Do you think it would be strange if any of the class I railroads wound up on undercover boss? What do you think might happen?[(-D] Would some of the current practices change or not? Please let me know thank you.
Trainmasters can appear at any time.There was a trains article about how Hunter Harrison dispatched CN from his house. It could be interesting.
stay safe
joe
Joe is correct IIRC the article about Hunter Harrison.
As for a BOSS showing up on a railroad, as an undercover employee,; My guess is that the really ‘Shinny Brass’ probably would travel with some sort of entourage; ] the higher up the food chain, the larger the entourage]. There would be certain protocols to follow notifying the mid and lower level managers who might get their ego’s bruised by unannounced visitations by folks from the ‘Head Shed’.
Unannounced visits create chaos in the ranks, as well as levels of paranoia of impending calamity among the middle management types. Very operationally disruptive, when Big Brass show up unannounced in places where they are not normally found. My guess it is very similar in the Railroad Industry. And that would preclude such stunts where very strict Union contracts exist as well, not forgetting the GCOR Rules which would could be violated in any number of ways by such shenanigans.
How “undercover” could it be if there are video cameras following the boss around ? Especially in the railroad operating environment, which is usually pretty ‘open’ and/ or outside, and where strangers are pretty quickly identifiable. [swg]
This is nothing new - Robert Townsend, who ran Avis Rent-a-Car in the 1960’s recommended doing this as a 2-week rotation for all executives as well as “calling yourself up to see what indignities your organization forces customers and associates to endure” - 'nuff said on that, I think.
On a small line, the boss is as likely as not to show up and ask for the throttle…
For the big boys, I’d imagine the CEO is no different than when a general walks into a subordinate headquarters - things look pretty normal while they are there - but the before is sheer chaos…
Go back and read some of the stories about John Reid (ATSF) and Rob Krebs (SP, later ATSF, BNSF)
OK - fair enough on Krebs and Reed (?) - and I’ll suggest the Claytor brothers, Robert of N&W and W. Graham of Southern and Amtrak, and L. Stanley Crane of Southern and ConRail - as nobody’s fools when it came to nuts-and-bolts railroading.
But I was thinking more of Stuart T. Saunders of N&W, then PRR, then PC, and Richard Bressler of BN, who both pretty much thought it was a “resource” company or industrial conglomerate that also happened to own a railroad . . . [sigh]
- Paul North.
I think some of you do not understand the premise of the TV show “Undercover Boss”.
The idea is NOT that the CEO shows up, fully announced that there is to be an inspection, with his full entourage of go-fors, but rather he disguises himself and ‘HIRES ON’ as a NEW EMPLOYEE, assumed to have NO pre-knowledge of the job he has been HIRED to do.
His goal is to learn something about his company, not by reading reports from his underlings, but as one of those that the reports are being written about… To learn how his company actually accomplishes the purpose of the company rather than how it is defined by the corporate documents.
Unfortunately, the TV show has degraded to a singling out specific employees that are in need of charity that the CEO can garner praise for helping, rather than focusing on what the CEO learns and how he implements changes based on what he learns.
Although there have been stories for hundreds of years of various upper echelon people, from corporate superiors, to ethnic shepherds, to national leaders and kings, entering, either deliberately or accidentally, into the lower ranks of the general public and they change their leadership styles because of what they learn. I have no idea whether any of the old-timey Railroad CEO’s would ever have submitted to doing so, nor any of the present day leaders of this segment of industry, but I can’t believe the TV show can go on for many more seasons as anyone with a TV will probably become suspicious of a new hire coming in with a TV crew to record their every move.