Undercover Boss and the “Red Zone”
February 3rd, 2010
I don’t plan to watch “Undercover Boss“. I work in the “red zone”. Nevertheless, it is a brilliant idea. This may or may not turn out to be “good television” - but it is absolutely vital that business leaders validate their notions of how their people work.
The “red zone” is that gap between what management imagines, and what actually happens. It is the gap between the IT department and its users, between engineers and operators, between training departments and customer-facing work-centers, between metrics and reality. It is the realm of strategy, or business architecture.
Job swapping is a clever way to uncover dysfunctional red-zones, but businesses are complex systems where every action has a reaction. Red-zone surprises are often the result of adaptive behavior on the part of well intentioned “Good Troopers”. A reactive response (”Fix it somehow”) is a recipe for unintended consequences. Operators, supervisors, and tactical managers only understand “how” in a correct and consistent process.
Competently transforming “somehow” into “how” is the essential red-zone activity. A sequel to Undercover Boss might be titled “How Hard Can it Be?” - as many red-zone problems begin by management failure to appreciate the importance of establishing clear methods for work.
It is counter-intuitive, but clearly defined methods for work (exactly “how”, and not “somehow”) is an essential ingredient to empowering employees. Incentives and bonuses to the good trooper who “figures it all out” is an abdication of a critical management activity.
Successful delegation requires independent thought. If we want our employees to be more than just obedient arms and legs while we “bottleneck” decision-making; then we must “set the table” by establishing strategically correct processes. This objective realm allows associates to confidently make decisions that they will be able to defend as rational.