Thursday, May 20, 2010

Getting Out in the Field

One of the surest paths to management excellence is not through MBAs, books and seminars but through personal, first-hand experience – getting out in the field and seeing with one’s own eyes how things really happen.

An earlier blog entry here concerned the CBS television show “Undercover Boss,” which, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a “reality TV” show where the CEO of a company goes out in disguise and works on the front lines to learn more about his/her company.

In that blog, I wrote: “I’d like to think that this show will encourage other bosses to do the same. It's always going to be a great learning experience – for both sides of the equation. The benefits that senior executives derive from getting out on the front lines with their employees are immeasurable.”

Apparently my wish has been granted. In at least one instance, the show has inspired a company’s senior management to get out their offices and see for themselves what goes on out there. In a May 20, 2010 article, the Boston Globe spotlights DHL, the international package delivery firm, and how its senior executives borrowed CBS’ idea. They came to Boston for a week to work alongside their local employees, though not incognito like the TV show.

Ian Clough, CEO for U.S. operations, was joined by several of his senior managers for the first-hand look. Clough and the others each rode shotgun in a delivery van all day one day, going on the daily rounds with their drivers. It was a terrific learning experience, the CEO reported.

As the Globe notes, “Clough developed the program as a way to better assess how policies enacted at upper levels of the company affect the firm’s front-line workers.”

Bravo!

As Clough explained, “The idea is if the CIO or the CFO is evaluating an investment proposal for new equipment for our couriers, and he’s sitting in his nice warm office, he’ll have firsthand experience of knowing what it’s like to be out on a truck in a wet and windy place like Boston.

(If they were looking for "a wet and windy" experience, I'm not sure Boston in mid-May is the best choice. But if they were out and about on the trucks yesterday, they got lucky. It was, indeed, wet and windy.)

Christine Nashick, marketing vice president, characterized the exercise as a “back-to-basics approach.”

Clough introduced himself to customers at each stop and asked probing questions about their preferences in delivery services and their attitude toward DHL. People were honest and Clough was grateful. He learned a lot, he said, and not all of it was good news.

He and his team were there to observe, not to get their hands dirty like the CEOs in “Undercover Boss.” Drivers were selected at random, and paired with the executives.

The van on which Clough rode was one of the company’s new hybrid trucks. Clough was interested to learn from the driver how well it performed. He was pleased to get a first-hand report from the driver, though not entirely happy to learn that the hybrids’ performance left a lot to be desired.

The story mentioned that the senior executives were scheduled to go out on sales calls as well, for better insights into the customers’ world, their needs, and how DHL can better support them.

I’m always heartened to learn of such out-reach activities on the part of senior executives. This kind of experience never fails to open one’s eyes. It’s one thing to sit in the executive suite and make decisions. It’s still another to do so after having been exposed to the field where those decisions most affect people and operations.

What the Globe story doesn’t mention is the importance of the personal connections the executives make with their front-line workers. It will undoubtedly leave a deep, valuable impression.

It will give them otherwise unattainable insights into the working environment of their employees: their daily challenges, pleasures, frustrations and opportunities. Decisions and discussions around capital expenditures are one thing – whether to buy new hybrid deliver vans, for instance. But now they have a better feel for the impact those decisions will have on people, perhaps the most critical aspect of any decision.

And they will have a newfound and profound perspective on how their company operates, from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down. They will have a better sense of the impact, not only of their decisions but also of their messages and their communications.

No doubt Clough was surprised at least a few times to learn that initiatives or executive communiqués failed to reach or failed to impress the people on the ground. Let us hope, if he did get that insight, that he will rethink his messages and how he communicates them in the future.

If that were all he got out of the exercise, then it was worth the week’s investment of the executives’ time. Everything else was a bonus.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Up In The Air

You never know what you have until you lose it, especially your job. Perhaps that’s the underlying message of a film I recently saw.

“Up In
The Air,” starring George Clooney, is a well-crafted, thought-provoking story of a man whose profession it is to be the bearer of bad news, delivering those bland words that carry such weight and meaning to the recipient: “We’re going to have to let you go.”

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen this film and intend to, you may not want to keep reading.
 

Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is the hired gun that casually goes about his business as the star executioner from “CTC” (Career Transition Counseling), always in transit to the site of the next lay-offs.

Having borne the task myself of letting people go, I can attest to its unpleasantness. It’s understandable, then, that a company might want to hire an outside firm to do its dirty work. I cannot say whether such firms actually exist. And I’m not sure where you would go to find such a service. But for the sake of the story line, let’s assume they’re out there, thriving in today’s environment of 9.9 percent unemployment.

Indeed, Craig Gregory, president of the fictitious CTC is excited. “The economic downturn has created a wonderful opportunity for the firm,” he announces at a staff meeting.

The film offers unsurprising glimpses into the pain and loss that people feel when their livelihoods are taken from them. Their experiences are made much worse because they happen in face-to-face meetings with this hard-hearted man who isn’t their boss, who they’d never laid eyes on before, and will likely never see again.

It’s only later that we come to realize that Bingham in fact has a humane side; that he truly does understand and empathize with his victims, even if his prepared patter betrays a hard-shelled, unfeeling approach to his job. His new partner, Natalie, a self-assured young college graduate, doesn’t sense his empathy through his apparently canned spiel.

It’s only later when an employee is laid off and threatens suicide that the young assistant is taken off her stride. And when they learn the suicide threat has been acted on, she quits, unable to bear the real life pain that her work has come to represent.

Bingham, too, is affected by the suicide, but more so by his gradual realization of the larger picture of his chosen field. The film’s title has both literal and figurative meanings. The newly unemployed find themselves up in the air, untethered to the reality of the jobs that had defined their lives.

Also, “up in the air” quite literally describes Bingham’s life of being always on the road, living in the fast lane, flying between assignments, racking up frequent flyer miles toward his nirvana of 10 million miles. Bingham blandly observes, “Last year I spent 322 days on the road, which meant I spent 43 miserable days at home” in Omaha.

It’s toward the end that we begin to understand that the haughty, self-confident central character is himself very much up in the air about everything: his life, his career, his estranged family, and his torrid, cynical affair with Alex, another road warrior.

Bingham comes to see the hollowness of his quest for the supreme 10 million mile club when he finally achieves it. He knows it’s a metaphor for his life. As they celebrate mid-flight, the pilot asks where he’s from. “Here,” he sadly replies, nodding to the airplane.

In the course of the story, we also get a realistic look at the normal human reactions to the news of losing one’s job. Tears, anger, disbelief, and argumentativeness: It’s all there. As Bingham says, “We’re here to make limbo tolerable.”

This is an allegorical tale of the conflict between the romantic fantasy of air travel and fancy hotels, versus the reality of delays and lost luggage, set in parallel to the conflict between the ideal of a fulfilling career and the very real possibility of job loss.

Bingham’s words seek to console the jobless clients, to assure them that this might be the break they were looking for, that they were stuck in a rut. He tells one older man unconvincingly that it might be his chance to become a chef, to fulfill that dream he once had.

In the end, it’s a depressing tale, especially in the context of today’s uncertainties around employment and job securities. People today are happy to be able to take home a paycheck. Few can afford to bemoan their philosophical misgivings at the stress and drudgery.

Many fantasize about what they’d rather be doing. We look enviously on those who had the youthful forethought, wisdom, courage and drive to aim for and stick to a long-term career goal. They are the ones now comfortably ensconced in early retirement – no doubt traveling at leisure on the same planes as the road warriors like Bingham that continue their Sisyphean haunting of the skies.