Ducks in a Row: Undercover Boss
by Miki Saxon
Did you watch the new reality show Undercover Boss on CBS Sunday after the Super Bowl?
The opening episode starred Larry O’Donnell, President and C.O.O. of Waste Management.
O’Donnell plays ‘Randy’, a new worker being filmed for training purposes. At one location he jams the trash line by not removing large cardboard; he is fired, for the first time in his life, for not being able to efficiently collect blowing trash at a landfill—unlike the worker he is with who has done the job for 19 years while spending three days a week in dialysis; he cleans porta-potties with a guy who’s attitude is every manager’s best dream; and he rides with a female trash hauler where he learns that to stay on schedule women drivers use cans from the trash as pee-pots.
He meets a 29 year old single mother who overcame five kinds of cancer by age 25, has taken in her brother’s family and her dad, is about to lose her home in foreclosure and is doing three jobs post layoffs for the same money she was getting before, but is still upbeat and even invites the new guy to dinner.
O’Donnell is surprised by the physical and mental exhaustion he experiences his first day, amazed by the people he meets, outraged by what he learns and shocked at the implementation of a policy he personally conceived to raise productivity by which workers were docked 2 minutes for every 1 minute they were late.
At the start of the show when O’Donnell tells his executive team that he is going undercover the reactions vary from surprise to incredulity.
When he meets with them at the end and talks about what he learned and changes he believes are needed and how he plans to use his new knowledge the look on guy’s face said it all—he might as well have rolled his eyes.
Sadly, that is often the reaction from senior leadership regarding intel that comes from front-line, bottom-of-the-heap workers.
The smartest managers listen to their all their people—not just the ones in suits.
The final scene includes and overlay update on what happened to each of the people who worked with O’Donell and changes, both made and ongoing, as a result.
I don’t watch reality shows; I’ve read that many are scripted, but I do believe that there are bosses of large companies who don’t have egos the size of Texas and are capable of learning from unfiltered feedback from the lowest rank and file.
Plus, it seems that changes were actually made.
As big a believer as I am in bosses talking to the troops, there is no way O’Donnell would get this kind of feedback from this level of employee if they knew who he was.
Go ahead and call me naïve, but in spite of everything I’d rather be a chump than a cynic.
And in case you missed Undercover Boss you can watch it here.
Image credit: Svadilfari on flickr
February 25th, 2010 at 10:20 am
Love this show! Always have avocated that it would be good for an organization if everyone would shadow the other jobs so they knew what other people did. Of course in reality who has time or money to do that with all employees?
March 1st, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Hi Julie, I didn’t respond sooner because I wanted to see yesterday’s show.
The first show on Larry O’Donnell was excellent, but the show on Cody Brooks (Hooters) was so bad I turned it off 15 minutes into the show. See Dan McCarthy managed to sit all the way through it and wrote an excellent review.
The 7-Eleven show was excellent and last night’s on White Castle proved that inheriting a company doesn’t make for lousy management, let alone ignorance.