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Re: bizzaro undercover boss, If it's for a week, "just don't fuck it up" would be fine. If I got airdropped into something where I had no experience or relevan

by rdl 7y ago

Re: bizzaro undercover boss, If it's for a week, "just don't fuck it up" would be fine. If I got airdropped into something where I had no experience or relevant insight (e.g. CEO of LVMH for a week), the only thing I could realistically do is try to keep stuff that was already working working (by deferring any decisions or just making "what would you do" delegations to subordinates), and spending the week learning about operations/industry. Maybe there would be a little value in someone from a different industry doing a high-level review of functional areas (e.g. seeing how LVMH manages inventory vs. wherever he had experience, or for me maybe digging into IT/security, or if you have nothing, just do "secret shopper" traditional undercover boss and then report back to the real CEO when he comes back). A month to a year, depending on the industry and company, would be a lot harder. With a big company with long product cycles a month might largely be a vacation/autopilot too, but at a startup or in a critical time for a company, even a month could be life or death.

ErikAugust 7y ago
"A month to a year, depending on the industry and company, would be a lot harder. With a big company with long product cycles a month might largely be a vacation/autopilot too, but at a startup or in a critical time for a company, even a month could be life or death." You're right - you would need some extended period of time, especially at a larger company.
notahacker 7y ago
tbh I'd assume the point of a bizarro undercover boss was less to do with actually turning the company around and more to do with "other C-level execs discover junior product manager has insights into customer base and development timelines that aren't captured by metrics, McKinsey or reports from the division VP; junior product manager discovers the things he thought the CEO should obviously introduce are in fact very difficult to change, and realises how difficult it is to grasp the needs of other products and departments" crammed into 40 minutes of TV time.

by rdl 7y ago

ErikAugust 7y ago

"A month to a year, depending on the industry and company, would be a lot harder. With a big company with long product cycles a month might largely be a vacation/autopilot too, but at a startup or in a critical time for a company, even a month could be life or death." You're right - you would need some extended period of time, especially at a larger company.

notahacker 7y ago

tbh I'd assume the point of a bizarro undercover boss was less to do with actually turning the company around and more to do with "other C-level execs discover junior product manager has insights into customer base and development timelines that aren't captured by metrics, McKinsey or reports from the division VP; junior product manager discovers the things he thought the CEO should obviously introduce are in fact very difficult to change, and realises how difficult it is to grasp the needs of other products and departments" crammed into 40 minutes of TV time.