4 ms·

These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth t

These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person" stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate positions. However, there's a real smell of something going wrong from them as well. The CEO working a single shift noticed something that needed to be changed? Why? Did none of the thousands of workers who work those shifts every day notice that problem? Did they have no way to report it? Did those reports not get evaluated properly? Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not notice the problem? Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed.

MrGilbert 4y ago
Your last paragraph has a valid point, and the outcome of such a visit can simply be that: There are ideas, but for some reasons, they don't make it to the higher levels. Let's find out why!
- daedalus_j 4y ago
  That problem is exacerbated in this case by the difference between "retail", "retail corporate" and "corporate". The fact the that anything coming from the frontline employees not only had to work it's way up to retail leadership, but then to essentially an entirely different corporation's leadership makes it nearly impossible for ideas that require action by "corporate" to trickle all the way up.
WalterBright 4y ago
The CEO can easily see problems that the line workers don't see as problems. For example, I happily programmed in C for many years while not even noticing severe problems with the language. Later broader experience with other languages led me to wonder why I didn't see the problems with C before, even though they were negatively affecting my work.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  For a small example: S s; S *p; To read a field: s.field p->field It turns out that there's no ambiguity in using `.` for both `.` and `->`. Both can be: s.field p.field But what's the problem with `->`? It's when you want to refactor the code to switch between a value to a reference. If `.` is used for both, just change the typedef and maybe a couple places. With `.` and `->`, there are maybe thousands of tedious changes to make in the code base. The inevitable result of this is you're not going to attempt such a refactor, as it's too much work. The code stays in the way it was originally designed. I was able to see this only via broader experience with other languages. I never even noticed the issue before. C++ addressed this not by fixing it, but by introducing the reference type. But the C++ ref type brings along with it all kinds of new problems, which I won't get into here.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    > switch between a value to a reference your language is too sloppy for me, a pointer-to-a-struct contains a value (could say "is" a value), and some struct-members might resolve as values, but a switch from a struct to a pointer-to-a-struct is not a switch between a value and a reference; while you might call a pointer "a reference", a struct is never a value. Or did you mean a "dot" r-value and a "dereference to an" r-value? This all makes a difference because C is a call-by-value language, and you can't pass a struct, so it's an important distinction to maintain. This kind of change might be something a student or newb might encounter, but an experienced C programmer is going to have a sense from the start whether to go with a static/local struct or a malloc'ed one. Maybe on more common a struct containing a struct might switch to a struct containing a pointer to another struct. personally, I use hungarian and ps->x vs s.x is a nice reinforcement of what hungarian is trying to reinforce. Using parenthesis to illustrate a sort of precedence, I guess I associate the (pointer->) like that as opposed to the (.member) though I can't defend that as making an inordinate amount of sense :)
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > an experienced C programmer is going to have a sense from the start whether to go with a static/local struct or a malloc'ed one In my and others' extensive experience in C, almost everyone is wrong about where their programs are consuming time. Profiling almost always produces surprising results. Being about to easily refactor programs to experiment with different data organizations is a superpower for a language. C programs are difficult to refactor, and so they tend to persist with their earliest design decisions despite changing requirements and profile results.
stcroixx 4y ago
The CEO is just a superior human capable of things others can only dream of.
- echelon 4y ago
  The CEO should have incredible hustle and ownership, breath of experience, ability to see second order effects in both the business and the market, ability to predict the business environment in the short and long term, ability to plan changes strategically, ability to judge how areas of the business are functioning or impaired, etc. The job of the CEO is to know as much as possible and take responsibility for it. That doesn't always happen, but it should.
danabrams 4y ago
Even if the problems get reported, this helps the CEO get insight into how to prioritize fixing them, how much to invest in doing so, etc.
throw101010 4y ago
I like your last paragraph a lot, one reason in my experience as to why a problem didn't get reported/fixed is that employees are unfortunately rarely rewarded for fixing processes in large structures (or just once, when the fix itself improves the productivity in a lasting manner). So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the first place. The CEO will care much more about it because their compensation/position is essentially tied to improving this side of the business.
- recfab 4y ago
  There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political inertia" involved. In my experience, the existing process has a way of appearing invisible such that any change will feel like more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them more work.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Agreed. The ideal scheme would be anonymous reporting + objective third party prioritization + financial compensation if benefits realized. The lack of compensation always baffled me. If an employee comes up with a change that saves the company $x, why don't they get bonused <$x for the year? Win/win. Make it subject to approval or somesuch, to prevent gaming and weed out edge cases, but every employee should be incentivized to find a way to do their job better.
    - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
      You aren't paid based off the value you provide. Companies don't know how to measure that anyways. Your salary is based off of how expensive it would be to replace you.
      - matwood 4y ago
        But in this case the measure is clear. Sales is another job where value is very clear, hence good sales people are often some of the highest paid people in a company.
bmj 4y ago
Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed. Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily operations of a cafe. That's a lot of internal politics for even a motivated regional manager to navigate.
- wintogreen74 4y ago
  >> Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily operations of a cafe. Really? You think there's a hundred or more executives/managers/supervisors between the CEO and someone on the floor of a SBUX? I'd bet closer to 10.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    This is an example of calling someone out for a misstatement that does not change the meaning of their message, and so was probably not necessary to make.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    I'd bet closer to six (6), and that can probably be verified (or at least ballparked) by looking at some of their SEC and other disclosures like franchise info. But that's just direct bosses-boss levels. Doesn't take into consideration things like... PMs, suppliers, customers, Health & Safety (which will vary by locale), unions, security, accounting, HR, public relations & the media, the board of directors, and all of the myriad depts. that will pop up in odd or varied ways. Maybe not 100 levels, but certainly dozens and dozens of interested parties.
- boole1854 4y ago
  If a manager at each level oversees only two unique people, then an organization with 100 levels has 2^99 + 1 (~a quadrillion quadrillion) employees.
  - 4y ago
oatmeal1 4y ago
> Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed. If they have a good CEO, they will realize there is an issue with the reporting system and fix that. If not, at least the glaring issue gets resolved, and perhaps someone else is able to use this as evidence to improve the reporting system in the future.
cameronh90 4y ago
It's like observability versus debugging. Sure, ideally you can get all your actionable information from your metrics, but in reality sometimes to understand what's really happening you just need to step through the code one statement at a time.
Mizoguchi 4y ago
The current king of Jordan used to dress as a regular person and ride public transportation. Not sure if to get wisdom or popularity.
indymike 4y ago
> Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not notice the problem? Probably. But there are often three to six layers of filters between the CEO and a service worker. Those managers may not see the effect of a small problem across the entire system. Sometimes those managers have incentive to hide problems to protect their bonus. Other times, the problem seems unimportant. In Starbucks case, a company with a great employer reputation is suddenly facing unionization, so there is a problem there. Unions don't happen because employees are happy. > if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed. In retail, nothing reveals subtle and not so subtle issues faster than being at the point of interaction with customers. Things that might look great on paper or sound good in a meeting at corporate sometimes aren't a good idea. Also, what works in one region, or even at a store across town, might now work well in another. You won't see any of this from a board room or flying in a Gulfstream.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Agreed. I love these people that think that hierarchy is a substitute. It’s the only way to scale but it misses a lot. Talking and actually understanding cross-cutting issues or solvable pain points is the only way. Most people don’t take on a sense of ownership and they infect a culture into being too conservative (which management also encourages because as you get bigger mistakes get amplified).
- nijave 4y ago
  >But there are often three to six layers of filters between the CEO and a service worker. In my experience, each layer also tends to lessen the severity/criticality. Even when everyone is well intentioned and truthful, you end up with a lot different story/description when it reaches the end of the chain.
- bigiain 4y ago
  > Sometimes those managers have incentive to hide problems to protect their bonus. I guess one important thing to look out for to judge this as either a PR stunt, or an actual well meaning practice - will be toi see if store managers get any advance notice that the CEO is gonna be working there. If an ambitious career oriented manager knows the boss is gonna see everything that hopes on tomorrow, you can bet there's be extra staff rostered on the day before to make sure everything is better-that-normally prepped for the next day, that all the most compliant staff and the staff who are most beholden to the manager will be rostered on and they'll all be coached about what to say and threatened if they say the wrong thing, and probably a whole bunch of friends of the manager will show up as stooges on the day cosplaying happy and satisfied "ordinary customers".
otikik 4y ago
> The CEO working a single shift noticed something that needed to be changed? Did none of the thousands of workers who work those shifts every day notice that problem? Obviously, he's much more intelligent than all those other people, that's why he's the CEO and way richer than them. Rich people are more intelligent and better than poor people in most aspects. That's why the laws favor them.
- don-code 4y ago
  I understand that your post is sarcasm, but it does bring up the underlying issue of who's been empowered to make changes, and ultimately, who's had (correctly or incorrectly) trust placed in them. An interesting thing happened at a company I worked for: the engineers were, during a time of intense labor pressure, asked to staff the fulfillment center. The fulfillment staff worked under a supervisor, and were supposed to perform the same rote tasks all day long: hook this device up to the bench, pack this box, unpack that box, and so on. The engineers worked under their engineering managers, and were supposed to perform the _exact samesame_ rote tasks all day: configure devices, pack and unpack boxes. What really happened was that the engineers found all sorts of ways to optimize the process as they went - and they made them largely without asking anybody. They then shared the optimizations with the other engineers, who followed suit. And they were rewarded by engineering management for finding those optimizations. Later, they propagated back down to the supervisors, who propagated them down to the fulfillment staff. If the fulfillment staff deviated from their rote tasks, though? They'd have most likely been fired.
  - bigiain 4y ago
    This _might_ not be Amazon. But it sure as hell sounds like exactly the sort of thing that would have happened at Amazon. (And, as a plot twist, those same engineers went back to their coding jobs earning 8 or 10 times what the fulfilment staff make, and started on a project using machine vision to algorithmically detect "rote task violations" and have the computer fire people for them...)
    - don-code 4y ago
slyall 4y ago
It happens. Imagine the duty manager has to spend 30 minutes each shift sorting out inventory paperwork because the system is old and slow. Nobody at the store has any influence, the area managers complain but the project for the new system is low priority. The CEO has the ability to see that this is a problem and the project needs increased priority.
morelisp 4y ago
"CEO does a day of actual work" is great if it helps the CEO better understand quotidian business process and customer needs. It is a sham when it's used to counter disagreements from employees.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not notice the problem? Along similar lines why did the manager's manager not notice the problem? IF the CEO can spend time investigating how the lowest tier workers operate, surely every manager can spend time looking at the tier of workers below his immediate tier.
rfrey 4y ago
It could be that working in the store for a day is a good way to get candid and unfiltered input from those workers and managers. Agreed that information should flow up the chain freely, but there are a lot of incentives working against that, some of which are just human nature (e.g. desire to fix the problems in one's own backyard without escalating.)
- bigiain 4y ago
  > It could be that working in the store for a day is a good way to get candid and unfiltered input from those workers and managers. Yeah, nah. Can you imagine any low level AppleStore worker giving Steve Jobs "candid and unfiltered input"??? If that's what you're after, you don't send in a very public top-of-the-org-chart face. At least not in any place with at-will (or right-to-work, whichever it is?) employment laws, where they could fire you on the spot for no reason at all. (Most likely not the CEO doing the firing, but the workers direct or one up or regional manager - who'd just been shown up as worthy of "candid and unfiltered input")

MrGilbert 4y ago

Your last paragraph has a valid point, and the outcome of such a visit can simply be that: There are ideas, but for some reasons, they don't make it to the higher levels. Let's find out why!

daedalus_j 4y ago
That problem is exacerbated in this case by the difference between "retail", "retail corporate" and "corporate". The fact the that anything coming from the frontline employees not only had to work it's way up to retail leadership, but then to essentially an entirely different corporation's leadership makes it nearly impossible for ideas that require action by "corporate" to trickle all the way up.

WalterBright 4y ago

The CEO can easily see problems that the line workers don't see as problems. For example, I happily programmed in C for many years while not even noticing severe problems with the language. Later broader experience with other languages led me to wonder why I didn't see the problems with C before, even though they were negatively affecting my work.

WalterBright 4y ago
For a small example: S s; S *p; To read a field: s.field p->field It turns out that there's no ambiguity in using `.` for both `.` and `->`. Both can be: s.field p.field But what's the problem with `->`? It's when you want to refactor the code to switch between a value to a reference. If `.` is used for both, just change the typedef and maybe a couple places. With `.` and `->`, there are maybe thousands of tedious changes to make in the code base. The inevitable result of this is you're not going to attempt such a refactor, as it's too much work. The code stays in the way it was originally designed. I was able to see this only via broader experience with other languages. I never even noticed the issue before. C++ addressed this not by fixing it, but by introducing the reference type. But the C++ ref type brings along with it all kinds of new problems, which I won't get into here.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > switch between a value to a reference your language is too sloppy for me, a pointer-to-a-struct contains a value (could say "is" a value), and some struct-members might resolve as values, but a switch from a struct to a pointer-to-a-struct is not a switch between a value and a reference; while you might call a pointer "a reference", a struct is never a value. Or did you mean a "dot" r-value and a "dereference to an" r-value? This all makes a difference because C is a call-by-value language, and you can't pass a struct, so it's an important distinction to maintain. This kind of change might be something a student or newb might encounter, but an experienced C programmer is going to have a sense from the start whether to go with a static/local struct or a malloc'ed one. Maybe on more common a struct containing a struct might switch to a struct containing a pointer to another struct. personally, I use hungarian and ps->x vs s.x is a nice reinforcement of what hungarian is trying to reinforce. Using parenthesis to illustrate a sort of precedence, I guess I associate the (pointer->) like that as opposed to the (.member) though I can't defend that as making an inordinate amount of sense :)
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > an experienced C programmer is going to have a sense from the start whether to go with a static/local struct or a malloc'ed one In my and others' extensive experience in C, almost everyone is wrong about where their programs are consuming time. Profiling almost always produces surprising results. Being about to easily refactor programs to experiment with different data organizations is a superpower for a language. C programs are difficult to refactor, and so they tend to persist with their earliest design decisions despite changing requirements and profile results.

stcroixx 4y ago

The CEO is just a superior human capable of things others can only dream of.

echelon 4y ago
The CEO should have incredible hustle and ownership, breath of experience, ability to see second order effects in both the business and the market, ability to predict the business environment in the short and long term, ability to plan changes strategically, ability to judge how areas of the business are functioning or impaired, etc. The job of the CEO is to know as much as possible and take responsibility for it. That doesn't always happen, but it should.

danabrams 4y ago

Even if the problems get reported, this helps the CEO get insight into how to prioritize fixing them, how much to invest in doing so, etc.

throw101010 4y ago

I like your last paragraph a lot, one reason in my experience as to why a problem didn't get reported/fixed is that employees are unfortunately rarely rewarded for fixing processes in large structures (or just once, when the fix itself improves the productivity in a lasting manner). So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the first place. The CEO will care much more about it because their compensation/position is essentially tied to improving this side of the business.

recfab 4y ago
There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political inertia" involved. In my experience, the existing process has a way of appearing invisible such that any change will feel like more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them more work.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Agreed. The ideal scheme would be anonymous reporting + objective third party prioritization + financial compensation if benefits realized. The lack of compensation always baffled me. If an employee comes up with a change that saves the company $x, why don't they get bonused <$x for the year? Win/win. Make it subject to approval or somesuch, to prevent gaming and weed out edge cases, but every employee should be incentivized to find a way to do their job better.
  - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    You aren't paid based off the value you provide. Companies don't know how to measure that anyways. Your salary is based off of how expensive it would be to replace you.
    - matwood 4y ago
      But in this case the measure is clear. Sales is another job where value is very clear, hence good sales people are often some of the highest paid people in a company.

bmj 4y ago

Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed. Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily operations of a cafe. That's a lot of internal politics for even a motivated regional manager to navigate.

wintogreen74 4y ago
>> Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily operations of a cafe. Really? You think there's a hundred or more executives/managers/supervisors between the CEO and someone on the floor of a SBUX? I'd bet closer to 10.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  This is an example of calling someone out for a misstatement that does not change the meaning of their message, and so was probably not necessary to make.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  I'd bet closer to six (6), and that can probably be verified (or at least ballparked) by looking at some of their SEC and other disclosures like franchise info. But that's just direct bosses-boss levels. Doesn't take into consideration things like... PMs, suppliers, customers, Health & Safety (which will vary by locale), unions, security, accounting, HR, public relations & the media, the board of directors, and all of the myriad depts. that will pop up in odd or varied ways. Maybe not 100 levels, but certainly dozens and dozens of interested parties.
boole1854 4y ago
If a manager at each level oversees only two unique people, then an organization with 100 levels has 2^99 + 1 (~a quadrillion quadrillion) employees.
- 4y ago

oatmeal1 4y ago

> Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed. If they have a good CEO, they will realize there is an issue with the reporting system and fix that. If not, at least the glaring issue gets resolved, and perhaps someone else is able to use this as evidence to improve the reporting system in the future.

cameronh90 4y ago

It's like observability versus debugging. Sure, ideally you can get all your actionable information from your metrics, but in reality sometimes to understand what's really happening you just need to step through the code one statement at a time.

Mizoguchi 4y ago

The current king of Jordan used to dress as a regular person and ride public transportation. Not sure if to get wisdom or popularity.

indymike 4y ago

> Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not notice the problem? Probably. But there are often three to six layers of filters between the CEO and a service worker. Those managers may not see the effect of a small problem across the entire system. Sometimes those managers have incentive to hide problems to protect their bonus. Other times, the problem seems unimportant. In Starbucks case, a company with a great employer reputation is suddenly facing unionization, so there is a problem there. Unions don't happen because employees are happy. > if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not being fixed. In retail, nothing reveals subtle and not so subtle issues faster than being at the point of interaction with customers. Things that might look great on paper or sound good in a meeting at corporate sometimes aren't a good idea. Also, what works in one region, or even at a store across town, might now work well in another. You won't see any of this from a board room or flying in a Gulfstream.

vlovich123 4y ago
Agreed. I love these people that think that hierarchy is a substitute. It’s the only way to scale but it misses a lot. Talking and actually understanding cross-cutting issues or solvable pain points is the only way. Most people don’t take on a sense of ownership and they infect a culture into being too conservative (which management also encourages because as you get bigger mistakes get amplified).
nijave 4y ago
>But there are often three to six layers of filters between the CEO and a service worker. In my experience, each layer also tends to lessen the severity/criticality. Even when everyone is well intentioned and truthful, you end up with a lot different story/description when it reaches the end of the chain.
bigiain 4y ago
> Sometimes those managers have incentive to hide problems to protect their bonus. I guess one important thing to look out for to judge this as either a PR stunt, or an actual well meaning practice - will be toi see if store managers get any advance notice that the CEO is gonna be working there. If an ambitious career oriented manager knows the boss is gonna see everything that hopes on tomorrow, you can bet there's be extra staff rostered on the day before to make sure everything is better-that-normally prepped for the next day, that all the most compliant staff and the staff who are most beholden to the manager will be rostered on and they'll all be coached about what to say and threatened if they say the wrong thing, and probably a whole bunch of friends of the manager will show up as stooges on the day cosplaying happy and satisfied "ordinary customers".

otikik 4y ago

> The CEO working a single shift noticed something that needed to be changed? Did none of the thousands of workers who work those shifts every day notice that problem? Obviously, he's much more intelligent than all those other people, that's why he's the CEO and way richer than them. Rich people are more intelligent and better than poor people in most aspects. That's why the laws favor them.

don-code 4y ago
I understand that your post is sarcasm, but it does bring up the underlying issue of who's been empowered to make changes, and ultimately, who's had (correctly or incorrectly) trust placed in them. An interesting thing happened at a company I worked for: the engineers were, during a time of intense labor pressure, asked to staff the fulfillment center. The fulfillment staff worked under a supervisor, and were supposed to perform the same rote tasks all day long: hook this device up to the bench, pack this box, unpack that box, and so on. The engineers worked under their engineering managers, and were supposed to perform the _exact samesame_ rote tasks all day: configure devices, pack and unpack boxes. What really happened was that the engineers found all sorts of ways to optimize the process as they went - and they made them largely without asking anybody. They then shared the optimizations with the other engineers, who followed suit. And they were rewarded by engineering management for finding those optimizations. Later, they propagated back down to the supervisors, who propagated them down to the fulfillment staff. If the fulfillment staff deviated from their rote tasks, though? They'd have most likely been fired.
- bigiain 4y ago
  This _might_ not be Amazon. But it sure as hell sounds like exactly the sort of thing that would have happened at Amazon. (And, as a plot twist, those same engineers went back to their coding jobs earning 8 or 10 times what the fulfilment staff make, and started on a project using machine vision to algorithmically detect "rote task violations" and have the computer fire people for them...)
  - don-code 4y ago

slyall 4y ago

It happens. Imagine the duty manager has to spend 30 minutes each shift sorting out inventory paperwork because the system is old and slow. Nobody at the store has any influence, the area managers complain but the project for the new system is low priority. The CEO has the ability to see that this is a problem and the project needs increased priority.

morelisp 4y ago

"CEO does a day of actual work" is great if it helps the CEO better understand quotidian business process and customer needs. It is a sham when it's used to counter disagreements from employees.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

>Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not notice the problem? Along similar lines why did the manager's manager not notice the problem? IF the CEO can spend time investigating how the lowest tier workers operate, surely every manager can spend time looking at the tier of workers below his immediate tier.

rfrey 4y ago

It could be that working in the store for a day is a good way to get candid and unfiltered input from those workers and managers. Agreed that information should flow up the chain freely, but there are a lot of incentives working against that, some of which are just human nature (e.g. desire to fix the problems in one's own backyard without escalating.)

bigiain 4y ago
> It could be that working in the store for a day is a good way to get candid and unfiltered input from those workers and managers. Yeah, nah. Can you imagine any low level AppleStore worker giving Steve Jobs "candid and unfiltered input"??? If that's what you're after, you don't send in a very public top-of-the-org-chart face. At least not in any place with at-will (or right-to-work, whichever it is?) employment laws, where they could fire you on the spot for no reason at all. (Most likely not the CEO doing the firing, but the workers direct or one up or regional manager - who'd just been shown up as worthy of "candid and unfiltered input")