GSI Commerce could really use some HR expertise.

Last Sunday night the show, Undercover Boss, featured an exciting thirty-something year old entrepreneur, CEO Michael Rubin. He obviously is very good at what he does -- namely starts companies -- and this is something that he has done since he was a child.

Like all mortals though he also has weaknesses and what is really disappointing to see is that he does not see that although he is a great entrepreneur, form his actions and words during the TV show it is glaringly apparent that he needs some major training in basic management theory and practice.

I happened to watch him in action Sunday night as he failed at job after job in GSI's distribution centers -- he was even fired for his poor performance sealing boxes in preparation for shipment. Then he moved on to the call center to take escalation calls. Here he was entrusted to Danielle who seemed a bit prissy but very structured (a positive trait for that job I would think) and knows that she needs to execute company policy even when it does not make sense and here is where another form of escalation occurred during an escalation phone call. What makes this matter particularly annoying is that Danielle actually tried to bail her CEO out when he lost control of the call due to his company's policy. Yet for her efforts he wanted to fire her. Now in case you missed the show the cause for the altercation was a customer whose order for a Garmin device was incorrectly processed by GSI. All at GSI admitted GSI was at fault and so everyone agreed that they needed to correct the situation. The problem was that the price had increased from $99.99 to 149.99 since the order was first submitted. The policy at GSI is that the customer needs to pay the new price and the difference would be credited at some later date. The customer was adamant that she did not want to deal with a credit (why should she) but wanted only to be charged the original price. When Mr. Rubin was unable to convince her to convert to his policy, Danielle very nicely offered to take over for him. She then tried to explain this ridiculous policy. The customer would not buy it and hung up.

When the show broke into a debriefing with the CEO, he shared with the home audience that he had been so angry with Danielle that he almost broke his cover since he really wanted to fire her on the spot. Not one word about questioning the effectiveness of the credit policy and no compliment to Danielle for sticking with the policy. He missed the whole point. Now that the show is over the same old policy remains untouched.

There was one more odd action by the CEO. He awarded another employee he met and liked at the call center a $10,000 check so he could get married. Now whether or not he took the money out of his own pocket, he has sent a message to all his employees that he did this once so the question in everyone's mind is how and when he will do it again?

There were peripheral issues as well. Not one of the employees seemed to have more than one year of service (do they have a turnover problem?). Also, from the lack of training the CEO received in the various jobs where he performed, this organization does not appear committed to learning organization principles.

By the end of the show my teeth hurt so much from all these inept activities. The lingering question for me is what would it take for the CEO to realize that his organization is really having a variety of people related issues that need to be addressed or the company will get buried by its inability to take a proactive stance in so many areas of the business. Additionally if the organization has grown to be so large and successful with these glaring inefficiecies, how much more successful would they be if they introduced effective work practices.