This book was tailor made for the experience I am having now. It’s the travelogue of a man who goes undercover as an employee in some of our most iconic organizations: UPS, The Container Store (not quite, he didn’t pass the interview), Enterprise Rent a Car, Gap, Starbucks, and The Apple Store. This is a true trip to the Gemba, in that Mr. Frankel actually goes to work for the companies discussed as an employee. I am doing a similar thing, but I am not undercover, and I am not actually practicing medicine in the organizations I am spending time with (I suppose I could do something similar as a health professional, but at a huge cost to the organizations and patients they serve). I am, however, putting myself at the interface between the customer and the organization, and I, too, am thinking a lot about culture and about how people and organizations work. It’s an awesome experience, as I’m sure Alex’s was.

Throughout my journey, I have resisted using the term “front line” because the war analogy doesn’t make sense to me in health care. However, I liked the way that Alex described the “front line”:

In the military, the front line is the border between two opposing armies; in retail and service companies it is the invisible divide between customers and employees

This definition frames the experience well in terms of how organizations fixated on “brand” see themselves, and the author stimulates thinking on this, in my opinion.

No one is selling what we think they are selling

The thing we think these companies are here to do doesn’t seem to be the thing they are actually doing. An Enterprise employee is really selling insurance in the form of collision damage waivers. A Gap employee is selling lines of credit. An Apple Store employee is selling add ons (warrantees, etc) onto the main products. Starbucks is selling the “third space” that is not our homes or our work.

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