Management by Walking About
This is a style of management commonly referred to as mbwa. It is variously lengthened to management by wandering about, or management by walking around. mbwa usually involves the following.
- Managers consistently reserving time to walk through their departments and/or to be available for impromptu discussions. (mbwa frequently goes together with an open-door management policy.)
- Individuals forming networks of acquaintances throughout their organisations.
- Lots of opportunities for chatting over coffee or lunch, or in the corridors. Managers getting away from their desks and starting to talk to individual employees. The idea is that they should learn about problems and concerns at first hand. At the same time they should teach employees new methods to manage particular problems. The communication goes both ways.
The difficulty with mbwa is that (certainly at first) employees suspect it is an excuse for managers to spy and interfere unnecessarily. This suspicion usually falls away if the walkabouts occur regularly, and if everyone can see their benefits. mbwa has been found to be particularly helpful when an organisation is under exceptional stress; for instance, after a significant corporate reorganisation has been announced. It is no good practising mbwa for the first time on such an occasion, however. It has to have been a regular practice before the stress arises. In the late 1990s it did not seem extraordinary that managers should manage by walking about.
But in the 1950s many white-collar managers turned their offices into ivory towers from which they rarely emerged. Edicts were sent out to the blue-collar workforce which they rarely met face-to-face. The outside world was filtered through to them via a secretary who, traditionally, sat like a guard dog in front of their (usually closed) office door.