There is a new hit reality show on CBS called Undercover Boss. CEO’s from well-known corporations spend a week undercover doing menial jobs with their employees. One has to wonder how long this can work, since the pretense is the CEO is doing a documentary on entry-level jobs. The more this show gets exposure, the less likely any employee of any corporations isn’t going to know what’s going on when the camera crew arrives. This is a great show with limited staying power.
So far, the biggest benefactors seem to be the CEO’s. They are learning a lot about the businesses they run and the employees in the trenches. In my 34 year career in business, I always had more respect for the men and women in the trenches than those at the top of the house. If you saw the show this week with the CEO of 7-11 there was only one nervous time. When he came back to the office and called his executive team together and told them how he had spent the week, they all looked like they had been hit with a taser. They knew whose asses were in a jam from the week, theirs . The CEO learned the people on the line were very devoted employees who were being hamstrung by the head office. Field trips always seemed to work out that way.
Here’s my idea. Let’s have a Undercover Congressman show. Let’s send out fine men and women from the House and the Senate out to the real world for a week to do menial jobs and see how the world works and what the people they work with think of them. Nancy Pelosi could spend a week on an offshore drilling platform. Harry Reid at a cattle feedlot. He might smell worse than the cattle. Rahm Emanuel in an inner city hospital. Obama seems to favor Elkhart, Indiana, so let’s have him send Gibbs there to make motor homes for a week. Eric Holder, easy, Gitmo for a week. Arlen Specter, to a mental hospital since he seems to be quite schizophrenic about whether he’s a Democrat or Republican. Janet Napolitano to an airport to screen fliers. You get the picture.
What would a week in the real world do for these clowns? First, they would learn how the public really feels about them. They might learn that people in the real world do real work and prefer not to have much help from them. Like the CEO’s are learning, them might go back humble and feeling very unimportant. They might ever learn that many of the problems workers are experiencing are of their making.
How would the public respond? It might be the best public relations effort an organization that is disgusting us, their bosses could do. It could humanize them. The vision of Pelosi flying back and forth to California on military aircraft on taxpayer money needs some polishing.
We are beginning to detest these people, Democrat or Republican for their arrogance and lack of integrity.
They need a real public relations fix. Town Hall meetings haven’t worked well for them. They can’t deal with the truth at these meeting. It’s hard to stomach the disgust the attendees have for them. Maybe a week in the real world with cameras and some time in their home offices and even in the halls of congress showing the taped results might get through to them.
We called it a 360 degree appraisal in business. Go out and get it, one on one, and then learn from the experience.
Never happen, you say? Probably right, but it would be a good idea and maybe someone will actually try it to see how it works. Write your elected officials and suggest they consider the idea.
