DATE: January 6, 2006

The UW Business School hosted a candid "CEO Exchange" between Starbucks CEO Jim Donald and Nordstrom President Blake Nordstrom during a live taping of the national PBS business show January 5 at Meany Hall for the Performing Arts.

More than 850 students, faculty and business leaders in the audience were treated to an intimate glimpse into two landmark Northwest companies and the men who lead them today. CEO Exchange host Jeff Greenfield, a CNN senior analyst, and several audience members posed a range of personal and professional questions to Donald and Nordstrom.

"I don't know of an executive who doesn't talk about putting the customer first. It's almost boilerplate," Greenfield charged. "But both of your companies actually seem to walk the talk. How do you do this?"

Nordstrom said the company owes its recent resurgence to a reconnection to the values and culture of the original high-touch shoe store founded in 1887 by his great grandfather. "As retailers, we have this thought that if you can be a successful shoe merchant, you can apply some of those learnings to other aspects of the business," explained Nordstrom, who got his start in the shoe business at the ripe young age of 10. "There's something about greeting the customer, listening to them, getting on your hands and knees and measuring their feet, going in the back to grab the inventory. You've got to sell that customer. You can't clerk it. That idea of being a salesperson, a real merchant, is at the heart and soul of what we do."

Donald, who went from bag boy to CEO of several grocery chains before jumping to big coffee in 2002, offered his thoughts on how Starbucks has prospered by continuing to create cafes that become vital "third place" hangouts between home and work. "We say we're in the people business serving coffee," he said.

Donald added that being in the people business extends to the "partners" who operate the worldwide legion of Starbucks stores. This means offering exceptional benefits and pay, and remaining accessible in person, by e-mail or by phone. He recounted delaying a recent meeting with general council to take a call from "Star from South Dakota:" "I said, ‘Star, this is Jim Donald.' She said, ‘It works! It's him, everybody! Thanks. Talk to you later, Jim.' And hung up."

Greenfield also drew personal details, many in the closing "lightning round" of spitfire questioning. For instance, Donald drinks three cups of coffee a day, has Neil Young and Guns & Roses on his iPod and aspires to dunk a basketball, whereas Nordstrom is "the only person in Seattle who doesn't drink coffee," hasn't yet foregone his cassette player and prefers boating to basketball.

"Do you ever wake up in the morning and call in sick?" Greenfield asked.

"My wife would tell you that if I'm on my deathbed, I'll go into the office," Donald replied. "I love what I do."

"In our positions," Nordstrom explained, "it's demanding, but you have some flexibility, too. It's not about calling in sick. It's finding those moments, those treasures, when you can be with your family."

"What I talk to my team members about is not work-life balance," Donald added. "If you balance, you don't grow professionally and you don't grow personally. I call it work-life blend. We can blend in activities into what we do every day. This blend is what makes a person and a company successful."

The UW Business School taping of "CEO Exchange" will air on PBS stations across the country in April 2006, opening the series' fourth season.