Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Reveals What It Felt Like to Fire Someone He Respected

By Shana Lebowitz

In 2008, Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO after an eight-year hiatus. Doing so required ousting then-CEO Jim Donald.

In his 2011 book "Onward," Schultz writes about how difficult it was to tell Donald — someone Schultz had a lot of respect for — that he would be replacing him.

Schultz says he started thinking about coming back as CEO in fall 2007. It was the beginning of the Great Recession and the company's sales were hitting unprecedented lows. Schultz, who at the time was Starbucks' chairman, recognized multiple problems with the company — most notably that it was focused on rapid growth at the expense of its brand.