Top Brass Try Life in the Trenches:
By 1 1 :30 A.M. one recent day, Carolyn Kibler had been on her feet for nearly six hours, shuttling among sixteen dialysis patients at a DaVita Inc. clinic in Atlanta, Georgia. Her lower back ached from the unaccustomed strain. The outgoing and talkative former nurse had known little about dialysis before she joined DaVita in 2006. (Dialysis takes the place of nonfunctioning or poorly functioning kidneys in ?ushing wastes from the body.)
Kibler is a vice president of the nation’s number 2 dialysis-treatment operator, earning a six-? gure salary while overseeing forty-eight other clinics. For three days this spring, however, she helped treat seriously ill patients alongside technicians working up to thirteen-hour days for $1 4.30 an hour. “The job is de?nitely more physically demanding than I had imagined,” the 48-year-old executive admits.
Kibler quickly feels the stress of the job. She must don a close-? tting surgical gown and plastic face visor. “It’s real hot,” she says. While wearing the protective gear, she helps a technician monitor patients’ blood pressure, checks other vital signs, watches the machines’ water purity, and completes paperwork.
After her hectic three-day stint, Kibler describes her technicians as “some of the most empathetic caregivers I have ever seen.” DaVita’s prosperity depends on front-line troops aiding patients. “Band-Aid by Band-Aid, piece of tape by piece of tape, and alarm by alarm,” she continues.
Back in her of? ce in another part of Atlanta, Kibler tries to integrate the lessons from her clinic experience into her leadership of a roughly 7 50-employee division. “I am more conscious of the power of my words and my actions and the impact they have down in the organization,” she says. So Kibler is more lenient when clinics fall behind on paperwork due to staf? ng shortages. She praises a nurse who skipped a conference call to discuss a clinic’s quality report so she could ? ll in for an absent employee caring for patients. “When something like that comes up, I have a picture of the treatment ? oor, everyone scurrying around and patients waiting in their chairs,” Kibler says.
“Patient care comes ? rst.” At an evening staff meeting in another clinic on June 1 3, she thanked workers for “the gift of life they had given to each patient they touched that day.”
DaVita requires managers to attend two days of classroom training before working in a clinic, and surveys participants after their visits. DaVita chief executive Kent J. Thiry created the immersion program for his senior managers in 2002. “The experience changes their view of the world,” he says. “They are better leaders as a result.”
I want assistance with the following case; it will help if you are a fan of CBS Under Cover Boss:
Imagine that you are the president of a large corporation. To improve your leadership skills, you want to make sure that you understand the work environment from your employees' perspective. To do so, you decide to go undercover in your own organization and report your findings to the board.
To prepare for this assignment, complete the following activities:
- Read the attachment
- Go to www.cbs.com and watch one full episode of "Undercover Boss."
Do the following:
1. Examine how working "in the trenches" of the organization can help improve leadership skills.
2. Analyze whether going undercover makes a difference to the impact of this program.
3. Determine what type of leadership qualities and styles a leader would need to possess in order to agree to and be successful in this type of program.
4. Evaluate the impact of this type of program on organizational performance.