By Mary Arnold
Reading this Harvard Business Review blog post about the new "Undercover Boss" reality show made me think of CUES member Dale Schumacher, aka Ted Parker. For those who haven't seen or read about the show, it features CEOs of large corporations like Waste Management, Hooters and Churchill Downs, who go undercover to work alongside some of their front-line employees. Their goal is to get new perspectives on their business and see what staff face on a daily basis. In the process, they also tend to discover "disconnects between the senior leadership at corporate headquarters and staff on the front lines," as Jeffry Pilcher delicately describes in his post about the show.
Getting back to Ted, er Dale, I thought of him because in his January Credit Union Management profile as CUES' board chairman, Bruce Koehler, one of the many CU execs Dale has hired and mentored over the years, told a great story of how he was "discovered" by Dale when Dale, already a CEO, was staffing the drive-up at Southern Illinois University Credit Union in Carbondale, Ill. It seems he would volunteer to work the drive-up on Friday afternoons so employees could attend a staff meeting. He wasn't undercover with his staff, but he was with members who, based on his name plate, thought he was just another employee named Ted Parker. When Bruce pulled up to deposit his paycheck from a consumer finance company week after week, Dale liked what he saw and hired Bruce. While they no longer work together, they aren't far apart: Bruce is senior vice president of $321 million USF Federal Credit Union in Tampa, Fla., and Dale is president/CEO of $276 million Tampa Bay Federal Credit Union.
Dale isn't the only CEO we've written about recently who knows the ins and outs of tellering. In "Staffing Efficiencies" in the April Credit Union Management, we learned that CUES member Paul Fero, CEO of $28 million PA HealthCare Credit Union, Sewickley, Pa., sometimes mans the teller counter out of necessity. As one of just 5.5 employees, Paul said, "You have to be able to do lots of juggling and to wear multiple hats."
So whether it's to give staff time for training, cover for a sick or vacationing employee or simply to "manage by walking around," a technique popularized by Tom Peters in the early 1980s, there are many reasons for credit union CEOs to frequent the front lines. I bet there are some great stories out there about things CEOs have learned about their staffs—and themselves—without going undercover. Let's hear a few in the comments section below.
Mary Arnold is VP/publications for CUES.
