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Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about Howard Schultz and Starbucks, Panera Bread, democratic workplaces, the manager and the swarm, and five things that CEOs have and look for.

From the Globe and Mail: Starbucks tries to build bridge from café to grocery store
"Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has big plans for the coffee chain. - Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has big plans for the coffee chain. |Howard Schultz once dismissed instant coffee as too lowbrow for his premium Starbucks Corp. Now, the chief executive officer of Starbucks is selling $300-million (U.S.) a year of Via instant coffee and planning an aggressive expansion of his consumer product lineup that will take the Starbucks brand much deeper into grocery store aisles."

Wally's Comment: The Starbucks story is definitely worth telling, as Schultz is doing in his new book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. This interview is part of the promotion for the book and Starbucks and Schultz. For some good perspective, I suggest the following articles that that tell the story from 2008 to today. Read "Starbucks fix" (Fortune 2008), "Starbucks Faces Existential Crisis In Downturn" (Washington Post, 2009), "Now at Starbucks: A Rebound " (NYT, 2010) and "A Changed Starbucks. A Changed C.E.O ." (NYT 2011).

From Wharton: Building a Brand on the Smell of Mom's Kitchen: How Panera Found Success in a Down Economy
"Stroll into any Panera in the country -- whether it is in Portland, Ore., or Portland, Maine, St. Louis, Mo. or St. Augustine, Fla. -- and the setting is the same: a wide-open airy space with stylish light fixtures, walls painted in rich red and yellow hues, an assortment of cushy, upholstered seats and perhaps a gas fireplace. The scent of fresh bread baking wafts through the café. Panera's menu offers hearty $7 sandwiches made on artisan breads, as well as soups, salads and baked goods. It serves its meals on real dishware rather than on plastic plates, and invites customers to sit on elegant wooden chairs rather than in Formica booths."

Wally's Comment: Panera Bread is a good story with lots of things you can learn, including why the company didn't lower prices during the recession. For background read "Rising to the Occasion With a Bakery Chain " from the Wall Street Journal.

From Winning Workplaces: Big Revenue Growth for Democratic Workplaces - Even Small Ones
"One reason why many business leaders who don't subscribe to egalitarian workplace people practices have stuck to their autocratic (or other) employee engagement systems is because they think it will slow down decision making and action, and thus impede revenue growth."

Wally's Comment: For background on democratic workplaces, read Louise Altman's excellent post, "21st Century Workplaces – Democracies or Autocracies? " The "democratic workplace" discussions are often muddied by three things. First, in most cases we're not talking about "democratic workplaces" so much as "participative workplaces." Second, most discussions suggest that the choice is between two alternatives, when the reality is that the choices range across a continuum with hierarchical at one end and group-based at the other. Third, the discussion usually ignores that fact that hierarchies are good at, for example, mobilizing resources but that groups do a better job of allocating resources to opportunity. We already have some examples of these workplaces at companies including Nucor, W. L. Gore, Semco, and Lincoln Electric.

From the Ivey Business Journal: To become a better manager stop being a manager
"The time is fast approaching, this author writes, when organizations will need Chief Creative Officers instead of Chief Executive Officers, and Chief Collaboration Officers instead of Chief Operating Officers. In the article, he offers the practicing manager proven, practical steps on how to become a Chief Creative Officer, and how to transform his or her organization into one capable of unleashing the power of self-organizing swarms."

Wally's Comment: Here's a call for another new and radical kind of management. I wouldn't bet the rent money on this, but it's the kind of article that will stimulate your thinking. For me, the benchmark for much of this discussion is Charlene Li's excellent book, Open Leadership . Read the reviews on Amazon and you'll find some additional points of view you can use to supplement the thoughts in the Ivey article.

From the NY Times: Distilling the Wisdom of C.E.O.’s
"In other words, what does it take to lead an organization — whether it’s a sports team, a nonprofit, a start-up or a multinational corporation? What are the X factors? Interviews I conducted with more than 70 chief executives and other leaders for Corner Office in The New York Times point to five essentials for success — qualities that most of those C.E.O.’s share and look for in people they hire."

Wally's Comment: Adam Bryant's Corner Office interviews are must-reads for me, so I'm excited about his new book. I'm also excited about this article because it distills Bryant's key learning from those interviews. What I like about the interviews and the lessons Bryant draws from them is that they come from CEOs who are not celebrated media darlings which gives them a freshness that you won't find in the standard business book or your typical hagiographic CEO biography. 

Carnivals and Such
Carnival of HR- The April Fool’s Edition hosted at Aquire

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check back on Wednesday when I select five excellent posts from the week's independent business blogs. Last week I highlighted posts on becoming a leader for all the wrong reasons, how to influence, the leader as gardener, learning from success, and taking time to re-think.

Popular posts on my blog last week included "A Bunch of Cs for Bosses," "Pareto, Juran and Your 'Vital Few'," and "You don't 'build' people, dammit!"

If you want to get a book done or improve your performance as a boss, let's talk about options . My coaching calendar currently has space open.

If you're a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor's Support Kit.

And be sure to stop by at Weekly Leader where I'll try to get you thinking about The Challenge of the Week.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.