What the heck is management by walking around (MBWA)?

Management has been variously defined by different scholars and management experts. In summary, management has been defined as the planning, coordination, organisation and control of organisation’s resources which include manpower (workers), materials, money, minutes and machineries for the achievement of organisational goals. There are different management styles. Management by wandering around (MBWA), also known as management by walking around, refers to a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner, through their workplace(s) at random, to check with employees, equipment, raw materials, office facilities or on the status of ongoing work. The emphasis is on the word wandering as an unplanned and unstructured movement within a workplace, rather than a plan where employees expect a visit from managers at more systematic, pre-approved or scheduled times.

The expected benefit is that a manager who employs this method, by random sampling of events or employee discussions, is more likely to facilitate improvements to the morale, sense of organisational purpose, productivity and total quality management of the organisation, instead of remaining in a specific office or area and waiting for employees, or the delivery of status reports, to arrive, as events warrant in the workplace. Management by walking around is not the same thing as spying on employees or check-mating them but visiting them informally and unannounced to feel their pulse and observe their conditions. Management by wandering around is very similar to the Japanese “gemba walk method of management” that was originally developed at Toyota Motor Industry.

The origin of the term has been traced to executives at the Hewlett-Packard Company for their management practices in the 1970s. Bill Hewlett and David Packard practised the innovative management style in the Loveland, Colorado plant. MBWA assumed that there was no alternative for personal involvement of executives and one-on-one communication to make sure everyone from the bottom to the top of the company had the support to perform at their best. However, the general concept of managers making spontaneous visits to employees in the workplace has been a common practice in some other companies as well. Apple Inc, under Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz also practised MBWA extensively. Also, the management consultants, Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, had used the term in their 1982 book “In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies”.

Reports have it that Apple Chairman, Steve Jobs, often engaged in after-sale customer service on a personal basis. The point was not to fill in for an understaffed contact centre; his time would be considered too valuable for that. Nor was it just about injecting himself into escalated situations to patch up customer relations; which, by the way, is a good strategy in itself. Jobs had mastered the art of MBWA, or Management By Walking Around. It is a relatively simple but far underused – best practice that keeps managers in touch with the people paying the bills or making things happen around the company. CNN’s Mark Milian called Steve Jobs an “outlier” in this regard, noting that few top managers bother to get their hands dirty with the day-to-day doings of companies and customers. Jobs would personally respond to an inordinate amount of customer emails, which often dealt with hardware issues or pricing questions. He also would pick up the phone and call customers about their problems.

If anyone needs proof that CEOs and other business leaders can really change and transform their business by relatively simple best practices such as MBWA, Apple’s performance over the past decade is a case study. Steve Jobs never got a Master in Business Administration, but he mastered MBWA. My own experience was that of a Managing Director that related well with his workers, both senior and junior, when I was at Stallion Property and Development Company Limited. Mallam M. L. Yusuf would make sure he got to your office unannounced, at least once a week, sat down and discussed with you. In a company of about 32 workers, the MD knew everyone by name. He delegated, challenged and motivated a lot and invited workers to his house during festivities and personal celebrations. He will assure you that if you are not important to the organisation, you will not be engaged.

That personal warmth even extended to contractors such as those in charge of facility management and the tenants in Stallion House, Victoria Island, Lagos, and to all our residents in Stallion Estate, Stallion Court, Stallion Villas and Stallion Garden, all in Abuja. I know most organisations do have customers’ day but managers need to practise more MBWA than following the MBA ethics which suggested that like the termites queen, executives must not be seen always to retain their authority. By the time the computer age was in full swing four decades later, business guru and best-selling author Tom Peters revived the spirit of this relatively simple but effective approach to corporate success, one that he said was proven to deliver far greater dividends than any other known management style.

MBWA is a strategy of getting to know what employees are thinking and what they are up to, and letting them know that you are available to assist them. David Jensen, a noted leadership coach, sees MBWA as an important part of gaining buy-in of employees to the changes within the organisation. For example, on the advice of Warren Buffett, when Anne Mulcahy took the reins at Xerox, she spent a lot of time meeting with both customers and front-line employees, turning the company around. By contrast, he reports how another high-tech organisation sought to bully change in a detached, top-down fashion. There is a story of a managing director of a blue-chip company who decided to use the junior workers’ toilets. All the directors joined him and realising that the managing director and directors preferred the junior workers toilet, the facility managers and the administrative staff concentrated their efforts on putting the toilets in order. The junior staff moved to the senior staff toilets and after a year, the managing director moved to the senior staff toilet because its standard had also deteriorated. The facility managers followed suit.

The benefits of management by walking around include: (i) Improved communication – MBWA can improve communication between the junior and the management staff. (ii) Faster problem solving – Problems are solved faster as they are not necessarily reported but experienced by the manager. (iii) More opportunities for feedback – There are more opportunities for feedback when a manager is meeting the junior workers regularly. (iv) Stronger relationships – There is a stronger tie between the manager and the junior workers. (v) It can lead to micromanagement – MBWA can lead to micromanagement of workers. (vi) Promote employee recognition – MBWA is a form of employee recognition.

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