options provided to our partners, rather than focusing specifically on gym memberships. We know that our partners want to find ways to be well and we continue to look for programs that will enable them to do that.”

5.15
opening seven new stores every day
Michael Herriman et al., “A Crack in the Mug: Can Starbucks Mend It?”
Harvard Business Review,
October 2008.

5.16
In 1992, a British psychologist
Sheina Orbell and Paschal Sheeran, “Motivational and Volitional Processes in Action Initiation: A Field Study of the Role of Implementation Intentions,”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
30, no. 4 (April 2000): 780–97.

5.17
An impatient crowd might overwhelm
In a fact-checking statement, a Starbucks spokesman wrote: “Overall accurate assessment, however, we would argue that any job is stressful. As mentioned above, one of the key elements of our Customer Service Vision is that every partner owns the customer experience. This empowerment lets partners know that the company trusts them to resolve issues and helps create the confidence to successfully navigate these moments.”

5.18
The company identified specific rewards
These details were confirmed with Starbucks employees and executives. In a fact-checking statement, however, a Starbucks spokesman wrote: “This is not accurate.” The spokesman declined to provide further details.

5.19
We
Listen
to the customer
In a fact-checking statement, a Starbucks spokesman wrote: “While it is certainly not incorrect or wrong to refer to it, LATTE is no longer part of our formal training. In fact, we are moving away from more prescriptive steps like LATTE and are widening the guardrails to enable store partners to engage in problem solving to address the many unique issues that arise in our stores. This model is very dependent on continual effective coaching by shift supervisors, store, and district managers.”

5.20
Then they practice those plans
In a fact-checking statement, a Starbucks spokesman wrote: “Overall accurate assessment—we strive to provide tools and training on both skills and behaviors to deliver world-class customer service to every customer on every visit. We would like to note, however, that similar to LATTE (and for the same reasons), we do not formally use Connect, Discover, Respond.”

5.21
“ ‘This is better than a visit’ ”
Constance L. Hays, “These Days the Customer Isn’t Always Treated Right,”
The New York Times,
December 23, 1998.

5.22
Schultz, the man who built Starbucks
Information on Schultz from Adi Ignatius, “We Had to Own the Mistakes,”
Harvard Business Review
, July-August 2010; William W. George and Andrew N. McLean, “Howard Schultz: Building
Starbucks Community (A),”
Harvard Business Review
, June 2006; Koehn, Besharov, and Miller, “Starbucks Coffee Company in the 21st Century,”
Harvard Business Review,
June 2008; Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang,
Pour Your Heart Into It
:
How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
(New York: Hyperion, 1997); Taylor Clark,
Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture
(New York: Little, Brown, 2007); Howard Behar,
It’s Not About the Coffee: Lessons on Putting People First from a Life at Starbucks
(New York: Portfolio Trade, 2009); John Moore,
Tribal Knowledge
(New York: Kaplan, 2006); Bryant Simon,
Everything but the Coffee
:
Learning About America from Starbucks
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). In a fact-checking statement, a Starbucks spokesman wrote: “Although at a very high level, the overall story is correct, a good portion of the details are incorrect or cannot be verified.” That spokesperson declined to detail what was incorrect or provide any clarifications.

5.23
Mark Muraven, who was by then
M. Muraven, M. Gagné, and H. Rosman, “Helpful Self-Control: Autonomy Support, Vitality, and Depletion,”
Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology
44, no. 3 (2008): 573–85. See also Mark Muraven, “Practicing Self-Control Lowers the Risk of Smoking Lapse,”
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
24, no. 3 (2010): 446–52; Brandon J. Schmeichel and Kathleen Vohs, “Self-Affirmation and Self-Control: Affirming Core Values Counteracts Ego Depletion,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
96, no. 4 (2009): 770–82; Mark Muraven, “Autonomous Self-Control Is Less Depleting,”
Journal of Research in Personality
42, no. 3 (2008): 763–70; Mark Muraven, Dikla Shmueli, and Edward Burkley, “Conserving Self-Control Strength,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
91, no. 3 (2006): 524–37; Ayelet Fishbach, “The Dynamics of Self-Regulation,” in
11th Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology
(New York: Psychology Press, 2001); Tyler F. Stillman et al., “Personal Philosophy and Personnel Achievement: Belief in Free Will Predicts Better Job Performance,”
Social Psychological and Personality Science
1 (2010): 43–50; Mark Muraven, “Lack of Autonomy and Self-Control: Performance Contingent Rewards Lead to Greater Depletion,”
Motivation and Emotion
31, no. 4 (2007): 322–30.

5.24
One 2010 study
This study, as of the time of writing this book, was unpublished and shared with me on the condition its authors would not be revealed. However, further details on employee empowerment studies can be found in C. O. Longenecker, J. A. Scazzero, and T. T. Standfield, “Quality Improvement Through Team Goal Setting, Feedback, and Problem Solving: A Field Experiment,”
International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management
11, no. 4 (1994): 45–52; Susan G. Cohen and Gerald E. Ledford, “The Effectiveness of Self-Managing Teams: A Quasi-Experiment,”
Human Relations
47, no. 1 (1994): 13–43; Ferris, Rosen, and Barnum,
Handbook of
Human Resource Management
(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995); Linda Honold,
“A Review of the Literature on Employee Empowerment,”
Empowerment in Organizations
5, no. 4 (1997): 202–12; Thomas C. Powell, “Total Quality Management and Competitive Advantage: A Review and Empirical Study,”
Strategic Management Journal
16 (1995): 15–37.

6.1
Afterward, he had trouble staying awake
Details on this case come from a variety of sources, including interviews with the professionals involved, witnesses in the operating room and emergency room, and news accounts and documents published by the Rhode Island Department of Health. Those include consent orders published by the Rhode Island Department of Health; the Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction published by Rhode Island Hospital on August 8, 2007; Felicia Mello, “Wrong-Site Surgery Case Leads to Probe,”
The Boston Globe,
August 4, 2007; Felice Freyer, “Doctor to Blame in Wrong-Side Surgery, Panel Says,”
The Providence Journal,
October 14, 2007; Felice Freyer, “R.I. Hospital Cited for Wrong-Side Surgery,”
The Providence Journal,
August 3, 2007; “Doctor Disciplined for Wrong-Site Brain Surgery,” Associated Press, August 3, 2007; Felice Freyer, “Surgeon Relied on Memory, Not CT Scan,”
The
Providence Journal,
August 24, 2007; Felicia Mello, “Wrong-Site Surgery Case Leads to Probe 2nd Case of Error at R.I. Hospital This Year,”
The Boston Globe,
August 4, 2007; “Patient Dies After Surgeon Operates on Wrong Side of Head,” Associated Press, August 24, 2007; “Doctor Back to Work After Wrong-Site Brain Surgery,” Associated Press, October 15, 2007; Felice Freyer, “R.I. Hospital Fined After Surgical Error,”
The Providence Journal,
November 27, 2007.

6.2
Unless the blood was drained
Accounts of this case were described by multiple individuals, and some versions of events differ with one another. Those differences, where appropriate, are described in the notes.

6.3
In 2002, the National Coalition on Health Care
http://www.rhodeislandhospital.org
.

6.4
“They can’t take away our pride.”
Mark Pratt, “Nurses Rally on Eve of Contract Talks,” Associated Press, June 22, 2000; “Union Wants More Community Support During Hospital Contract Dispute,” Associated Press, June 25, 2000; “Nurses Say Staff Shortage Hurting Patients,” Associated Press, August 31, 2000; “Health Department Surveyors Find Hospitals Stressed,” Associated Press, November 18, 2001; “R.I. Hospital Union Delivers Strike Notice,” Associated Press, June 20, 2000.

6.5
Administrators eventually agreed to limit
In a statement, a spokes-woman for Rhode Island Hospital said: “The strike was not about relationships
between physicians and nurses, it was about wages and work rules. Mandatory overtime is a common practice and has been an issue in unionized hospitals across the country. I don’t know whether there were signs with those messages during the 2000 union negotiations, but if so, they would have referred to mandatory overtime, not relationships between physicians and nurses.”

6.6
to make sure mistakes are avoided
American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Joint Commission Guidelines,
http://www3.aaos.org/member/safety/guidelines.cfm
.

6.7
A half hour later
RIDH Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction, August 7, 2007.

6.8
There was no clear indication of
In a statement, Rhode Island Hospital said some of these details are incorrect, and referred to the August 7, 2007, RIDH Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction. That document says, “There is no evidence in the medical record that the Nurse Practitioner, employed by the covering Neurosurgeon, received, or attempted to obtain, the necessary information related to the patient’s CT scan … to confirm the correct side of the bleed and [
sic
] prior to having the consent form signed for craniotomy surgery.… The medical record indicates that the surgical consent was obtained by a Nurse Practitioner working for the Neurosurgeon who was on call. Although the surgical consent indicates that the procedure to be performed was a ‘Right craniotomy and evacuation of subdural hematoma,’ the side (right) was not initially entered onto the consent form. Interview on 8/2/07 at 2:05 PM with the Director of Perioperative Surgery indicated that patient … was transported from the emergency department with an incomplete (as to side) signed surgical consent. The Circulating Nurse noted that the site of the craniotomy was not included on the signed surgical consent as required by hospital policy. She indicated that the site of the craniotomy surgery was then added by the Neurosurgeon, in the operating room, once he was questioned by the Circulating Nurse regarding the site of the surgery.” In a follow-up statement, Rhode Island Hospital wrote that the surgeon “and his assistant finished the spinal surgery, the OR was readied, and when they were in the hall, about to return to the OR, the OR nurse saw the consent form did not include the side of the surgery and told [the surgeon]. The doctor took the consent from the nurse and wrote ‘right’ on it.”

6.9
“We have to operate immediately.”
In a letter sent in response to fact-checking inquiries, the physician involved in this case contradicted or challenged some of the events described in this chapter. The physician wrote that the nurse in this case was not concerned that the physician was operating on the wrong side. The nurse’s concern focused on paperwork issues. The physician contended that the nurse did not question the physician’s expertise
or accuracy. The nurse did not ask the physician to pull up the films, according to the physician. The physician said that he asked the nurse to find the family to see if it was possible to “redo the consent form properly,” rather than the other way around. When the family could not be found, according to the physician, the physician asked for clarification from the nurse regarding the procedure to improve the paperwork. The nurse, according to the physician, said he wasn’t sure, and as a result, the physician decided to “put a correction to the consent form and write a note in the chart detailing that we needed to proceed.” The physician said he never swore and was not excited.

Rhode Island Hospital, when asked about this account of events, said it was not accurate and referred to the August 7, 2007, RIDH Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction. In a statement, the hospital wrote, “During our investigation, no one said they heard [the surgeon] say that the patient was going to die.”

“Those quotes with all the excitement and irritation in my manner, even swearing was completely inaccurate,” the physician wrote. “I was calm and professional. I showed some emotion only for a brief moment when I realized I had started on the wrong side. The critical problem was that we would not have films to look at during the procedure.… Not having films to view during the case is malpractice by the hospital; however we had no choice but to proceed without films.”

Rhode Island Hospital responded that the institution “can’t comment on [the surgeon’s] statement but would note that the hospital assumed that surgeons would put films up as they performed surgery if there was any question about the case. After this event, the hospital mandated that films would be available for the team to view.” In a second statement, the hospital wrote the surgeon “did not swear during this exchange. The nurse told [the surgeon] he had not received report from the ED and the nurse spent several minutes in the room trying to reach the correct person in the ED. The NP indicated he had received report from the ED physician. However, the CRNA (nurse anesthetist) needed to know the drugs that had been given in the ED, so the nurse was going thru the record to get her the info.”