Business leaders, are you having open conversations with your team? Is your communication up and down the chain authentic? I saw something recently that served as a reminder of how important it is, no matter your organization’s size, to have honest dialogue from the top to the bottom and back again. You certainly don’t want to be Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor to whom no one dared speak the truth that he was wearing no clothes.
My family and I were on vacation in San Diego, and, not shockingly, one of us forgot something we needed for a party we were attending. I mapped out the nearest Macy’s to our hotel, and my son and I hit the road.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my experience with Macy’s over the last several years has been one of playing, “Where’s Waldo” in search of staff inside the stores. I’m not slamming the store, economics in retain are challenging, but let’s be honest, it is never easy to find an associate to simply check out, let alone get any help with a question.
That was not the case in San Diego. We were barely a step inside when someone welcomed us in and asked if we needed anything.
“Okay,” I thought. “Good customer service at this location.”
Then, within thirty seconds, it happened again. A couple of minutes later, again! My first wondering was if this store was simply superior to the location I regularly visit in St. Louis. But as it kept happening, it started to seem strange. (We were greeted at least five times in five minutes! No exaggeration!)
My son then raised the question, “Is there some corporate visit happening?”
Bingo! Right after he said that, we saw a gaggle of people in suits with iPads dutifully following someone through the men’s department. It was like that scene in Christmas Vacation where Clark’s boss walks down the hall with all the underlings scrambling behind him.
As my son went looking for a pair of pants, I couldn’t resist asking one of the friendly employees about the visit. It turns out, this wasn’t just any corporate check-in. Macy’s Corporation Chairman and CEO Tony Spring was on site, and the team was there to wow him!
I chuckled at first. We’ve all put our best foot forward for a client or boss at some point in our career. But as I thought about it some more, this seemed like a big waste of Spring’s time.
It goes back to my initial point: everyone knows that there are never enough staffers at a given Macy’s on a Tuesday afternoon. So, what was Mr. Spring really learning about the day-to-day operations of his stores if he was being shown a mirage? Beyond that, can one really expect that any serious issues were being raised by these employees as he moved through? I saw lots of smiling and pandering, but little else.
To be fair, I know nothing about the purpose of this visit, and I wasn’t close enough to hear any conversations. It is possible I have the context all wrong, or that there were opportunities later for frank discussions.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the importance of authentic internal communication, and the appearance that it was not happening here. Was anyone telling Mr. Spring that this was not common staffing. Does he know that the idea of finding help at Macy’s (or any other big box or department store) is a punchline in many circles?
So, leaders, here is a question: How comfortable are your people when it comes to raising issues or sharing criticisms about your operations? Does your day-to-day, top-down communication encourage frank conversation about how things are going? Do your employees feel comfortable being candid with their managers, and can those managers come to you with issues?
Finally, can you conduct a less choreographed visit to one of your locations, see what is really happening on the ground, and not have it feel like an ambush? (Just showing up unannounced can have its own negative impacts.)
These are all culture questions, and culture doesn’t happen overnight. It requires consistent messaging, and a back and forth with your teams that does not come with a built-in fear of making the boss mad.
Creating and maintaining these lines of communication is a big job. It takes time, consistency, and a real commitment from the top. At Chemistry PR and Multimedia, our team has a lot of experience helping organizations walk that line between staying positive and encouraging honest critiques. By design, the people in charge will see and hear things they probably won’t like when things are done this way.
But that certainly beats the alternative: carrying an assumption that everything is fine, right up to the point you find out that it isn’t. A moment that is way too late to solve the problem, just like the Emperor walking down the street naked because no one would tell him he was wearing no clothes.
