Despite Starbuck's promise "to keep the program going," in time, the company's disastrous "Race Together" campaign to tackle the issue of race in America will be forgotten.

And Starbuck's quixotic founder and CEO Howard Schultz, the driving force behind the erstwhile, ill-fated PR campaign to "initiate the discussion about race," will move on to tilt at other windmills.

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Now that the company has shut down the campaign, a week after it was announced with great fanfare, what are the lessons that others may learn from Starbuck's high-profile "fall from race?"

• Think "worst case" before striking.

No one questions that Howard Schultz is the kind of billionaire that truly cares for his fellow man and means well. But idealism is no excuse for rushing into a bad idea; even for a billionaire.

Race Together was a classic "Ready Fire Aim" campaign, rushed out with as cockamamie a premise as any ill-suited PR campaign in modern history.

The idea that 50,000 busy baristas at 12,000 Starbuck's locations would be willing, able and competent enough to engage customers in conversation about race was almost as moronic as the idea that Starbuck's customers would stand for such an intrusion into their simple daily act of buying coffee.

The premise was ridiculous on its face. If anyone around Schultz had even raised the worst-case issue of "what if," perhaps the headstrong coffee king would have seen the light in time to stop the rollout.

• Don't succumb to the misplaced whims of the CEO.

This is a tough one, since all of us need the job but……….

Recent history is littered with the bad PR ideas that autocratic CEOs have foisted on their companies, to the detriment of employees, customers and bottom line.

- In 2012, when Chik-fil-A founder Dan Cathy went public with his opposition to same sex marriage, the company was clobbered.

- In 2013, when Whole Foods founder John Mackey compared Obamacare to "fascism," he infuriated the company's liberal customer base.

Bleeding hearts, of course, have defended CEO Schultz for reinforcing the "social conscience" of his brand. And that he did. But the question is, "At what price to customers, employees and shareholders?"

Just as one patronizes Chik-fil-A for its chicken, not management's views on homosexuality, so, too, does one patronize Starbuck's for its coffee, not management's desire to discuss America's race problems.

CEOs, even those who started the company, must be persuaded to consider the impact of their public views on their business.

• Don't compound failure by shooting yourself in the head.

By far the most embarrassing aspect of Starbuck's calamitous campaign was the decision of its communications director, a few days prior to closing down the program, to delete his Twitter account.

"Last night I felt personally attacked in a cascade of negativity," Global Communications Senior Vice President Corey duBrowa grimly recounted.

When the person in charge of the communications campaign stops communicating, you've got trouble in River City. Which leads to the last and most important lesson……..

• The job of the PR counselor is to tell it like it is.

In the days of "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," PR advisors were primarily "yes men," nodding in agreement at every foolhardy idea the CEO championed.

Today, by contrast, a truly "valued" PR advisor is one willing not only to stand up to a CEO's well-meaning but wrong-headed ideas but also brave enough to talk the boss down from the ledge.

Evidently no one at Starbuck's was willing to step up to this counseling responsibility.

And that's why Howie Schultz was allowed to jump.

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Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He may be reached directly at [email protected].