241–250 of 353 posts
I'm not sure I see the point of this, unless it's just for PR. Working a half day per month will tell you very little of importance in any workplace. And, if you're the CEO of the company and all of the other employees (and especially management) knows you're the CEO, working that half day will tell you exactly nothing.
As long as the customers don't know, I can imagine it might help.
Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something g…
If they have a good CEO, they will realize there is an issue with the reporting system and fix that. If not, at least the glaring issue gets resolved, and perhaps someone else is able to use this as evidence to improve the reporting system in the future.
The only way things like this really work is by not giving any heads up to the store or the store management. Otherwise store management spends a huge amount of time trying to tidy up before “corporate” comes by. At least that was my experience when things like this happened at the fruit stand.
It's a nice gesture, but this sort of ear-to-the-ground work is something that everyone over a VP level should be doing in such a high-touch customer-facing business. When it's just the CEO for one day a month...it's like when you see a frontpage news article declaring that your governor recently undertook a choreographed ride on the local subway to better understand their constituents' public transit concerns. Inste…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People need performance and narrative. Spending one day a month so you can say to fellow executives "I actually went and touched the problem, we need to fix it" and so employees can say to each other "he actually came and touched the problem, he must be working on fixing it" has real value. Actually learning about the problem and coming up with a solution is best done by listening to the people like you said, but the…
You're describing an incredibly toxic environment. Executives blowing each other off, employees not trusting executives, executives not considering a problem real until they've seen it themselves. All of this is a crutch in place of actual trust. Yes, I realize this toxic environment is present in 95% of all companies in the U.S. That makes it worse, not better.
That's kind of the problem that Starbucks is having right now.
Or rather, it's a symptom of the war its executives are waging on its employees. The former are going to need to do a hell of a lot more then a shift a month to rebuild that trust.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something g…
The CEO is just a superior human capable of things others can only dream of.
The job of the CEO is to know as much as possible and take responsibility for it.
That doesn't always happen, but it should.
Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something g…
So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the first place.
The CEO will care much more about it because their compensation/position is essentially tied to improving this side of the business.
As it should be. Nothing worse than a CEO who does not understand how their business works at the lowest level. Unless this somehow does not matter for business profitability or future (which there are examples of but much less than many people would think). In my experience, upper management has this problem of getting accurate information. This happens for many reasons and is really, really, really hard to fix. It…
I really hope he picks a random Starbucks location across various cities.
Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would just go into a store totally undercover to the customers (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit. Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to the customer experience, were made based on his visits. I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem…
These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something g…
Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily operations of a cafe. That's a lot of internal politics for even a motivated regional manager to navigate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you'd be surprised what even a little manufactured exposure can do. It doesn't need to be undercover. At almost every company I've worked at that asks for feedback I recommend some version of this. Some things I think you could learn in only a few hours at a Starbucks: * "Wow that machine is a pain in the ass to use" * "3 customers got angry at me because ____" * "Making ___ the way Jane showed me was much ea…
Sure, there are a few things. That's why I qualified my statement. But they're necessarily going to be minor things, not the larger persistent problems that only become clear once you've spent some real time working.
no, a CEO isn't going to know what a clopen is like, but if they're responsible for people who are designing a process / choosing a set of tools / setting expectations for employees, being willing to step into the workers' shoes is a worthwile move.