Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Undercover Boss Part II

So I had several comments on the last post. Some of which I did not publish (Language people!) Anyway, a couple of people suggested that the show degraded the position of the C-level person. An example of comment is

"The average American is dumb. This show just adds fuel to the fire – Joe American is going to think “Hey, the CEO can’t do my trash picking job as good as me, why does he make so much money!? Not fair!”"

I have several issues with the comment.

1st "The average American is dumb". Not true. We are a democracy and our opinions and what we stand for is the ability for us to make our own decisions. Do some people think that C-Level people make too much money. Yes. However the show does what I felt was a good job showing how C-Level people do care about their people and can sometimes get out of touch with their business. Yet they do want to learn and do care.

Really? Do people expect the C-Level person to be able to do all tasks in the company well? That would be a talented person. If the average American does believe this than they are dumb.

If anything the show made middle management look bad. The example of this is the clocking in thing where late the employee loses 2 min for every 1 late. This (I am sure) was made with thinking that corporate supported it. However it was a poor management decision. Just like the supervisors following trash pickup. Just decisions gone wrong.

It looks like next week will have some different issues surrounding what looks to be abuse. Probably happens more than we think.

Keep the comments coming!

1 comment:

Stuart R. Crawford said...

Steve..I think it is great that the C levels get the feel for what happens in the trenches.

Also, you guys are not dumb! You're not as smart as Canadians that's all :-)

Stuart Crawford
ULISTIC Inc.
http://www.ulistic.com