What ‘Undercover Boss’ Teaches Us All
With far too many Americans out of work, and employers cutting another 20,000 last month, many people have come to blame chief executive officers for not having the pulse of their own companies. Undercover Boss has done nothing to change that impression.
In the first episode Larry O’Donnell, the CEO of Waste Management, poses as “Randy Lawrence,” a construction worker supposedly being filmed for a story about down-on-their-luck Americans in search of entry-level employment. O’Donnell, who earns nearly $3 million a year according to company filings, experiences the backbreaking work of the company’s frontline employees. He’s even fired during his seven-day stint after failing to fill a trash bag.
During his undercover week O’Donnell sees an employee stretched impossibly thin by performing eight different jobs and also finds that he can’t keep up sorting cardboard and recyclables. “I’m going to approach the whole way I do my job differently,” he says on the show. “I don’t want to be doing things that are going to cause disruption. The things I’ve learned could change the way we do business forever … and make things better for our frontline employees.”
His experience shows why leaders who focus solely on the balance sheet can’t succeed. If executives look only at numbers, they can’t make the most of honest feedback, recognize the limits of their knowledge or avoid repeating mistakes. When leaders see their shortcomings as a chance to learn and grow, they gain the ability–and credibility–to help others do the same.
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It will take a while to see if any of the leaders featured onUndercover Boss fulfill the promises they’ve made on the show, but that the program is on at all illustrates that CEOs are beginning to understand that they’ve got to change if they’re going to truly succeed in a postrecession world.
Read the full story on Forbes
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CBS’ Undercover Boss: Management Is Out of Touch With Employees
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Mark Holmes from Manage My Employees shares some thoughts about Undercover Boss. Here are some of the highlights:
…the Hooter’s CEO episode was sad.
Cody Brooks/CEO was not only out of touch with some essential perspectives from his employees and customers, but he had failed to visit one of their more important food manufacturing facilities since taking over as CEO in 2006.
Furthermore, Brooks admittedly hadn’t been “out in the field personally” for 20 years! How can you run a company that way?
How can a CEO be that far removed from his/her people? That far separated from the daily operations?
How can one climb the ladder of success as a leader yet fail to understand the ramifications of a basic leadership tenet: that employees support mentally and emotionally what they help create, not what gets jammed down their throats!
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Bottom-line: Immunization from honest dissonance as a leader leads to dangerously myopic, endogenous decision-making. The organization’s sacred cows live on as leaders control ops from a mink-lined rut. CEO’s, all leaders for that matter, must get out, get involved and get their hands dirty once in awhile if they expect to grasp reality.
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