Innovation Insight: Why I Love “Undercover Boss”

You’ve probably seen the TV show where the CEO dons a wig, makeup, and funky clothes, and goes to work for a day at one of his or her stores, or a company warehouse, or at a franchise. We see the boss interacting with a variety of front-line employees, some of whom are disengaged and “off the rails,” while others are highly dedicated and trying their best to succeed. The employees are told that the unqualified person they’ve been assigned to work with—the boss—is participating in a reality game show.

It’s interesting to see the range of employees, and how some try very hard to excel, even under difficult circumstances, while others are clearly poorly trained or simply have a bad attitude. But it’s equally interesting to discover the breadth and depth of the gulf that divides the CEO from the front line employees. In episode after episode, we see front line employees doing one of two things—or both:

1. They struggle to use and make sense of policies and procedures promulgated by the corporate office that don’t relate to real-life customer service. Then, in response:
2. They innovate solutions to problems that the company manual doesn’t cover or doesn’t solve.

Over and over again, the front-line employees say they want to do a good job but the corporate office stands in their way. So they innovate. Meanwhile, the CEO usually discovers that he or she lacks the skills to do the jobs to which they’ve been assigned.

In one memorable episode from 2010, Dave Rife, one of family owners of White Castle, went undercover in his own company where he accidentally ruined thousands of hamburger buns after mishandling equipment in one of his bakeries. He also discovered low morale among his employees at a local factory.

When the company got the call about participating in Undercover Boss, president and chief executive officer E.W. “Bill” Ingram III told WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio, that they were interested in the opportunity to learn more about their workers.

“One of the interesting things about White Castle,” said Ingram, who couldn’t go undercover because too many employees knew him, “is the longevity of the company and the fact that it’s still a family business, with now the fourth generation of family members working in the business. You think that you know your employees because you go out and visit most of the restaurants and that type of thing, and have interaction with them, but there’s always things that come up that you don’t realize.”

As Ken Tucker pointedly wrote in Entertainment, “We were told Dave ruined 4,800 buns. Earlier, he had commented, ‘I have not had a great deal of time to spend in our bakeries.’ Gee, no time, when we saw you riding in your sports car and dropping pounds with a trainer? You had the time, Dave; you just didn’t give a damn until the Boss camera crew came a-callin’… By the end, I wanted to fire Dave and his entire entitled family.”

Memo to all disconnected CEOs: Right now, in your stores and factories and call centers, your employees are innovating. They do this to make their jobs easier and more productive. Do yourself a favor and harness this spirit of innovation. You’ll have a better company and happier employees. You might even learn a thing or two about how your company operates!