“Undercover Boss” and the Missing Information Loop – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.

It is rare that I read something and find myself agreeing with it completely.  I’m pretty much a skeptic (which I’m sure is  no shock to those of you that know me) so I was surprised to find myself nodding my head like one of those souvenir dolls they give out at Twins games when I read the piece linked above.

Like the author, I watched Undercover Boss after the Super Bowl last week and found it fascinating to see how many surprises the COO/President of Waste Management, Larry O’Donnell, ran across (for what it’s worth the episode preview for the coming week featuring Hooters seems to extend this even further) while he was assigned to work with low level people within his company doing tasks like picking up litter and sorting recyclables.  He discovered that one location penalized workers 2 minutes for every 1 minute late they were returning from lunch (a violation of company policy).  A female garbage truck driver showed him the can she needs to use when nature calls because she is penalized if she stops to use a restroom.  A woman at an office was doing the work of 3 or 4 people and was in jeopardy of losing her home.

At each job that O’Donnell did (one job per day for a week done anonymously) he uncovered injustices and burdens placed on Waste Management employees that are likely pervasive throughout the company (unless he really had bad luck getting assigned to jobs or the show’s producers added some things for dramatic effect).  Some of these were truly shocking.  He also uncovered some spectacular people that worked these jobs and did so happily for not much pay/recognition.

At the end of the episode he brought the employees that he had worked with each day to the Waste Management headquarters and revealed the truth.  He also set up committees that these people could sit on to spread their knowledge/skills to others within the company and he made the woman working several jobs a salaried employee eligible for bonuses.  He also dealt (briefly and kind of offhandedly) with the manager that set the “2 minute penalty for every 1 minute tardy” policy to get that corrected.

But there was one glaring omission that is the focus of of the HBR piece…how was any of this going to help the other thousands of Waste Management employees that were similar afflicted?

While the concessions given to the particular employees the Waste Management COO/President happened to work with during the week were nice, I too was wondering what fundamental changes were going to be made to avoid these same kinds of things happening in the future and with countless other employees.  And what happens in companies where the senior management doesn’t touch base with the rank-and-file?

The bottom line is that there need to be formal and in-formal processes where the feedback that the Waste Management head received by actually working with the people on the ground can reach the C-suite level without having to engage in such an extreme practice.  It shouldn’t take a CEO level person actually working with the people in the field to gather the information that O’Donnell collected.  It needs to be made part of the culture and should be the role of the levels of management in-between to bridge that gap (otherwise why do they exist? — are they just babysitters/police officers?).  Companies that succeed in bridging this gap will leave behind those that do not.

It isn’t enough to say “our people make the difference” — it really needs to be that way.

[Edited to add that I realize that Undercover Boss is designed to entertain and that most folks likely wouldn't have been interested in seeing the implementation of the feedback loop, but it doesn't take away from the fact that no such feedback mechanism existed in the first place.  If it had, O'Donnell would not have been surprised by so many things in his travels through different Waste Management operations.]