Thoughtful leadership and marketing

Undercover Boss exposes the sad truth about leadership.

I have this running joke with my wife when we fly Delta.  The attitude of the work force and the way Delta treats their customers is so bad that when we have an encounter with one of their glum, depressed and despondent workers I say to my wife, "Doesn't the president of Delta ever fly on his own airline and see how badly some of his workers treat his best customers?"  My wife, aware that I am a customer service evangelist, humors me, looks up from her book and says, "I don't think he does honey."  But I had no clue until I watched Undercover Boss that she was right.

I was watching the prime time TV show at the behest of the nice lady who books my keynote speeches, and I am now convinced the answer is most corporate bosses do not fly on their own airlines or interact with their own employees or customers unless they are forced to do so by a national television production company telling them they want to do a one-hour prime time special watching them actually speak with real life employees.  

Bill Carstanjen, the COO of Churchill Downs went "undercover," a term Bill repeats about 75 times during a recent episode of the show, like he is with the CIA or something, so he can learn what his employees are experiencing.  Undercover, no kidding?  I had always called it MBWA, management by wandering around, a term I first heard from Tom Peters.

Bill was moved by the whole experience, even to tears at one point. He is truly a likable leader but thus far a left brain leader who by his own admission locked himself in his office with spreadsheets and apparently never thought of going out onto the shop floor, so to speak, and talking to his own employees.  And the cut-away shots of his management team in the boardroom, when they heard he actually learned from his employees, was every bit as incredible.  One guy looked at him like, "Really, the employees, no kidding, you spoke with them and it was valuable?"

One of the benefits of starting my own business from ground zero is that I was the first employee.  You learn to appreciate and understand every job in the place as you hire more workers and you develop a lifetime of compassion for the work they perform because you've performed every job yourself.  McDonald's is not a Delta or Churchill Downs kind of company.  McDonald's is infamous for putting their managers through rigorous in-the-trenches type of training.  Sadly, I am learning that McDonald's is the exception and not the rule.

All of the segments on the show are about the president interacting with his employees and the only thing more valuable is interacting with your customers.   No need to go undercover which explains why the TV show doesn't go there.  Take good notes because the stuff they will tell you is golden.  It is the single most important thing a leader should do.  Right up there with talking to your employees and flying your own airline.

Work place flexibility is about empowering workers to take responsibility.

"Only 30% of companies in a McKinsey survey reported offering options for flexible working conditions."  If you are an advocate for worker empowerment, those are depressing numbers.  70% of companies are so set in the way they do business that they want employees to conform to uniform start and stop times.  It somehow stresses these leaders if an employee contributes the same total number of hours, yet spends extra time in the morning getting their child off to school, but stays later in the day.

It is interesting to look back and determine how we form our own unique leadership philosophies. Years ago I worked in the armpit of America in the bowels of downtown Milwaukee as a drill press operator boring holes in metal.  Boring being the operative word here.  It required me to perform repetitive, tedious movements.  However, it was precision work that would cost the company money if and when I screwed up, so it required great concentration (full disclosure here I have the attention span of a 7-year-old).

And for whatever reason I had to "stand" at the drill press while a perfectly good chair was unused a mere 10 yards away.  I'm thinking I'd be more comfortable sitting and better able to perform my job.  A win-win for me and the company.  So by the afternoon of the first day I can no longer control myself and ask the foreman if he minded if I pulled that chair over and really focused on my "precision" job at hand.  He says, "No chairs.  All 'our guys' stand at the drill press."  I of course ask, "Why?"  I'm not making this up. "It looks good," he says with the straightest face I've ever seen. 

We discussed his management philosophy a while longer but I lost the debate. Some factory foremen are reticent to embrace the evolving leadership philosophy of a college student.  We were so far apart philosophically, that I thought it best I quickly find a new job, which I accomplished in six short weeks that felt like six years (always try and have a new job before you quit your current source of income). 

If you can do your job more effectively sitting down it makes no sense to have someone stand just so it looks good.  What matters most is performance and profits and giving workers control over their job environment.  Let the worker decide if they want to stand or sit so they have ownership in their own performance. 

Worker control is critical to the health and happiness of employees.  Many companies won't allow employees to put up family pictures in their cubes.  If you want people to be responsible for doing a great job give them choice and flexibility in other areas and it will translate to more ownership on the business at hand.  Treat them like they can't think for themselves and they most assuredly won't.