One of the main purposes of management by walking around is to access information that you wouldn’t normally hear. Unfortunately, that often means it’s negative and the actions taken require more finesse:

“Did you know I was pulled off that supposedly critical MIS project and assigned to this stupid auditing of cycle counts?”

Since it’s likely that the executive is unaware of the reassignment she needs to first verify that the employee’s assertion and analysis is true.

“I didn’t know that, Jim. Was the assignment supposed to be permanent or temporary? Who reassigned you? Was it Bill?”

Many times, detailed probing reveals that despite the person’s obvious irritation, the situation has a reasonable explanation. But if you decide, after some checking, that the incident the employee is complaining about merits further investigation, you must move carefully.

No matter what your policy is, giving out the name of the person who asked a critical question, or made a critical remark, can expose her to the wrath of whoever is implicated and dry up that source of information.

Further, you cannot assume that she’s is completely impartial, or, for that matter, correct, in what’s been reported. Employees interpret management actions in the light of their own experiences, which may not aptly apply; and they are perfectly capable of bending the truth a bit to enhance the impact of their remarks, as are managers (it’s a human thing).

If, in fact, Bill is the person who actually made the decision to pull Jim off the MIS project, you should approach Bill indirectly without prejudging the situation.

Q: “Are your cycle counts off a lot, Bill?”

Bill could have made a perfectly reasonable management move, if the MIS project is on schedule but cycle counts are far off. However, what you may hear from Bill is a problem with serious consequences that is just starting to bubble up out of the depths:

A: “You know, I suspected some sort of pilferage because the cycle counts are off so far, so I’m temporarily transferring some of the MIS people to audit the counts.”

Or the answer could indicate a different type of management problem:

A: “No the counts are fine. I moved a few of people around just to shake the group up.”

There are many other possible scenarios that you might need to deal with, but the bottom line is that management by walking around will have provided good internal organizational intelligence—more than justifying the time spent.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 8:38 am and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Hiring, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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