It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of some of the best posts during that time.

Often the most important stuff we need to learn doesn’t require multiple videos, books, and coaching. Sometimes a simple memory aid that’s easy to remember will do it, although execution still requires effort and self discipline, as in this case.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

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.

In order to get the most out of management by walking around, you must sort the wheat from the chaff. The questions and comments you hear will come from a diverse workforce, so you must make allowances for the differences in education, experience, philosophy, etc., between yourself and your people. You manage people who

• may not fit your definition of “people like me;”
• are different from your friends and neighbors;
• were raised in a different culture; or
• hold vastly different views of corporations and/or society.

These differences, however, do not diminish the value of their question or information, and you’ll do yourself irreparable harm if you react with scorn or boredom. Even if the employee has a highly distorted or meaningless question on some trivial management matter, you must listen with apparent concern or he will shut down the process and you will miss something very important later on.

If management has followed the policy of complete truthfulness toward employees, then the actual answer to most questions is straightforward; if it hasn’t, you may find yourself being forced to prevaricate and even rethinking your desire to be in the company! You may have to clarify or explain what an employee heard second, third, or fourth-hand in order to correct the perspective, but you should be able to answer almost all questions without reservation, even if they seem absurd to you.

When responding, don’t roll your virtual eyes or give curt answers that appear dismissive or demeaning, and whatever style you use, be consistent. One approach, used successfully by several of quasi Spock-like managers I know, is to use a slightly professorial air, without being patronizing, and teach your people a little about management and business as you go. This approach, or variations of it, pay off handsomely over time because your people will take more ownership when they understand why something is done and they’ll brag about what they learn—which makes recruiting easier, too.

Tomorrow, in the final (for now) installment on management by walking around, you’ll learn what to do about the negatives you’re bound to hear when you’re walking.

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:)!

Remember Management-By-Walking-Around? It’s an oldie, but a goodie. Great managers work to spend at least 25% of their time wandering around chatting and building trust with their people.

Don’t have time? Maybe that’s because you never really thought abut the benefits. Getting to know your people this way helps you to

• spot high-potential workers;
• raise your trust quotient with employees;
• improve retention;
• attract talent;
• discover molehills before they’re mountains, and, most importantly, it’s the best, if not only, way to
• know what’s really going on.

To work it must be the norm—that means it needs to be done constantly, not just when there’s a problem.

Consistant, casual visits make people feel comfortable and encourages them to chat—saying what they are thinking without editing it. To pass on information, rumors, and the like without wondering or worrying that it will boomerang and hurt them.

While wandering, you’ll hear enough to validate or repudiate what you heard from somewhere else. It lets you protect your sources—which means they’ll continue to pass on information—and it helps you avoid acting on erroneous information.

The higher you rise in the organization the more important this intelligence becomes. One of the greatest dangers for any manager is getting isolated and hearing only a sanitized or slanted version of what’s going on within the group, department or company. This is especially true for the CEO and senior staff.

Bottom-line—get off your duff, out of your office, wander around, say hi, listen, be a sponge and soak it all up.

Invest the time—that’s what managers do—and it will pay off handsomely!