As of this June, I’ll have spent 16 years as an employee of Starbucks Coffee Company. Roughly half of my total career has been in service to Starbucks, and I can say without a doubt that it’s been the best 16 years of my career so far. So many great people, so many amazing things to work on, so many opportunities to travel to far-off places and meet other Starbucks partners who are making the Starbucks mission come to life. It’s been a roller-coaster ride for sure. It’s taken me from the heady mid-2000s when Starbucks was opening a new location every 7 hours on average, through the economic downturn of the 2008–2010 years, and into the resurgence of Starbucks as a powerhouse brand in the ten years that followed. Through it all, I’ve worked with smart and dedicated people and learned so much from the many great leaders I’ve had the good fortune of working with and for.
That said, the last three years have been rough, to say the least. It’s taken a toll on all of us, and it’s taught me lessons about myself and my leadership style. The COVID years have changed me as a leader because it drove home for me the power and importance of connection, servant leadership, and empathy for your team. We could not have come through that experience with as much success as we did without binding together as a team and supporting each other. It was a critical success factor.
As proud as I am of the team and what we’ve accomplished, I’m simply mentally and emotionally tired. It feels exceedingly privileged to admit that, knowing that my situation was so much better than the experiences of so many others, but it’s true. I’ve been incredibly fortunate, but I’m still just a person, and we all get tired.
With that as a backdrop, starting the first week of June, I will be taking advantage of an amazing Starbucks benefit: the Career Coffee Break (or CCB, Starbucks parlance for an unpaid sabbatical). Once you hit ten years of continuous service with Starbucks, you become eligible, so in that sense, I’m overdue! You can take a CCB as long as twelve months, but if you take less than six months of CCB, you are eligible to return to your previous role and position, assuming there hasn’t been a major reorganization during your absence. My plan is to run my sabbatical from June through the middle of November, taking slightly less than six months and covering the best possible months of Pacific Northwest weather.
We haven’t completely firmed up our plans, but right now we’re considering several small, 1-2 week “local” trips with our camper trailer, going to places like Bend, Vancouver Island, and eastern Washington, and then one “grand tour” trip that will be a clockwise circuit of the far-western US (staying well west of the Rockies). That longer trip may be anywhere from 30 to 40 days, and we want to hit as many highlights as we can along the way, such as Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon. The return trip will take us back up the California coast. There are still lots of logistics to figure out for that one. We’ve spent recent evenings and weekends studying the map and checking out locations available through Hipcamp and Harvest Hosts, as well as state and national parks with camping accommodations. Once we have a rough circuit mapped out, I’ll post the plan.
I’ll make updates in this series as we progress through my sabatical journey to share insights, observations, and pictures from along the way as we travel. Follow along if you’d like. I think it’s going to be fun!
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