Office Depot, Wells Fargo, VW, & Your Company as Well?

Headlines of Wells Fargo have been plentiful in recent months regarding the scandalous behavior in meeting sales goals. Volkswagen is still in the headlines over issues with emission measurements. I am certain most of you have read those headlines and many of you are probably Customers for one or both of these companies. Trust was diminished tremendously. What did VW and Wells Fargo have in common? They were striving to meet measurements and doing whatever they had to in order to achieve those measurements. I have a little secret for you, the same is probably happening within your company as well. Many of us would not like to think the company we work for would ever do such actions, but I will tell you it happens all the time whether the company leadership realizes it, or is willing to admit it.

Office Depot is the latest company to join the headlines on this topic. Now let me be clear, Office Depot in a statement said they have not condoned such behavior. So what happened? Seattle KIRO-TV did an investigation of Office Depot after an employee turned them in. So what was happening? Tech services have been very important to companies like Office Depot. They are a huge revenue! Unsuspecting Customer would bring a computer in to have it checked out. The employees of Office Depot would run a check on the computer and recommend services to fix it. The problem is many of these computers had nothing wrong with them. KIRO-TV brought 6 brand new computers to a variety of Office Depot stores and surprisingly enough 4 of these computers had issues according to Office Depot.

I am not surprised Office Depot did not condone these mistakes or realize they were going on, but that is because more often than not senior leaders, or PR departments are not connected to the frontline employee and do not understand everything being done to achieve whatever the business metric that is required. This is very similar to what we have seen with so many companies over the years and that is because we are focusing too much on bad metrics. We are not focusing on how we go about doing things. I am certain if you asked any of these companies prior to these issues if they were ethical, they would all answer absolutely yes. If I asked the company you work for they would say absolutely, but are they at every level?

I have spent years in business and when I work with a new business my first place I like to go is the front line employee. They know all the dirt on the company and how to fix it. They are often not permitted to speak up because someone in the line of command will retaliate but they can be your greatest asset at preventing an issue like this. I do not care what type of company you are in, when you know where to turn the rocks, issues will crop up. Don't laugh at any of these companies because it could easily be your own.