Before saying another word I have to make the standard reality TV disclaimer. We see roughly 45 minutes of a weeks worth of experience over the course of a single episode of this show. I have no idea how the companies/CEOs that are profiled are chosen and have no idea how the specific locations they work at are chosen. The goal of the show's producers is to make something entertaining to watch and that means editing out almost everything and just saving "the good parts". Those creating the show need to make a story out of the events, regardless of what actually happens. Even though there is no script, the portrayal of each person we see is not entirely up to him or her. We only get to see the parts the producers want us to see.
The last segment of the show features the CEO talking to those he worked with (now out of his disguise and back in his normal job of CEO) and his top-level executives about what he saw while working entry-level positions and what changes he'd like to make. This is the part of the show that is both the most feel-good and the most frustrating to me. I enjoy watching it because the CEO gets a chance to make things right and help out those who are sometimes struggling to get by in his corporation. For the store clerk who needs a new kidney he puts a program in place to get more of the people in his organization registered as organ donors. For the line worker with art skills he offered a position helping create some of visuals for marketing campaigns.
I'm a systematizer, though, and these solutions seem to be one-off fixes for specific people rather than trying to re-structure and re-design the organization so that other people in these kinds of situations can also receive a similar benefit. It is easy to do very dramatic and even expensive/generous acts towards the five or six people the CEO worked with that week. He could double the salary of each, give them fantastic medical coverage and an extra week of vacation and it would have no significant financial impact on the company, dramatically improve their lives, and make for great feel-good TV. This is, generally speaking, what I feel like the CEOs are choosing to do.
The harder work would involve analyzing the systems of the organization as a whole to try to determine who this undesirable situation arose. Does the line worker with art skills not show other people is work? Is there a path for a hard worker like him to move to a position that can use these skills? How can somebody with such talent who is already in the organization find a a job that is a better fit? For the lady that needs a kidney transplant, does she have good medical coverage now? Are there things the company could have done to help prevent her from being in a situation where she needs the transplant? Are there things that need to be done in the work schedule to make people in her situation more easily able to take time off to get the medical treatment she needs? These are hard questions to answer and the solutions can be much more expensive and difficult to implement. Systemic change is no cake-walk.
The CEOs say that their time at the bottom will change and impact how they run the company and I truly hope it does. If the man at the top has lost touch with all the ins-and-outs of the business and forgets the people behind the numbers, he needs to do something to get his perspective re-adjusted. I fear, though, that once band-aids have been applied to the five or six employees he worked with for that week that the motive for change will slowly evaporate and that no long-term, company-wide change will take effect. It will be a wasted opportunity.
I hope I'm wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment