last night I watched the premiere of a new show, right after the Super Bowl.  It was called “Undercover Boss”.  Another on the long list of ubiquitous reality tv shows.  Truthfully, I expected to be turning it off after a few minutes.  That did not happen.  In fact, I was amazed, impressed, and am a convert.  A president and COO who actually did what I have recommended time and time again in my work as an executive coach: Spend a week working alongside your front-liners and within your organization and see what is going on in the lives and work of the people your company.  His experience was life-changing for him, life changing for his employees, and life-changing for the company itself.  I actually cried, it was so moving.  You can see the episode, watch previews of the next episode, or take a quiz to see what kind of a boss you are by visiting http://www.cbs.com/primetime/undercover_boss/ 

What’s the point?  Well, we’ve been discussing workforce engagement.  A perfect example appeared on the show last night.  One of President (and COO of Waste Management) Larry O’Donnell III’s employees is a female garbage collector.  He accompanied her on her route and discovered disengagement creeping in, and caught the problem quickly enough and handled it brilliantly, along with several other actions he took to re-engage his workforce.  He had one of his front-line people speak to the leadership team, and I don’t want to give away the rest of the show, but I will use the words of Charlie Daniels in the Geicko commercial http://www.geico.com/about/commercials/ when he plays a mean fiddle and says “That’s how you do it, son.”  Well, Larry O’Donnell III has earned the right to say “That’s how you do it, son” when it comes to running his company.  Thank you Larry, for showing us a perfect example of Re-engaging the WorkForce.  I bet you get some high potentials from other companies knocking on your door !  Well done!

PS In case you are saying to yourself “I can’t go undercover, everyone knows me…”, let me just say that you don’t have to be undercover.  Most (good) employees would be overjoyed to have you shadow them for a day, and recognize what they do and what life is like for them.  Heck, many employees would just like you to remember their name!

Tags: Coach, Diengagement, Engagement, Executive Coach, Larry O'Donnell, Leadership, Management, Re-engagement, Undercover Boss, Waste Management

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