UNDER COVER

I am an occasional viewer of the CBS reality show “Undercover Boss”, because I like the concept of the owner of a business genuinely interested in verifying if, in the trenches, his/her vision for the business lives, if the culture he/she wants to espouse pervades the organization and if the employees are all engaged in fulfilling the mission of the enterprise.

CBS has not made me a fan of this series, for several reasons. First, I do not think that you can honestly and successfully do this investigative work with the cameras on the scene. In real life, there are no professional cameras and camera-men around to record what’s going on. Or, if there are, a completely different and interfering element comes into play. Second, I believe that singling out a few employees, addressing their issues and concerns and then lavishly throwing money at their hardships, in public and with the cameras rolling, is the wrong way of dealing with the findings of the investigation. It is unfair to the many others in the company who did not get singled out for the cameras and are likely dealing with similar hardships and unfulfilled ambitions.

But the concept is laudable. If you have a vision for your business, that is, if you can visualize and articulate where you want to go with your business and what you would like to achieve with it, you want to have metrics established that tell you if your operations are on track, on target to get you to your desired state, your destination. Your employees, their performance, their attitude and behavior should provide you with some of these metrics, but to your face and in your presence will they tell you like it is, or simply play lip-service to what they think you want to hear?

If you are an owner of a business that has a vision for its future, you want to be building and maintaining a purpose driven organization of people who chase a dream, all aligned behind a clearly articulated mission, who are competent and accountable for their function within the business and are thriving in the corporate culture established for the business by its owner. Following in the footsteps of Aileron (www.aileron.org), I call a company that meets all of these criteria, a professionally managed business.

A professionally managed business would not have to have its leader go undercover to verify if the business is on track to achieve its mission and if it operates in a manner that is true to the culture it wants to exude. The metrics that the leader of a professionally managed business has at his/her disposal are tangible and easily discovered: They include high customer satisfaction, low employee turnover, public recognition, predictable financial performance, above average growth, high employee engagement and a palpable “esprit de corps”.

I will admit that not a lot of businesses operate as the professionally managed business described here. The reality, for the owner of the business and for the employees is, more often than not, a lot less glamorous and Utopian than professed in mission statements, value statements and public announcements about the business. But the remedy for this is not for the leader of the pack to go under cover and—one time— find a few culprits and victims, but to start from scratch and organize and manage the business in accordance with the tenets of professional management.

Too often do I hear that “my business is not sexy enough to live by these lofty ideals expressed in visions, missions and values.” But, to that I say: “Every business has customers and has a product or service to sell and what is sexier, or more satisfying, than solving customers’ problems, all the time and every time and meeting or exceeding customers’ expectations?” How few businesses truly succeed in doing just that? You don’t have to be a Dreamworks, Patagonia or Tesla to have high ambitions for your business and to offer your employees an outlook on a participative and fulfilling career.

“Serving the customer” is often propagated but only rarely accomplished. Any business that is totally dedicated to getting that simple mission right has a good outlook on being around for a while and being profitable. Your customers will let you know unambiguously if in your business you say one thing and do another. You don’t have to go undercover to find out if your business is running on all cylinders. Just ask the people who interact with your business on a daily basis, your customers, your suppliers and your stakeholders and they will tell you quickly if your self-promotion is all bogus or the confirmation of a business that is professionally managed.