Work Babble

Undercover Boss - White Castle episode

By Tony Deblauwe

This week White Castle CEO Dave Rife went undercover to several WC stores and processing facilities. He started things off by talking about the values his great grandfather built the company on: honesty, integrity and job security.  The belief is that happy team members make for happy customers. As he experienced each job he would see these values in action.

First job he met Geenie, the store manager. Her complaint was that new stores send inexperienced people that end bumping into each other or standing around more than helping. At one point she comments, “do they look happy?” In the reveal, Rife brings in an employee from this store, Donna, who had health problems and was trying to get on track with her weight. Rife decides to create a wellness program and have Donna head it.

 

While I think a wellness program is great, I’m surprised something like this didn’t already exist especially in an age where most companies have some kind of health awareness or wellness effort. Maybe it’s a nit, but I’m definitely glad – this is a meaningful investment from Rife’s time spent undercover. Although the staffing of new stores problem was not addressed,  Rife walked away feeling connected.

 

Rife visited the bakery for the buns. He botched the packaging machine process and was surprised how angry he got. He destroyed 25 cases worth of bread that fortunately would be sold to pig farmers for feed. Not sure what he learned here but it seemed to me like the operation would use some better onboarding. Why would you set a first day on-the-job trainee on a machine to risk so much lost merchandise?  

 

At the next restaurant he met Jose, the aspiring culinary student. During the reveal he gives Jose a chance to meet the culinary team and a $5K scholarship. Kudos in aligning competencies with the right job. Jose was certainly happy and will be better utilized. Rife’s reaction to why Jose didn’t think he had a career with White Castle is similar to the reaction from the 7-11 episode where the night shift manager had the job so he could go to school during the day.

 

That begs the question – is these companies are so concerned people see the site level jobs as dead-end - what effort is being done on career planning? I still believe most people look at a job in a White Castle restaurant as a stepping stone. Get some customer service training or maybe management, and then move on to something else. If you really want to see many examples of people moving into corporate, then I’d like to see how they go about actively engaging high potential employees for higher level positions.  

 

Rife visits a drive thru and once again is not up to the multi-tasking requirements. He meets Joe who he finds friendly and highly efficient. In the reveal, Rife offers Joe the opportunity to create a “Leaders of Tomorrow” program. I liked this part. Such a program would go a long way to solve the career pathing issue. And it would help establish benchmarks for the right talent profiles to bring up the chain. Rife also gave $5K to help Joe’s visually impaired son.  

 

In the frozen packaging division, Rife uncovered disconnects between a supervisor and employees. As he yet again could not handle anything mechanical and food preparation related, he noticed that Brenda (the supervisor) was in the breakroom while the employee (Vicki) was struggling on the line. In the reveal Rife had both of them in to discuss how they could work together and improve teamwork.

 

Hopefully that will continue and I certainly hope that HR is involved with looking at these issues in general. And I really hope that the security cameras issue, which makes people nervous about following processes and procedures, is not the way they will ensure teamwork is done.
  

At the end of the journey, Rife says he will put faces behind the numbers. I think this is the biggest reveal of all and what so many people think about executives in general – they look at people as commodities. The us versus them perception is based on that so if a CEO needed to go undercover to learn that lesson, and become more mindful of instituting unrealistic goals and processes, so much the better.

IDEO - Know Me Nudge Me

Re-posted from the IDEO website

IDEO has a great section called “Know Me Nudge Me” written by guest authors Jenny Comiskey, Aradhana Goel, and Simon King. The section looks at trading personal information for personalized services but I feel the design has a correlation to the work environment. Like all things IDEO, it offers some great questions on behaviors and thinking to design solutions.

Here are the questions:

1. How might we help people connect with the invisible, reflecting a new perspective? How might we allow our own history to introduce a new understanding of ourselves?

2. How can we reveal the big picture across behaviors in order to inspire proactive change?

3. How might we make supportive services available in the right place, at the right time and through the right channel?

Here are the takeaways:

1. Make people feel safe

Allow people to reveal themselves selectively and give them control over how their data is used. Let them experience different levels of customization and take ownership of their data.

2. Support the moment of decision

Don’t choose for people. Instead, support them in decision-making when it matters most. Reveal options, choices, and tradeoffs at the right time.

3. Nudge, don’t push

Don’t cross the threshold from nudging people to pushing them with heavy-handed advice. Allow information such as trends, comparisons, and accepted standards to inspire people toward outcomes that they themselves believe in.

4. Don’t be obtrusive

Design noninvasive and intuitive platforms to collect information, and be subtle when nudging people with choices or alerts. Provide ambient services that fit well into people’s lives.


I think all of these points can be extrapolated into leadership and workplace behavior. During moments of uncertainty and rapid change, employees look for security and trust from leadership. Employees want to be empowered in their day-to-day decisions related to their job duties and feel powerful in the fact that they know they are moving things forward not merely surviving.

To read the full article and participate in the conversation, click here

Toyota Recall and Crisis Leadership

By Tony Deblauwe

Watching the hearings involving the sudden acceleration issue with several models of Toyota vehicles is scary to say the least. Testimony included stories from victims of the problem – in one case, an entire family was killed. With such catastrophic consequences and huge liabilities and tarnishing of a once great brand know for quality, it provides a platform to look at how companies, and leaders, address crisis.

When faced with crisis, leaders need to make prudent decisions quickly. That involves canvassing their direct teams, and in many cases several levels below to get answers. It’s not apparent if CEO Toyoda did this given the criticism they received for their slow reaction time to consumer complaints.

Once a leader is engaged in addressing a critical issue, what should they do to make sure they respond adequately? Here are a few ways leaders can cope with rapidly changing circumstances:

1. Focus on a few key elements and build a plan. Often emotional tensions are so high that seepage of minor issues pop up as the most important issues. A leader has to determine critical touch points that - addressed properly - cascade down to fix other issues. It’s not the lowest hanging fruit argument, but a strategic view of the top 3-5 issues that need immediate attention.

For a business this is usually shareholder and customer communication of what’s happening, operational analysis of essential work processes, and key legal considerations/regulatory interests. Toyota executives were late to the game in some of these areas. This could have reduced the level of exposure and amount of crisis to handle (e.g. notifying people of other models that had the problem, etc).

2. Communicate constantly. Crisis management requires immediate updates as new information is available. To facilitate this exchange, networks need to be created that can share pertinent details to different parts of the organization and to external interests. Sometimes creating internal wikis or discussion boards helps with this process and ensures that appropriate business units are talking to each other. In the hearings, CEO Toyoda said he was not aware of key meetings addressing the complaints.

3. Roll through setbacks. Often the first ideas aren’t the best – they are solutions meant to get certain actions in place. They require modification on-the-fly as the situation unfolds. These initial actions may prove to be duds or they don’t capture the full scope of the problem resulting in negative backlash. Toyota thought the problem was solved with adjusting floor mats, then sticky brake pads, and now the problem appears to be in the software. While consumers were not please with these initial measures, Toyota has continued to diagnose the problem and issue offer different solutions. 

Leaders often make the mistake that after pouring so much effort into initial solutions, they have to stick to them no matter what. Toyota did this with the floor mat issue for a long time - blaming driver error if this solution was not the fix.

A confident leader will accept imperfection in initial approaches and make sure the team is ready to change quickly and respond with new approaches. The leader has to stay calm and focused when this happens to avoid worsening the crisis.

4. Recognize what is working. The bright spot at the end of the tunnel can be elusive in the early going of crisis management. Everyone is bogged down with moving forward so it becomes difficult to notice how solutions are taking root and reducing issues. Leaders who have created the right communication channels will be able to flag good results and use those results to bolster ongoing efforts. This helps morale and shows progress against the crisis mitigation plan. Toyoya made the right move to halt new car production in January which saved more potential accelerator problems from going to market.

5. Maintain a good pace. Leaders need to be mindful of the pressures coming from all directions to solve problems quickly and “perfectly.” If a strong plan is in place, backed up by the right communication channels, and a focused team, resolution activities will eventually balance out. This has nothing to do with perception or reputation damage control – that can take much longer as Toyota is sure to experience.

Pacing decisions around good solutions and re-working as needed provides a sense of control. Reacting to everything all the time is chaotic and doesn’t endear a leader as professional and deserving of the higher position. Executives must maintain decorum to their team and key stakeholders at all times. They must be ready to calm nerves for weeks or months depending on the issue and never waver from a methodological and reasoned response to crisis situations. Only time will tell if Toyota is pacing their crisis management properly and what that will mean in order for them to regain global consumer confidence.

 

Additional Resources:

Center for Creative Leadership
http://www.ccl.org/leadership/landing/crisis.aspx

 

Leadership Challenge

http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131339.html#tipFeb10

 

Crisis Leadership Blog

http://crisisleadership.blogspot.com

 

Leadership Now Blog

http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2008/03/five_tips_from_atsutoshi_nishi.html

 

Crisis Communication Checklist

http://www.topstory.ca/crisis.html

 

Rudy Giuliani on Change and Crisis Leadership Lessons

http://www.schulersolutions.com/change_leadership_lessons_of_r.html

Cultural Adaptability

Cultural adaptability is a pivotal competency for leaders and managers who lead across distance, time and culture.

It is the competency that helps global leaders learn how to use and flex their behavior appropriately when dealing with people from varied cultures. In order to be effective, global leaders must have an understanding of cultural differences and use that information to help them interact effectively with different people.

This global intelligence of cultural differences—includes cultural values, predispositions and behavioral tendencies—is a starting point. It is this global intelligence of culture that global leaders need in order to adapt their style and the way they enact the various roles that they must play.

Culturally adaptable leaders appropriately alter their behavior in response to cultural expectations.

What do you need to learn to increase your cultural adaptability?

To better understand what you need to learn to improve your cultural adaptability, ask yourself how skilled you are at the following:

*Effectively selecting and developing people in multiple cultural settings.
*Evaluating the work of others in a culturally neutral way.
*Motivating multicultural teams effectively
*Inspiring information sharing among individuals who do not know or see each other and who may represent different cultures.
*Adapting your leadership style to meet cultural expectations.

About Glowan

The Glowan Consulting Group was formed in 1993 on the premise that individuals and organizations needed more than just pre-designed, prescripted "training" to meet their human development goals. Organizations and our societies are changing at a rate never seen before in our experience and we need tools, techniques and support systems to meet those new challenges. Glowan has been meeting those needs via our broad and deep offerings of Leadership and Management Development Services and Products. Visit http://www.glowan.com for more information.

Employer Branding – An interview with Cyndy Trivella of NAS Recruitment Communications

By Tony Deblauwe

I recently spoke with Cyndy Trivella, Director of Business Development for NAS Recruitment Communications in Kansas City, about the state of recruitment branding.  NAS offers employers branding solutions that target the right messaging to attract job seekers.

Trivella has a deep HR background and understands the challenges of talent management very well. Her experiences have made her keenly aware of the competitive advantage of proper employer branding. In terms of what she is hearing today, Trivella points to client reluctance to venture too deeply into social networking. As she puts it, “They are window shopping and trying to understand what they need.”

Employers have little time to spare. Working with clients, Trivella and NAS staff first looks at a client’s existing career website. Often these sites are neglected – offering the same look and feel as engineering and marketing sites with no call to action. “It’s not just about job board contracts anymore,” Trivella states. This is very true as social networking capabilities through Twitter and Facebook remove the blankness of vanilla job board postings. People are connecting through the social networks and finding jobs with warm contacts inside companies.

Trivella notes that companies are budget conscious as well. NAS solutions help target incremental changes a company can undertake to improve brand awareness. Options are provided for a variety of price points that are cost effective and yield valuable metrics for clients to decide how best to manage their campaign over time. As an additional benefit, NAS has a full research staff looking at trends as well as offering thought leadership regarding how a client’s competitors might be addressing the needs of the new job marketplace. This service helps guide clients to better ROI on a particular solution.

The landscape for talent is starting to surge. Companies have to make sure they are relevant in the eyes of top talent - that starts with a well-thought out branding campaign that often centers around both career options and opportunities. Trivella agrees that competitive advantage can be lost if companies don’t start changing their approach right now.

 

For more information about how NAS can help you visit www.nasrecruitment.com