Last week, Starbucks announced that it was laying off 1,100 employees in its corporate offices – one of the biggest cuts in the company’s history. This week, the new CEO of Starbucks has a blunt message for the workers who didn’t get cut.

Coming days before the first time that CEO Brian Niccol will face investors since taking over his role, it all boils down to three simple parts:

• Work harder
• Take ownership
• Get back into the office

“We’re not effective on how things get to the store, and we’re not effective in making decisions and then holding each other accountable to those decisions,” Niccol told Starbucks employees, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. “This is why we had to make the changes that we had to make.”

There’s nothing I love more in business than when a giant company makes a bold leadership move that could either be genius or could completely backfire, and those of us who run slightly smaller businesses – or for that matter, much smaller businesses that could fit around a single table at Starbucks – can unpack the whole thing and look for takeaways.

So pour yourself a cup of whatever beverage gets you thinking, and let’s dig in.

The rule of 3’s

Let me start with something smart that Niccol did, in that he packed three core messages into one. The reason it’s smart? The human brain is simply hard-wired to remember things better if you group them in threes.

Skeptical? It’s why groups of three comes up so often in culture and literature: everything from “blood, sweat, and tears,” to “Veni, vidi, vici,” to “The 3 Litlte Pigs.”

Fewer than three can make focusing hard; more than three can be hard to remember. But three exactly is like Goldilocks: just right.

Even before we get into the substance of what Niccol had to say and whether it’s likely to work, this communications tool is so powerful that I advise rewriting whatever message you have to give so that it can be delivered in three parts.

Work harder and take ownership

Niccol said that Starbucks employees who didn’t lose their jobs in the round of layoffs are basically safe for now. With that security comes a big responsibility, he added. The message, if I can summarize, seems to be:

If you’re still working at Starbucks, and you want the company to succeed, then its success is your job – not just to be the best you can at your individual part, but to be a part of the whole.

“Make no mistake, we’re in a turnaround,” Niccol said, and elsewhere: “We’ve got to untangle a few things right now. But you know what? It’s all things that we can untangle.”

The jury is out on how well this message will work. Much will depend on follow-up and execution. But, we can at least offer it as a positive comparison to what we’ve seen from another large iconic American company that did layoffs recently.

That would be Southwest Airlines, which is profitable, but where CEO Robert Jordan made it clear that the cuts are about making it more profitable – which is for the benefit of shareholders, not employees.

I don’t know how that message is supposed to inspire anyone still working at the company. Niccol at least is laying this out as a battle for the success and relevance of Starbucks.

It seems a lot more likely to work – and necessary, too.

Get back into the office.

There’s something so ironic about the idea of a coffee chain that has tried to establish itself as the “third place” besides home and work telling workers that they have to come back to the office.

Ironic thing part 2: Niccol negotiated a very sweet remote work deal for himself when he agreed to come on board as Starbucks CEO.

He has a potential $113 million compensation package, plus the right to work remotely in Newport Beach, California, which is 1,000 miles away from Starbucks HQ in Seattle, and a heck of a lot sunnier.

I’ve asked Starbucks whether Niccol is still taking advantage of that perk, but haven’t heard back. Still, it’s the most do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do part of this story.

But, Niccol is at least swimming with the tide here, in terms of big U.S. businesses trying to erase the last vestiges of Covid-era remote work. At one point in his remarks, he suggested a problem that having people in the same room together might help alleviate:

“We have way too many follow-up meetings to fix way too many surprises. We’ve got to stop it,” he reportedly said, adding at another point: “We own whether or not this place grows.”

Leaders need to lead

I can’t predict the future, so I can’t say if Niccol will be successful. The more I think about it, the more I think there is a blind spot in having negotiated such a lenient work-remote setup for himself, if he thinks that getting Starbucks corporate employees back into the office is crucial for success.

That said, Starbucks has been through some tough times lately, and Niccol was brought in to make changes and try to move forward.

That’s the one lesson that I think we can confidently take from all of this: When you’re in a position of leadership, you have to lead. That seems obvious, but only until you stop and think about how many leaders are afraid to do so.

Sometimes that means making bold steps that could look either genius or insane in retrospect. Maybe Starbucks will bounce back, or else maybe its best employees will balk and look elsewhere (especially anyone for whom remote work is a deal-breaker).

Still, that’s why Niccols landed the job he has, and it’s why you’re likely running a business too.

See you at Starbucks. I might well be running my little empire from the next table over.

The opinions expressed here by YourGossip.com columnists are their own, not those of YourGossip.com.