On Monday, Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ chairman (and former U.S. presidential candidate), told The Wall Street Journal that the company wasn’t considering any internal candidates for its next CEO appointment. Think about that for a second. Of the many thousands of managers and executives in the company — and the tens of millions of dollars the company proudly spends on leadership development — the Starbucks board has determined and publicly announced that not one single person in the company is capable of being promoted internally to fill the CEO spot. Leadership development is the opposite side of the same succession planning coin. Starbucks has failed on both sides.

Starbucks Just Had a Corporate Governance Meltdown. Your Board Should Take Note | Inc.com