CEOs Could Learn A Lot from Undercover Bosses

You have likely seen the CBS television show Undercover Boss where the chief executive officer or family owner of a large corporation goes undercover in their own company. They pose as a new employee or trainee and spend one day with each of three or four different employees. The employees don't know that the $10 per hour trainee is the CEO of the company so they dish out personal stories, share complaints about the company, and even share ways they shortcut the company. The boss comes away from the experience suitably charmed by some but almost always flabbergasted by what is really happening in their businesses on a day-to-day basis.

Doing an undercover assessment is a great idea and can really improve your company whether you do it yourself or hire someone. But I can tell you from experience that what you see on television is only part of the story. Our firm has been providing this service for years to companies with fewer than 200 employees where everyone knows the boss. We go undercover as an employee, trainee, temp or whatever the owner is comfortable with and real life is a little different.

Real Life

In good TV programming, things are edited. All the boring stuff and dead time is cut but so does some of the good stuff get left on the editing floor. In the real world, an undercover assessment is a lot like surveillance. You watch and listen to a whole lot of nothing for a long time until suddenly you witness something big.

As an undercover employee, you train with co-workers, hang out at the water cooler, go to meetings, and start to make friends. You typically learn a few things right away that help the company. But for the most part it can stay pretty benign for weeks or even months. The reason is different depending on the size of the company. For smaller companies, people are more cautious of what they say and do outside the family and can maintain formality for quite some time. Small companies just tend to be too tight knit for anyone to give dirt to a stranger right away or let them see the family's dysfunction.

Three to six months is a magic time frame when people start tire of faking who they really are and start discussing the true opinions. The bigger the company, the more likely it is that employees will  act and speak freely even though those candid types still have to uncovered.

In addition to real life undercover assessments taking longer and often being more dull, they can also unveil very serious issues that might be too much for television or too embarrassing for the CEO to share in public.  For our clients, that information remains strictly between boss and consultant.

Over the years we have learned about various seedy activities performed by employees. We have seen employees engage in immoral behavior while requiring subordinates to stand guard on their behalf. We have seen the most respected member of a management team threaten and assault the employees of an entire department as part of their natural management style. We have seen groups of employees in one department band together to undermine another department. We have watched employees purposely provide poor service to customers they didn't like and brag with a sense of accomplishment after chasing them away. Extreme? Yes, but more common than you think.

On the less dramatic but equally damaging side are the bookkeepers who don't know how to keep the books. Employees who get angry about the boss's new car and retaliate by lowering their productivity. And there's the snoops who go through the boss's desk and computer when alone and then brag about it. The part that should surprise and shock you the most is that the overwhelming majority of these examples involve long-term trusted employees.

Which immediately begs the question, "Why would a long-term employee act that way?" While new hires can certainly pull some doozies, they aren't able to get away with such nonsense for long. They haven't been there long enough to have the support and/or fear of the other employees. They do something wrong and current employees sell them out.

The Less Dramatic But Equally Important

Finding and correcting the issues above can have a huge effect on your organization. It can help avoid lawsuits, improve morale, and increase productivity, for starters. But we find many issues that are far less dramatic but equally important like inefficiencies, safety issues, potential breaches in data security, etc. We always find improvement opportunities that increase the bottom line; and that is the true value of the undercover assignment whether it's real life or television. 

Eric Egeland, CPCU, AU is the president of Capacity Consulting Inc., which provides strategic consulting for multiple industries including insurance, real estate, education, energy, and internet. He has personally created 10 successful startups, including seven insurance groups, and has consulted on hundreds of projects, closures, startups, plans, assessments, turnarounds, and reorganizations. He can be reached at ericegeland@capacityconsultinginc.com  and at (845) 430-1347.