**Normally I’d post this sort of thing over at stratechick dot com…but I’m waiting for iLife ‘09 to show up so I can spruce the place up a bit. Until then…here you go.**

A few weeks ago, I and several of my Strategic Management teammates received an email from our instructor. He had bumped into a VP of something or other for Starbucks, and as we were all working on Strategic Planning Notebooks for Starbucks, he inquired as to whether or not she’d be interested in taking a look-see at our final deliverables. She agreed, and he passed on her contact information to us to set up meetings with her. This would all be done independent of our actual class, and wouldn’t have any impact on our grades. Totally optional.

One of my teammates forwarded me the email and asked me if I’d be interested. “Depends on how our final SPN looks,” I replied. I’ll admit though, I was intrigued. I lust (and no, that isn’t a dramatic overstatement) for honest, intelligent, and informed feedback on my work…both professional and academic. I’m not looking simply for an “atta girl” though, I want to hear true constructive feedback.

A couple of weeks after that initial email, the Starbucks teams received an update on the meeting requirements…if we wanted to take the meeting. Basically, the VP had indicated she was very busy and didn’t have time to read our strategic planning notebooks, so we’d need to arrive with an Executive Overview and she’d review them all during the same meeting.

Hmm.

I was really disappointed by this, and let me tell you why. You see, I think one of the fundamental problems in business today is that everything is an Executive Overview. Managers and employees can talk about the Big Picture and think Outside the Box all they like, but at the end of the day…it’s the details that determine whether a project or a business fails. My team had spent twelve weeks performing several different strategic planning activities and had produced a rather comprehensive document. I was proud of it. To take it and whittle it down to an Executive Overview (really – what does that even mean?) was an insult both to my team and to the hard work we’d done. If she couldn’t take twenty minutes to read our SPN, then clearly she’s too busy to provide us with any truly meaningful feedback. Not everything should be scanned at the 35,000-foot level.

I was also disappointed because I think the woman (and Starbucks) missed a great opportunity to mentor some enthusiastic business students. Also of note, she did a fantastic job of actually demotivating said business students by minimizing their efforts to make her day easier. If she didn’t want to truly engage herself in this process, why on Earth did she say yes?

When I grow up, I won’t be that kind of manager…or executive. If I don’t have time, I won’t do something. If I say I will though…I will follow through.