Leadership Fundamentals

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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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Employee Engagement, Leadership, Management, Motivation, Organizational Leadership, Rewards, Undercover Boss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.