Who is the boss?

It is a beautiful fall morning in Connecticut and I just took my car through the local car wash. It is one of those places where you have an assembly line of workers who vacuum and dry off your car after it has been washed. It is 8:10 and my car is the first one through this morning.
      I walk up as it is being finished and hand my receipt to the crew supervisor. I thank him and tell him the car looks great. He comments on how glad he is to be able to serve me so efficiently this morning. “We are working with a skeleton crew again this morning — yesterday our customers were furious, we had the same number of workers, but unlike this morning, we were very busy. People were waiting over 20 minutes for their cars. I don’t schedule the workers, I just supervise the one’s who are here. The scheduling is done in the front office.”
     As I drove away, it struck me how often we come across this in business. We see someone who is the “face to the customer” working to satisfy their needs without the ability to influence the outcome. Sometimes a “boss” gets in the way. Doesn’t everything from a three- year plan to every customer touch-point make a difference? P&G’s former CEO A.G. Lafley had mantra for that help to crystallize how every should think about the business — The consumer is boss.

Who is your boss? How to relate to internal bosses to serve external ones?