The Corner Office

Update: Be sure to check back on Wednesday for my interview with Larry O’Donnell - his perspective on the show will surprise you! 

Yesterday, something happened that I wouldn’t have thought possible. After the Super Bowl and its super ads, I actually watched the premier of Undercover Boss, a surprisingly creative reality show where, each week, the top boss at a big company poses as an entry-level employee.

Don’t watch reality TV? Me neither. This is different. Have you ever cursed corporate’s dumb policies? Ranted that the mucky mucks never listen? Wished the boss would work a week in your shoes? Well, be careful what you wish for; it’s really happening.

Now, my initial impression of the concept was “nice idea on paper, train wreck in practice.” I’ve seen CEOs in the trenches; it’s not a pretty sight. Trained in problem-solving, they tend to hone in on what’s wrong: incompetent employees, their “good intentions” botched by middle management, their grandiose plans failing in practice.

Then there’s the loose cannon factor: Who knows what they might say or do? Conventional wisdom says be careful when you put a CEO in front of customers because whatever he promises, the company has to deliver. Well, the same thing applies here.

So, as a management strategy, it’s definitely high risk. At least, that was my initial impression. Having watched the show, I’d say the concept has merit — with some serious caveats. Here’s my take on what went down:

The show begins with Larry O’Donnell (pictured), president and COO of Waste Management — a $13 billion company — telling his senior leadership team that he’s going undercover to find out what affect their aggressive cost-cutting and restructuring is actually having in the field. One exec looks over at his peers and says, “Is he serious?” That seems to represent the collective feeling in the room.

Larry takes on a different job each day: cleaning out portable toilets at a carnival, picking up trash at a landfill, even doing the garbage collection rounds. Along the way, he picks up more than just dirt and recycling. He learns that one supervisor (Kevin) docks his employees two minutes pay for every minute they’re late, that one woman (Jaclyn) is doing the job of three because of budget cuts, and that a female trash collector has to pee in a can to stay on schedule.

When it’s all over, Larry shaves and returns to his corner office with a new perspective on the plight of his workers. He seems to have learned a valuable lesson: His relentless drive toward cost-cutting and productivity improvement may be backfiring. After all, if his employees are miserable, how well can they serve their customers?

That’s a big step. As we discussed recently, admitting mistakes is indeed a key to leadership success.

That said, Waste Management is not a “growth” company. The way to grow shareholder value at a company with flat revenues is to improve operating margins by, that’s right, improving productivity and cutting costs. And that’s exactly what Larry’s done since he took over operations in 2004.

So, should shareholders be concerned if Larry goes soft on cost-cutting — or is a happy company a productive company? Only time will tell. But from a management perspective, I’d say that Larry needed this experience to offset his natural proclivity to cut, cut, cut.

Larry also made some changes that I think were more about showmanship than solid management practice:

• Jaclyn was promoted and got to hire two people. That’s great, but how does that make all the other overworked and underappreciated “Jaclyns” in the company feel?
• Kevin got chewed out by the big boss. Sure, he deserved it, but in private. Getting thrown under the bus on national television is a bit much for screwing up at work.
• Then there’s Larry’s leadership team, who may feel that their authority was undermined, if not justifiably so.

Bottom line: Some CEOs, like Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg, who began his career 40 years ago as a cable splicer’s assistant, have a visceral feel for the customer and the rank-and-file employee. Those who lack that perspective should get out once in a while. But the cost of that education shouldn’t include the undermining of an otherwise healthy management and organizational structure.

Image of Waste Management COO Larry O’Donnell courtesy of CBS / Dan Littlejohn

Um, where to begin? Have you seen California senatorial candidate and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina’s YouTube ad? The one that characterizes republican rival Tom Campbell as a cheesy wolf in a sheepskin rug with demon eyes, crawling around the pasture on hands and knees, presumably trolling for helpless constituents to slaughter.

Well, you should. You really should.

I bet Hewlett Packard’s board directors have seen it. I bet their initial reaction was to cringe, shortly followed by sighs of relief at the bullet they dodged when they put their rock-star CEO out to pasture and replaced her with Mark Hurd, who has since executed one of the most brilliant turnarounds in tech history.

Whew … that was a close one.

Okay, so we get why she did it. Instead of spending $5 million to blanket California with a well-produced TV ad, she did, well, this. She got some crazy viral ad guy to cut and paste this thing together and throw it on YouTube. Well, it’s viral all right. And sure, she got her message across, that Campbell is a FCINO, aka fiscal conservative in name only. Read the rest of this entry »

In the early 80s, Audi was an upcoming luxury auto brand in the U.S. A “sudden acceleration” recall linked to six deaths and 700 accidents put a stop to that. Within five years, Audi sales plunged 83 percent, and it would take 15 years for the brand to claw its way back to pre-recall sales levels.

The parallels to Toyota’s current accelerator pedal crisis, which includes a halt in production of 8 models and a recall over 5 million vehicles, are obvious. But the potential damage of a so-called “lost generation” to the Toyota brand is enormous and on a scale far greater than any brand crisis in modern times. Read the rest of this entry »

Think you’ve got crappy management? Clueless, incompetent, dysfunctional executives who don’t know what they’re doing and won’t listen to the wisdom of their employees? Then you need to read this.  

True story:

The CEO of a Fortune 500 company put a great deal of money and effort into change management and communications programs up and down the management chain and across divisions. These were well received by the folks. Operationally, the company prospered.

But after a few years of great pomp and fanfare, the CEO left the company for a “better job.”

The new CEO made a big showing of dismantling the physical, organizational, and communications apparatus that, as he put it, his predecessor put in place to isolate himself from employees. He flattened and streamlined the organization.

But his agenda wasn’t exactly altruistic. Narcissistic is more accurate. He simply wanted all eyes on him, everyone’s focus on his vision for the company. Well, his vision was wrong. Employees didn’t get it, and neither did the market, but he wasn’t listening. Operationally, it was a disaster. I don’t even think it’s a Fortune 1000 company now. 

Neither executive was genuinely a “man of the people.”

So why the story? Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to being an extraordinary CEO and marketer, Apple’s Steve Jobs is without a doubt one of the great pitch-men of our time … or any other time, for that matter. He can create a buzz like nobody’s business and he gives one hell-of-an inspiring commencement speech, as we’ve noted in the past.

Last week, in an “employees only” town hall style meeting a few days after the iPad launch, Jobs demonstrated that he’s also a master motivator of employees. This excerpt, as reported by Wired, is a stunning example of uniting the troops against a common enemy:

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there …

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s b***s***.” Audience roars. Read the rest of this entry »

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From the time we’re little, we’re told that time heals all wounds. But nobody tells us it’s only half true. When the wounds are inflicted by somebody else, fine. But when wounds are self-inflicted - also known as mistakes - all the time in the world won’t heal them if we don’t acknowledge them.

Failure is a little bit different, but the concept is similar. Failing to admit and learn from failure will only lead to more dramatic failure. The converse is also true: admitting and learning from failure will ultimately lead to success.  

Unfortunately, many leaders seem to be allergic to the whole idea of admitting failure. I’ve seen it dozens of times with business leaders, political leaders, CEOs, and executives. Why that is, I don’t know, but it may have something to do with how success gives leaders a big head, as we discussed in The Problem with Know-It-All Managers.

Regardless, systemic business failure, corporate failure, and personal failure, typically comes down to leaders or managers sticking their heads in the sand. Don’t be one of them. Instead, master these … Read the rest of this entry »

We’re barely through “that time of the year” — the endless deluge of holiday season automobile commercials complete with red bows, winter scenes, and “limited time special offers.” Having just bought a new car with my wife, I have a suggestion for the automobile companies: spend way less money on the one-after-the-other television ads and more resources on fixing the dealer experience, which I’m sad to say remains terrible. Read the rest of this entry »

More people get into trouble by opening up their mouths than any other way. Don’t believe me? Think about all the times you’ve screwed up in your career, or even in your personal life, and think about the most common cause. 

Okay, so actions count a lot too. I get it. But you have to admit, what you say and how you say it carries a lot of weight in life. And it can make all the difference in your career and your business.

Unfortunately, most of us weren’t born with the management communications gene nor had the benefit of an executive coach to mentor us on the finer points of “soft skills.” Looking back at the early days of my management career, it’s almost shocking how demeaning and arrogant I sounded at times.

You know what I’m talking about. You know how it feels when it happens to you. Read the rest of this entry »

The iPad will likely be the biggest thud since Steve Jobs returned to Apple. Not that it’s a bad product. It’s not. It’s an amazing product. It’s a nifty product.

And while it certainly will steal market share from other products - some MacBook, some Kindle, some Netbook, some Tablet PC - it won’t create a new category in between phones and notebooks, the way Steve Jobs hopes it will. It will sell millions of units, but it won’t sell tens of millions of units. Read the rest of this entry »

Think you’re a smart and savvy business person? Think you’ve got executive potential? Think you can make it as a management consultant or an executive coach? Guess what? You get to try your hand, right here, right now. Ready? Okay, let’s do this.

Here’s the deal:  I give you three real-life management dilemmas that plagued me and/or a company I worked or consulted for during my career. You pick one and tell us what you would do. Simple, right? Yeah, we’ll see. 

But hey, these are complex issues so there are no wrong answers and nobody gets shot down for trying. You can comment or send me a direct email using the appropriate link at the end of the post, your choice. I’ll follow up with a post that explains what really went down for each one, along with at least one intriguing reader solution.

One more thing: this is going to be a regular on The Corner Office, so, if you’ve got a juicy dilemma or problem you’re dealing with now, send it along as a comment or an email. If it’s a good one, we’ll use it in a subsequent post and solve it for you. What have you got to lose? But if you send it as a comment, check back because we may have some questions for you.

Okay, here are today’s three; have at it: Read the rest of this entry »