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If you’ve seen “Undercover Boss,” a CBS show in which executives try out entry-level jobs at their own companies, have you ever wondered how it affected companies’ business? Check out this fascinating The Corner Office interview with show participant Larry O’Donnell, the COO of Waste Management, and Lynn Brown, Waste Management VP of communications. Here’s a snapshot of the interview:

Tobak: Since you took over operations in 2004, you’ve managed to keep profit margins trending up and to the right. Doing a show like this strikes me as a risky move for an operations guy. So why do it? Why risk rocking the boat?

O’Donnell: I’ll tell you precisely. When Lynn first brought this opportunity to me, I told her she was absolutely crazy. I’m a reality type person and there is no way I’m doing reality television. But the more we talked about it, well, we’d been working really hard for the last several years on our employee engagement, getting people engaged at every level of the company and opening up communication. We do employee surveys and, as we talked about it, this seemed like a very unique opportunity to drive that engagement.

And I can tell you we got it right because just the number of emails I’ve received since the promo started has been overwhelming. Everybody in the company, they’re all talking about it. They’re seeing how important it is to have open communication, talk about the issues that confront the company, and pull together as a team and solve these things working together.

Read the full interview at Bnet.

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