Undercover Boss: Escaping GM’s Abusive Corporate Culture
BNET has an interview with Joel Manby, CEO of Herschand Family Entertainment, a privately held $300 million company with 10,000 employees and 24 theme parks around the country. Here are some of the Q&A:
Tobak: Tell me about the leadership culture at Herschend.
Manby: We have a common culture that we’re trying to create at all our properties. It’s a “servant leadership” culture; we have an objective of being a great place to work for great people. Servant leadership is actually a faith-based concept, but we adapted the behavior, not the faith. It has eight attributes that leaders are measured on. Half of their raise and bonus is based on how they go about their work, and half is based on hitting their numbers, so it creates a really strong culture. And as you know, every great company has a strong culture.
Tobak: So, what are the eight attributes?
Manby: Patience, kindness, honesty, humility, respectfulness, selflessness, forgiveness and commitment. You can dislike somebody, but you can still respect them, forgive them, and treat them with humility and honesty. We also have a phrase: “admonish in private, praise in public.” So you don’t embarrass people.
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Management Lessons from Undercover Boss
The new CBS reality show demonstrates that each employee has a story—and the importance of management learning what it is, says Kellogg School’s Michelle Buck.
After watching an episode in which William C. Carstanjen, chief operating officer of Churchill Downs, worked with three employees in varying capacities at Churchill Downs locations in Florida and Illinois, Buck spoke with Bloomberg BusinessWeek Management Editor Patricia O’Connell about the message of the show and the responsibilities managers have to create a culture of openness. Here is some of the Q&As:
Patricia O’Connell: Out of curiosity, what did you think of the show, Undercover Boss?
Michelle Buck: I was very interested, not just for our conversation, but as someone who teaches a class in managerial leadership. … It’s a look at how important it is for leaders to know what’s happening at all levels of the organization. As [William Carstanjen] said, “this is really a people business,” and everything is a people business. [Managers need to find out do] people have what they need to do their job? What are their hopes and dreams? Those are the factors that affect their motivation and their ability to get their work done.
If [Undercover Boss] that can trigger conversations and open awareness of these issues to the fundamental business practice, that’s a great thing.
What do you make of the idea that clearly a lot of employees have no clue what top management looks like? I realize they are showing situations where there are many, many layers between the workers and the top management. But still, I was struck that employees have no idea who their top people are.
I was at an event at Kellogg with an executive of a large global firm and we were talking about the show, before it had aired. He said the premise was scandalous. The ability of people to go undercover [and not be recognized] at a large organization shows the problem.
Workers likely would not have been as open had Carstanjen shown up and said, “Hey, I’m the COO, and I don’t know enough about the way the operation works. What’s hard about your job?” Even if you create a culture from the very top where this kind of conversation is important, and you want to give people the tools they need to do their jobs well, and you set it up so that cascades down throughout the organization, how do you make it safe for employees to be open with you?
Leadership is a relationship, and like any relationship, it evolves with trust and credibility. So a leader has to be consistent in showing desire for the input and acknowledging the feedback—but there has to be follow-up as well.
Too often people feel, “I made the suggestion, they said thank you and smiled, but nothing ever happened.” And that can cause a real decrease in morale ….
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CBS’ Undercover Boss: Management Is Out of Touch With Employees
- Image via Wikipedia
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!
…
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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