Undercover boss? What about taking some time to understand your co-worker’s World?

A late evening, I had a look at the show called “Undercover Boss”. I directly noticed the link between the program and what we daily live with our clients.

What is the purpose of the show?

A boss becomes aware that his is far from the reality of the field and thinks he needs to match again with it. He decides to dress up and spend 5 days under covered in his own company pretending to be an unemployed person trying to find his way during a television coverage on his path.

The reality show can annoy or distract, this is not the issue.

What interests me is the gap between the manager and his teams, and the importance to live it to be able to introduce this in his strategy and his management: having some empathy to the job of the other one.

The show presented the 5 days of the CEO of Colombus Café: one day to make the sandwiches in the kitchen, another one at the bar making the coffee, another at the cashdesk…

What are the points which question me?

•          The interest that co-workers gave to this unknown added person, who asks a lot of questions. They notice his mistakes as a beginner but they do not care so much… Many other managers would be annoyed in that kind of situation?
•       They brightness in the feedback: “he talks more than he does”, “he is not precise”, “he is really slow according to what he has to do”….
•      The concrete lessons the boss learns : “Yes, knowing by heart prices of a whole range is not easy…Should we make it easier?” Or “the kitchen is not tidy therefore the production is limited…but people are always under pressure therefore they cannot step back and organize their job better…”
•       The boss feedback is mainly that the pressure from the management is due to blindness to reality and to a high constraint for the teams without any added value: a useless stress.

Without playing the reality show, a lot of managers would improve visiting the World of their indirect co-workers:

•          From the N-2
•          In a “do it together” style
•          With a transparent and positive feedback

Within our cabinet, we have a process to be immersed during one day on the field with operational workers:

•          With postman during their job, commercial from Essilor, SNCF ticket inspector, reception banking…
•         This enables us to challenge during the executive committee established images and to sometimes know more that the person in charge for many years

Act, open your calendar and fix a meeting to experience that, you will be thankful!

Do not wait for the contrary show “I replaced my boss”, the candidate could keep the job!

Laurent Dugas