Have you heard of the show Undercover Boss on CBS? The premise is that the boss secretly takes on another role in the company and learns how their brand is perceived in the marketplace as well as what really happens in the trenches.
This week I did a not-so-secret trading of places with my project manager. Typically, I facilitate our meetings and my project manager, Pam, takes notes and asks additional questions or adds insights. Today, she facilitated a meeting for a client and I took notes. What I found was completely different than I expected.
I expected that I would be jumping around in my seat wanting to throw in my two cents or ask questions she wasn’t getting to. What I found was that she asked all the right questions. I expected that I wouldn’t have time (as is typical when I’m facilitating) to think of and make note of potential solutions. What I found was that from the other seat, that came more naturally. I expected that Pam, after watching me facilitate dozens of times, would have absorbed all the thoughts that typically go through my head during these meetings. What I found was that I hadn’t told her a few key things that are important to the process.
I have a couple of points here. Point one is that, from a different seat, I got a different perspective on the roles at VisionBridge as well as the company as a whole. It allowed me to see areas where I can improve on my facilitation and set client expectations better. Point two is that, even as the experts in building and documenting processes, there is still more to learn and document about our own business. Getting inside another role was really the only way to “see” that. I learned that the parts I hadn’t prepared Pam for will now go in our operations manual to better prepare future facilitators and transfer that institutional knowledge.
Overall, I found this to be an extremely valuable and worthwhile exercise. Let me know if you want to try it and if so, what you learn!