Undercover Boss: Break Out Already!

Calling The Workforce: Raise your hand if you’ve become formula-fatigued by CBS’s second season of Undercover Boss. I’ve got both hands raised. As a lover of reality TV, I totally find coziness in format recycling…challenge is next, tribal is coming. But Undercover Boss’s product has gone stale. Why is that? The show’s format is based on a CEO-level working “undercover” in their own company to investigate how things “really” work, identify how it can be improved, and the icing on the cake is rewarding (in a life changing way) the staff he/she meets along the way. We’ve seen Waste Management (first episode and highest rated), Hooters, 7-Eleven, GSI Commerce, Frontier Airlines, Choice Hotels, Chiquita… A good story is calculated, but now on episode 18, a better word for Undercover Boss is manipulative. The CEOs work awkwardly in the frontlines, beside people who are doing a fine job – the job that was formulated from the top. What I want to see, and you might agree, is the raw stuff: the brainstorming behind the customer feedback computer system, the strategy behind the packaging ounce change, the ideas behind the sales programs, the marketing meeting agenda! Now there’s a real peek behind the curtain and it involves the executives themselves and the decisions they make for their brand that trickles down to those who sell their brand. We’ll spend more scene time in whole picture brand ideation and feel rewarded for being part of those conversations. Undercover Boss breaks through when it takes one more step into transparency. America, you like? Now, I must ask: Which brand would you like to see go “undercover” in this “new” format? My pick is the middle market guys who are nimble enough to make real changes in the challenges they face.