Today’s explosion of social media offers a cornucopia of communications potential – a virtual abundance of technologies and platforms for communicating with anyone, anytime, anywhere across an array of devices. But, from a communications perspective, none of the popular options beats seeing the whites of your manager’s eyes in a one-on-one conversation. Creating that human bond is at the heart of the old-school management technique known as MBWA, or Managing By Wandering Around.
MBWA is an unstructured way for managers to stay in direct touch with the people who do the work by making informal – and unannounced – visits to work areas. If done right, this kind of personal interaction can help forge a deeper connection between management and employees.
By listening to employees’ suggestions, concerns and complaints, you can collect unfiltered information, keep your finger on the pulse of your organization, and find out what’s really going on. The benefits are many: MBWA encourages spontaneous, two-way communication, builds rapport, earns trust, shows people you care about what they are doing, boosts enthusiasm and enhances individual job satisfaction. It can be especially useful in gaining insights and knowledge into major issues that you can’t get any other way, or nuances that get “lost” in the up-and-down communication chain.
MBWA may sound like a walk in the park, but to get the most out of it, here are 10 tips, culled from both experience and a variety of “how to” websites:
- Make “wandering” a regular activity and do it as often as you can. Keep it spontaneous by doing it at different times every week or month. If you have people in geographic distant locations try Management by Calling Around. Maybe you can try “Management by Skyping around.”
- Go alone without an entourage. Be authentic.
- Act like a coach, not an inspector.
- Ask for suggestions and recognize good ideas. If you adopt any of them, make sure you let everyone know whose idea it was.
- Be open and responsive to questions and concerns. If you can’t answer a question on the spot, get back to the employee within 48 hours – personally if possible. This common courtesy builds trust.
- Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.
- Be constructive, not critical. Your tone
- Talk with people about their passions – whether family, hobbies, vacations or sports.
- Broaden your reach by eating in the company cafeteria and sitting with different people you don’t already know every time.
- Have fun with it; this is a chance to lighten up and show your “softer, human” side.
Time and again, in my 35-plus years as a communicator, I’ve seen the power of the personal connection, where tone of voice, facial expressions and body language (combined with listening and storytelling) truly have a meaningful impact. As much as the next digital devotee, l like Twitter and Facebook, emails and Google+, but nothing beats a personal connection where you can see and hear a person for who they are versus their digital avatar.
I know from personal experience that MBWA is an excellent way to unleash motivation and commitment. When I was a junior officer in Washington, D.C., I was working on a speech for my then-boss, a four-star general (whose office was two floors away). All of a sudden the general wandered into my office and asked, “How are you doing?” I told him that the speech was on track. He said fine, and again asked, “How are you doing?” It suddenly dawned on me that he had come to talk to me, about me. He showed genuine interest and we proceeded to have a thoughtful 30-minute conversation. I did most of the talking and he – a busy Air Force general with accountability for more than 100,000 people and a budget of nearly 100 billion dollars – listened. By the end of our chat, I was feeling so good about my role, my purpose and life that I knocked out that speech and the many to follow for the next year with a new passion and enthusiasm. My boss cared. It is a feeling that still motivates me today.
But don’t just take my word for it. Get up and walk around. Talk with people. Listen. Hear. Engage. You’ll see for yourself that Management By Wandering Around works!
Ron Fuchs, APR, is the Head of Communications Services, F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd.
Management By Wandering (Walking) Around History
MBWA was not “invented” by any one company or person. Management guru Peter Drucker is said to have coined the term in the 1960s and its earliest documented appearance may have been during that decade at NASA. It bears similarities to Japanese management methods such as Genchi Genbutsu (meaning “Go and See”). Historian Stephen B. Coates traces its origins to Abraham Lincoln, who while president used it when informally inspecting the Union Army troops in the early part of the American Civil War.
In the U.S., MBWA was popularized as an important part of “The HP Way,” the open management style pioneered by HP founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard as a means of boosting morale within their company. Often when people retired from HP, they reflected on those times when the founders would pop into their labs and chat about their experiments, families and the company.
The approach gained prominence in the early 1980s when management consultant Tom Peters wrote about it in his first book, In Search of Excellence, sharing examples from such notable organizations as Hewlett-Packard, GE, PepsiCo, Lucasfilm, 3M and Disney. In his second book, A Passion for Excellence, Peters said he saw MBWA as the basis for leadership and excellence and called it the “technology of the obvious.”
