Undercover Boss: A Made-Up Case Study

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1:01Kentaro Hayashi is the president of RSA Ground, the division of Rising Sun Airlines responsible for servicing its planes at airports across Japan. RSA flights are more frequent than ever before, but the ground crews are struggling to clean, check, restock and refuel the planes fast enough to keep up. The ideal turn time is 12 minutes. The average time? 18 minutes. Today, Ken is expected to present the board with a proposal. Should they hire more workers? Or would the existing workers be more efficient with better supervision? Or perhaps there's a more cost-effective technical solution. But for Ken, the real problem is that nobody in this room understands the worker's perspective.

1:48That's why he went undercover a week ago as a member of the ground crew to see for himself why his employees aren't meeting the ideal turn time.

1:59Masquerading as one of many recent hires, Ken's first assignment was cleaning planes at Narita International Airport, clearing seat pockets, wiping food trays, and vacuuming seats. With his six-member team, he helps turn a Boeing 787 in 18 minutes. During their break, Ken meets Toshi, who joined the crew a month ago. It gets better. You learn how to do it faster, but not ever as fast as the manager wants. Where is the manager? We won't see her till this afternoon. Lady's stopwatch oversees another crew in the morning. Lady's stopwatch? That's what we call her. She shouts out the time to help us keep pace.

2:34We can turn a half-full 787 in 12 minutes, but just the six of us can't clean a whole 747 that quickly. It's not possible. So the crew needs to be bigger. Yeah, especially for the bigger planes. But it won't be my problem much longer. Why is that? This was the only job I could find when I moved to Tokyo. I'm not exactly trying to make a career out of it. Not like Naboo over there. Ken mulls this over as he approaches Nabuo. He's an older man, and the crew seems to regard him as an expert. These turns are tough. I was working as fast as I could, and it still took me 18 minutes. I was done with the bathrooms in eight.

3:09People could go faster. The more experienced people do. But fewer of us are around now. Ken knows attrition rates have risen in the past year, and lots of temporary workers have been hired to pick up the slack. But like Toshi, they never stay long. Why have you stayed? This is the only job I know how to do, and I'm good at it. The manager says I'm the only one she trusts with the toilets. What's your secret? There are tricks, but they aren't in the manual. If you're still here next week, I might let you in on one or two. The other crew averaged 16-minute turn times. Let's see if we can get you down to that.

3:46As the crew turns plane after plane, Lady Stopwatch points out the best cleaner on each turn, the person who finishes the fastest and with the fewest mistakes. Nabooa wins most often. Ken keeps working hard, and their turn time improves by a few minutes, but he doesn't think the competition makes much of a difference to his teammates, and some of them seem annoyed by Lady Stopwatch. Five minutes! Let's finish strong! You cleaned planes for four days? Well, I believe that what you saw confirms what I've been saying all along. We need to hire more crew members and give them better training and higher wages.

4:25Let's make sure our Toshis learn the ropes quickly and our Nobuos stay with us. Now, what Ken observed is that the teams perform best when they are fully coordinated. Stopwatches and competitions are terrific ideas. We need to hire more managers and ensure stronger oversight of the teams. But you're both talking about a huge budget increase, and we've made promises to our shareholders. Why not use technology to achieve the same result? Make a one-time investment in wearable tracking devices to monitor employee performance. Ken knows none of these suggestions are quite right. He thought his undercover boss experiment would give him new ideas for reducing turn time.

4:59But the only one he'd had so far was to clone Nabuo. Aren't there any more creative, less costly ways to solve this problem?

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