Last week I talked about management by walking around (MAP Action 2) and buried my inbox. The emails ran the gamut from asking for more info and examples to saying that it seemed like a big waste of time. OK, if you think it’s a time-waster then I suggest that you skip this week’s posts, but for those of you who wanted more, here it is…

The reason that management by walking around is still one of the best ways to uncover problems that are not brought up via normal management channels is that it taps into all the information that people have that they don’t even realize is of value, as well as stuff that they aren’t about to, or don’t know how to, bring up. In other words, in order to both manage and lead, you must have a well-rounded picture of what is going on in your bailiwick.

The risk taken by an executive who regularly walks among his people on the job, and asks “how’s everything going?” is that they’ll really tell him and the answers will be radically different from what one, or more, of his managers have been saying. For example

• The MIS project that the manager claimed was “going perfectly” is, in fact, “going down the tubes.”

Or

• A question that comes seemingly out of the blue, “Are they really going to lay off half the staff when the company is sold to Gutem Industries?”

There are as many reasons that executives avoid appearing informally as there are executives, but most are based on fears of one stripe or another—no matter how they are disguised:

• They don’t like to hear anything that conflicts with the (sycophantic) information from their direct reports.
• They would have to deal with things that normally wouldn’t surface.
• They fear the embarrassment of being asked something they don’t know.
• They don’t like to fraternize with “those people.” (No joke! I’ve had managers actually say that!)
• They’re too busy.
• They’re concerned that the questions will require answers they consider “confidential”.

Hey, nobody ever said that managing was comfortable; and if you want to hear off-the-record information, you need to be prepared to give some out as well.

A special note: I’d like to thank Scott Allen for his marvelous write-up about my blog. Thanks Scott, you are the best (and so is your blog:)!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: MAP action 2
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