Undercover Boss - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

kknudson · #1 02-07-2010, 11:18 PM

This show is fabulous, I hope we don't find out there was too much staging etc.
I hope what we saw was real.

The first week the President of Waste Management was out picking up trash, and even cleaning porta potties.

He learned a lot.

There was a similiar show on PBS a while back, the CEOs were not undercover, but worked the frontlines.
For most of them it was eye opening.

More Senior managers need to do something like this.

It's similiar to the stories I hear about the President of JetBlue (I think, but it was one of the major discount airlines). He would fly in the planes, help clean them during turnaround (on a Thanksgiving once), load luggage everything.

Thats the way senior management should be, involved and intouch with the people that really do the work.

Corporations would be a different place.

davidmash · #2 02-07-2010, 11:51 PM

I think you are thinking of Herb Kelleher of South West Airlines.

I remember seeing a news show on him. He routienly went out and threw peanuts on a flight, tossed luggage, worked the ticket counter....etc.

Two things I remember being mentioned were that he had an ability to remember names that was infamous. He could meet someone one time and he would remember your name and would call you by name when he saw you next. Also, supposedly he was working the ticket counter one day when a customer became quite irate and started verbally harassing one of his agents. Supposedly he walked over and gave the customer his money back on the ticket and told him that no one treats his employee with such disrespect and that he would not be welcome on any SWA flights.

I think it is this type of behavior that inspired such loyalty among SWA employees.

#3 02-08-2010, 12:00 AM

One of Tom Peter's books talks about the CEO of HP (who's name I don't recall) rotating his work location through the various departments for a week at a time to "rub shoulders" with a variety of employees. Seems like it would work, only if it was a legitimate effort, not a stunt.

kerry · #4 02-08-2010, 01:04 AM

I only saw part of it, but it made me wonder how smart the boss was. He seemed surprised that his employees were hard working decent human beings. What did he think prior to the show? He also seemed surprised that sending out managers in white pickup trucks to keep an eye on workers would be perceived by workers as spying? Either the guy is pretty clueless or the show was staged, or Marx was right that the owning classes can't see beyond their class interests.

kknudson · #5 02-08-2010, 06:27 AM

I'm not defending him totally, but there is a wide gap between him and the people he met.
At his level you become blinded, you don't see reality after awhile.
We all have this issue in different ways, but the longer we exist in 'our' world, the less we see reality.

As for the policies, ie white truck spyguy, part of the issue is not that he did not see what it would do. But that he creates a policy 'monitor employee productivity' but the actual implementation is done far away from him, where he does not see the details.
He mentioned that he had created policies regarding improving employee efficiency, but did not know the actual implementation.

Hopefully this will not cause him to micromanage, but to get the him to listen to the frontline people, and get them willing to contact him. They too now see he is a real person too.

I admit, despite my hopes, that is was staged 'some', hopefully it was just by cautious editting.

SwampYankee · #6 02-08-2010, 08:47 AM

I DVR'd it and hope to finish watching it tonight. It looks pretty interesting. I was wondering what the "angle" of the show was going to be; whether it was to portray the CEO's as buffoons (which was my first thought, in the current climate, when I saw the promos), have the employees be shocked that their boss was *gasp* a real person, or be a true learning experience for both sides of the boss/employee dynamic. I wasn't surprised to see that there's a disconnect between a CEO and a lower level employee, the inverse would hold true as well. Both, of course, would be eclipsed by the disconnect between either one and a career politician.

SwampYankee · #7 02-08-2010, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kknudson

I'm not defending him totally, but there is a wide gap between him and the people he met.
At his level you become blinded, you don't see reality after awhile.
We all have this issue in different ways, but the longer we exist in 'our' world, the less we see reality.

Speaking from the owner/boss side, and having worked at each and every step of the business and knowing all of the processes and machinery, I would at least caution you on the reality aspect. Both views are based in reality, they just have different scopes. I'm not sure one is any more or less valid, or maybe I should say they are both equally as valid.

kknudson · #8 02-08-2010, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SwampYankee

Speaking from the owner/boss side, and having worked at each and every step of the business and knowing all of the processes and machinery, I would at least caution you on the reality aspect. Both views are based in reality, they just have different scopes. I'm not sure one is any more or less valid, or maybe I should say they are both equally as valid.

Yes Swamp thats true.
Things are different with 'Owners' as most started the busines and worked their way up (or out) of the frontline. There are a number of major corporations too run by a person that started at the bottom.

I was a senior exec at a subsidary of a major corporation, but I tried to be part of the teams I managed. I had started as a member of one and even kept some some my responibilities from that time (it was a major software we had developed, I had created a key component. I kept the maintenance responsibilities for that component right to the end).
I was also generally 3rd level support for the team I started with, when th S hit the fan it I had to be there to help. But I regularly took 2nd level, and periodically 1st level.
I was also available weekends and holidays, sometimes taking support calls to allow the team time off. They had kids, we do not.

BUT I was different, my team knew I knew what they were doing so they couldn't BS me when they gave estimates. And I knew what they were doing, so I understood that things don't always go as planned.

The CEO of the division I worked for trusted me, but was also very open and easy to deal with. He'd walk into cubes randomly with a cup of coffee and BS, just so the people knew he was available.

BUT the execs at the parent didn't have a clue, they were off in their Ivory tower and we saw them maybe quarterly.
Fortunately my CEO had their trust too, so they generally let us be. But their were times they would implement policies that just did not fit the real world.

So I have, to a point, been their done that.

I still enjoyed the show, and hope it is more reality then staged (as I know many of the reality shows are).

MTI · #9 02-08-2010, 12:09 PM

Next Episode: Hooters

SwampYankee · #10 02-08-2010, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTI

Next Episode: Hooters

I'm just hoping the dude is going in as a fry cook or something and not donning some hotpants!

MS Fowler · #11 02-08-2010, 01:04 PM

So the "pointed-headed boss" from Dilbert is more the norm than we care to think?
How will capitalism ever survive?

kerry · #12 02-08-2010, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

How will capitalism ever survive?

It survives exactly because bosses dehumanize their employees. The boss last night made all kinds of changes once he realized the employees he met were humans like him. He promoted the good looking women, changed the log in policy and put some of the guys in different jobs. The problem is that this makes him a bad boss from the shareholder point of view. He can't do that for all employees and he has to constantly be responsible for maximizing productivity which is why he had previously implemented the plans his 'human' employees didn't like. The class interests of the boss are at odds with the class interests of the employees.
The things that he did for his employees last night may salve his conscience in regard to those particular employees but they don't modify his managerial class responsibilities in the least.
Does anyone think there are going to be wholesale changes in the managerial policies of Waste Management today?

Pooka · #13 02-08-2010, 03:34 PM

When I was in the BIG oil business we had a control room where operations were managed nationwide. A very, very, very technical place full of people that could do complex math in their heads as there was no time to enter data into a computer and wait for an answer.

The CEO of the company would drop by several times a year and just hang out for about 14 hours at a streach. No scheduled breaks for this guy because that was the way the techs did it.

He decided that all company managers needed to see the place and what the techs went through. So the manageers showed up, stayed an hour or two, and took off to play golf.

Turns out it was a little two years program the CEO had running, and at the end of the two years 80% of the managers in the production end were fired.

And how did the company fare? The stock just went up and up and up, so I guess everything turned out OK.

Pooka · #14 02-08-2010, 03:40 PM

Another oil company I am familiar with has a famous saying for its' employees: "You work from the neck down."

This company has a LOT of employee turnover. One of the execs asked me if I knew why they could not keep people and I pointed out the mission statement above. I also told him of a famous Human Resources saying....

'People come to work for a company for the pay and benifits; they leave because of the management.'

That was about five years and lots of consultants ago. Now they are finally starting to work on their turnover situation, but as one of the current managers told me the other day, "We just had to wait for a few retirements to take place first."

aklim · #15 02-15-2010, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pooka

'People come to work for a company for the pay and benifits; they leave because of the management.'"

I wouldn't bet on that for today and the next few years. Lots of people waiting to take your place should you decide to leave. As an employer, it is my market. As an employee, I would be VERY careful leaving. I don't want to jump from the frying pan into the fire.