Starbucks is an international franchise with service at its core. CEO Howard Schultz has a great reputation within the retail and market communities. One concept Starbucks teaches its employees is LATTE.
- LATTE is an acronym. It represents: LISTEN (to the customer), ACKNOWLEDGE (the problem), THANK the customer for bringing attention, TAKE care of the problem, and ENCOURAGE the customer to return.
- "Basketball is a game of mistakes." - Bob Knight; We succeed by reducing ours and forcing others'.
- Players commonly tell a player after a bad pass, travel, forced shot, or other error..."It's okay." It's NOT okay. We must correct decision and execution errors or they multiply like rabbits. Refocus players with your favorite, "next play", "play in the moment", "positive play".
- Don't allow one mistake to become two. Every game we see a player take a bad shot or turn the ball over then immediately commit a "frustration foul". I see you. SMH (shaking my head). This is EPIC (see video below).
- Be warm and demanding. Analyze mistakes. Why did you get outrebounded? Was it height or failure to block out? Did you anticipate and show quickness on the o-boards? Was that shot in your range? Did you see the defender and the help defender? Did you come to the pass? Did you have an open driving lane and chose to shoot? Was that good clock management shooting with fifteen seconds left in the quarter? Did you catch and immediately put the ball on the floor? When we accept mistakes we encourage their repetition.
Matthew Syed has written a new book, Black Box Thinking, that examines processes and error. He notes that "Social hierarchies inhibit assertiveness." That means that nobody tells leaders that they are wrong or distracted out of respect, even when that results (aviation industry) in fatal accidents. We coaches make mistakes, too, in how we prepare, train, analyze, and execute. We may be too rigid in how we substitute, use timeouts, or stick with what's worked in the past. It's not okay for us, either.
