Leadership Fundamentals

Sheldon Yellen, CEO of BELFOR, the world’s largest disaster restoration company, goes undercover posing as Tom Kelly and experiences frustration and anger at his shortcomings — particularly his attempt at struggling to hang drywall. Anyone who’s done it knows the awful difficulty of trying to hold that drywall up with your head and your shoulders, while attempting to drive enough nails in it to secure it so you can finish the nailing without bearing that load of drywall. Your shoulders ache, the sweat starts dripping into your eyes and burning them, your hand cramps up — Yellen was furious! “There’s gotta be another way. This is stupid already!” Later, he admits: “Hanging drywall is much harder than I ever imagined.” His trainer, Drew, tells him “Don’t let it get to you,” but later admits to the camera that “Tom’s” performance was “sub-par”. This day in the life of Sheldon Yellen was one of the worst he’d ever experienced –he had failed at every single task he was given — and he was near tears when he admitted later “I’m not used to failing” and “I’m probably just not as good as I’ve been told by everybody else in my business life.”

His undercover cover story is that he is competing with other candidates for a BELFOR job. As he packs for his journey, we briefly see a glimpse of his clothes closet– full of Gucci garments and accessories, from which he extracts items like work boots and jeans, as well as the wig which is part of his camouflage.

As a newbie on the job, he is given the tasks that usually fall to a newbie — jobs that don’t call for much expertise — jobs that nobody else really wants to do. Like packing up belongings to be removed for storage while disaster recovery is taking place [he almost crushes some items], or collecting a long-dead animal that was discovered behind the drywall removed at a water-damaged home. Power tools present another challenge to be overcome — the darn nails just won’t stay straight long enough for the drill to drive them in!

As always in these episodes, the unsung heroes of a company share their sometimes brave and painful private lives — like Brenda, unschooled and unable to pass the Watertech exams because she couldn’t read the instructions, although she knows the job and how to do it. Her life-embracing warmth and customer interaction does not show that she was once homeless as a child and for awhile lived in a boxcar. Then there is Jen, who can’t make all her bill payments and who was promoted a year ago to be a Watertech, but never given a pay raise, which she desperately could use.

What is the point behind these undercover shows? Is it to be amused at bumbling attempts by a CEO who portrays incompetence at even entry-level jobs? I don’t think so. It is because it allows us a peek into one small part of what makes a company great and at what helps create entrepreneurs — a willingness to expose oneself to the possibility of failure and then to step right over that possibility and move forward toward success.

As is usual in these episodes, upon the CEO’s return to the company’s headquarters, several – or even many – positive company actions take place at the direction of a CEO who has been given new insight about his company’s practices and the dedication of many of its key employees . Yellen is one of the most generous CEOs Undercover Boss has covered.

We can do some things wrong for the right reasons
At BELFOR, Yellen had made a conscious decision to freeze wages in order to refrain from layoffs, and to retain all of its employees. Who can argue with that? Yet, because of that decision, there were employees who’d received promotions and expanded duties without any additional compensation. They were hurting financially, and struggling to pay their bills.

As Yellen listened to their dilemmas, he was so touched that at one point he revealed his true identity to Jen, the employee who had been promoted without a pay raise, and who wondered if anyone in “corporate” knew she existed. Moved by her expression of those thoughts, Yellen pulled off his wig and glasses, revealing his own “corporate” identity to reassure her that they did indeed care. Near the end of the episode, Yellen and BELFOR deliver on this promise with a host of generous bestowals of financial compensation and bestowals for the employees shown.

Take the time to watch this episode online here: Undercover Boss

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In this episode, Chris McCann, President and COO of 1-800-FLOWERS, America’s largest florist and online gift shop, goes undercover to try and understand what practices the company is lacking in and how to battle the image of his company as simply an internet business.

A little background information: His older brother, James McCann, started his chain of florist shops — at the time known as Flora Plenty — in the New York City Metropolitan area in 1976. In 1986, he made the important decision to acquire the 1-800-flowers phone number and changed the company name. They were reportedly the first company to incorporate a toll-free number into their business name. They were no stranger to leadership.

Their vision of where business was headed had them on the internet in the 1990s. They have been around for 33 years and have grown to a billion dollars in annual sales. They pride themselves on quality and in knowing who their core customers are. And they know how to keep their costs in line. They had 5 service centers a few years ago and were able to cut that down to 2, offering their employees the ability to work from home and make more money. You’ll recognize some of their companies immediately — Fannie May Confections, the Wine Tasting Network, the Popcorn Factory, Plow & Hearth.

They obviously know how to run a successful business, but they wanted to know firsthand where improvements could be made that would benefit the company and its employees. So Chris went undercover, and spent a week going to several 1-800-flowers locations. He discovered the reason why one of their most profitable locations did so well. The woman who managed it, Dee, had built strong relationships with people in the community. She treated patrons like family and their loyalty made them staunch customers. Chris recalls that his brother Jim’s philosophy is to build relationships first, then do business. Chris considered her “fantastic”. In fact, he was so inspired by her, the company named a floral arrangement after her: Dee’s Paradise.

As usual, there are employees here who are of great value. The creative floral designer who paid for her own classes and seminars to keep up with new trends in the industry. The store manager who understands that well-to=-do potential customers are put off by the company name, or don’t realize it’s an actual florist, not just an internet service. When an undercover boss is willing to go to the trenches, he leaves with a bundle of information which, if acted upon, will strengthen the company and create dedicated employees.

P.S. Chris did extremely well with the flowers, but not so good with the Fanny Mae chocolates. It was reminiscent of Lucy and Ethel’s I Love Lucy episode which took place in a candy factory. Neither one of them could keep up with the conveyor belt and ended up stuffing chocolates in their pockets and mouths and anyplace else they could think of.

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In the April 2, 2010 airing of Undercover Boss,  Rick Arquilla, President and COO of Roto-Rooter, goes undercover to examine the daily lives of his workers. Although it’s not a particularly easy episode to watch — sewage, opening drains, pulling out hair and old towels from stopped up plumbing — it is once again a real eye opener for those, like myself, who are  interested in the day-to-day work lives of the unsung heroes of the work world. Heck, I remember one of my own crises only this year, when our kitchen sink stopped up. Who do you think we called? Yep, that’s right – Roto-Rooter! We were faced with dozens of ads in the Yellow Pages, but we didn’t want to fool around. We’ve had experiences in the past with local companies which didn’t call us back or couldn’t come within 24 hrs. In our case, there had been a built-up of grease. Parenthetically, I should say we have septic and well water. What I learned from it is to wipe grease and oil completely off pans and dishes with paper towels and try and prevent it from getting into the system at all.

But I digress. Let’s get back to the show, shall we? We first see Rick in New Orleans, then in Chicago. He’s going under the name of “Hank”. Once again, the employees have a hard time training the newbie. You can see this in their expressions, rolling of their eyes, and their comments. It’s obvious their  opinion is that this newbie is NOT going to make it. What really amazes me is how good most of these people are at their jobs. I’d do anything to hold on to them. For instance, the customer service person who tells him “you talk AT the customers and interrupt them”. He concedes that he has done that a number of times. She explains “I love our customers”. She tells them “basically, you want to be their hero”. He admits ” I gotta be a little warmer and fuzzier”.

I loved it when he was back in New Orleans, and being shown the ropes again at a nursing home with a problem. His “teacher” is obviously frustrated and says “Today’s his first day. Only time will tell — he may be my boss one of these days.” Well, that made me grin. Rick said “This was probably a little more than I had bargained for.”

As with past shows, he gets to have a one-on-one conversation with one of the workers. Chris reveals his past problems and recovery from alcohol and drugs, something that almost destroyed his life. Rick can fully sympathize, because his own father was an alcoholic, and it destroyed his life and impacted on his children. You watch Rick experience very emotional reactions, and he is clearly in tears hearing the worker’s story. In the end, he confesses “You taught me how to be a better person”.

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I have just watched – for the first time – an episode of Undercover Boss, a program that is aired by CBS. This episode, which aired Feb. 28, 2010, followed Dave Rife, one of the owners of White Castle (the hamburger chain) in his one-week undercover quest to experience and understand the day-to-day workings of the average White Castle and its employees. His experience covered a number of skill sets in different positions and at various White Castles around the country, from working at grilling to manning the take-out counter, to packaging for frozen food distribution.

He bungled most of the jobs and admitted later that he hadn’t realized just how hard they were. Along the way, he discovered that:

• Bureaucratic directives did not always accomplish what they set out to do
• Employees many times improved the process on their own initiative, even though they were afraid of being fired for not following corporate protocol
• He discovered, to his own surprise, some very special people who brought their own great insights and talent to the job and were ready and able to take on more responsibility. Several of them were awarded grants due to Dave Rife and White Castle – either for college scholarships or other needs
• There were some programs White Castle could put in place that encouraged career development

Disclaimer: I don’t watch a lot of TV, and when I do, I like travel and cooking shows, documentaries, that kind of stuff. I never watched any reality shows at all. My medium is books and internet. The only reason I watched this show was because of a blog post I discovered through LinkedIn. I’ll be watching some more of it, though, because I have a great deal of admiration for leaders who can make the jump to get down there with the producers of their product and out of the board room for awhile. It’s way too easy to forget what it’s like down in the ditches.

You can watch this and other episodes of this show here: Undercover Boss

On a personal note: Gosh, I loved White Castle when growing up in the Bronx, NY. My brother Bob, a navy man [now gone from us] would come home on leave and I swear, he could eat 16 White Castle hamburgers all by himself. Funny thing, to the end of his life he was thin as a rail and I remember as a young girl that he was just gorgeous in his navy whites.

It was not unusual for him to come over with a fellow navy guy and go out and order 4 or 5 dozen hamburgers from White Castle for all of us. This show brought back fond memories of our White Castle mania days. I haven’t had one since the Bronx, many many years ago. Of course, today I have diabetes, so it can’t be on my menu anyway. Even if that were not true, there is no WC near me [maybe thank God!].

I fully intend to watch future shows and, if you are interested in leaders who really want to understand how their businesses work, you will too.

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