Undercover Christian

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to visit briefly with Joel Manby, CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment—that’s the outfit that owns Dollywood, Stone Mountain Park, Ride The Ducks, and various aquariums and other theme parks around the country.

Earlier this year he was featured on the popular CBS television show Undercover Boss. It’s a quasi-reality show where a CEO goes undercover as a lower level trainee in his or her own organization to see what’s really going on with the people who make the company successful.

I first became familiar with Manby when reading Andy Stanley’s book Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins When Family and Work Collide?, one of the better books (and quicker reads) out there addressing the challenge of balancing work and family life. (Sidebar, for clarification: the basic theme of the book is that far too often when it comes to time and attention we choose to cheat the one who has committed to us for a lifetime in favor of an employer whose commitment ends the day we are no longer billable or profitable).  Early in the book Andy tells the story of an auto executive who nearly lost his family after being consumed by a highly successful career in the upper echelons of management.  He’s not named in the book, but Joel is the executive in the story Andy relates.

Joel spoke recently to a group of businesspeople in Atlanta about the topic of servant leadership. And that’s where the popular CBS television show Undercover Boss comes in.   One one of the episodes Joel presents himself undercover as newly hired trainee “John Briggs” while being trained to perform various low-paid jobs in several different parks around the country.

In the episode we see him interacting side by side with and being trained by employees that must be at least a half dozen supervisors removed from him, if not more. We watch as he learns to clean dirty streets, wait on tables in a busy restaurant, clean snot off of glass windows at an aquarium, stack and unstack strollers, entertain kids on amphibious vehicle tours, and greet visitors while taking tickets.

And we also see him interact with these people who are training him, people who have no idea that this “John Briggs” character is really the president of the entire 300 million dollar company that owns all of these parks.

We watch as he learns about the struggles of single Moms, one of whom was homeless before getting hired at the park. We watch him discover that another man training him to clean streets has five kids (including two adopted) and lost his house in a flood.  We see another young man burning the candle at both ends to perform well in his job while also getting his degree at school at night, clearly striving to succeed well enough to please his father.  And we see this CEO increasingly aware of the personal challenges these employees face daily—struggles not too far removed from those he experienced early in life growing up with very little money.  I’ll not spoil the ending, where in true “Reality Show” fashion the employees are summoned to the Atlanta headquarters for reasons unknown to them, where they and others in the company learn the true identity of their trainee—and end up on the receiving end of some amazing and unexpected generosity.  You can almost see the wheels turning in their heads during the moments of truth as they presumably try to instantly recall whether or not they said anything they might be about to get in trouble for.

Now, I haven’t seen any of the other episodes of this program, but from what I have heard this one was one of the higher rated programs of the series. And I think that’s interesting, given at least three surprising things I noticed during the program (which, by the way, you can view here online for free).

1. The influence of servant Christian leadership of the organization is evident in the program. Sure, edits were made but it’s evident that something different is at the heart of this company, and it’s not a weird, cult-like vibe that some other overtly Christian organizations give off
2. The life struggles of the people strike a chord with this CEO, and he clearly is both personally moved by it and at the same time is dismayed by the reality that he can’t fix all of the problems of his employees
3. The assistance provided at the end of the program to financially-challenged employees, and the related changes in company policy – not all of which were shown on the program – is not typical of what one expects of a for-profit business is this post-Enron business climate

Most of us aren’t CEO’s, so we can’t replicate what happened on this program, whether we wanted to or not. But we are all leaders and influencers to some degree, and even if we don’t have people directly reporting to us in a formal organization, we are all served daily as we interact with people who are several levels removed from us in some capacity.  People who, in reality, report to us in the sense that a company representative reports to the customer he or she must satisfy.

So, in a sense, there isn’t a tremendous amount of difference between those who serve us through daily commerce and those who serve us through direct employment. Servant leadership.

It’s much easier to stay in the bubbles of the corporate executive suite and middle class/upper class life, where everyone exists to serve us–or so we think– and it’s our expectation that they will.  After all, it’s their job.  It’s less messy and much neater, as makes us feel superior.

But Jesus taught that if we want to serve him, we should focus on those who can give us nothing in return comparable to what we have given, rather than those who can pay us back.