1-800 Flowers Undercover Boss
The season finale of Undercover Boss was the best one so far. I thought it would be another weepy series but instead showed how the President, Chris McCann, truly was a professional and was interested in his people and the business. I’m a business person. The lessons learned from his undercover assignment showed why 1-800 Flowers is a blooming (pardon the pun) business.
1-800 Flowers has been doing business since 1997. It offers both floral arrangement and gift/chocolate boxes. The two brothers Chris and Jim founded the company and understood the meaning of excellent customer service while providing excellent products. When Chris went undercover, he wanted to see how he could improve the day to day operations.
He went to several floral shops to see why some of the floral shops were doing better then others. What he found was that the managers of the stores are the most important asset to the company. Their excellent customer service was helping to grow the floral business as well as franchises.
He also found out that he could never be a production worker. He was very bad as a production worker at their chocolate factory. This reminded me of the old “I Love Lucy” series when she was working in a chocolate production line. Just like Lucy, he couldn’t keep up with the conveyor belt to fill the boxes. He learned that there was a minimum production that needed to be done each day at the factory. However, when the employees exceed the goal there was no incentive for overachievement. Chris McCann turned that around by offering incentives for exceeded the goal. Now that’s real management!
What really irritated me was when his big brother Jim, who is the CEO of the company, tried to blow his undercover. Jim thought it was funny, I didn’t and neither did Chris. He was there to do a job. I think Jim thought this was a lark and wasn’t important. However, at the end Chris made many good management decisions that would help grow their company as well as their franchises.
By the way, I think Chris looked very attractive with his facial hair; he should keep that look.
Good ending to a rather boring and dull series. Now if the producers find more of this type of story, I’ll be happy to watch it again next season.
Until later,
Linda
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