Case Study
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Executive offices in major corporations are often far removed from the day-to-day work that most employees perform. While top executives might enjoy the perquisites found in the executive suite, and separation from workday concerns can foster a broader perspective on the business, the distance between management and workers can come at a real cost: top managers often fail to understand the ways most employees do their jobs every day. The dangers of this distant approach are clear. Executives sometimes make decisions without recognizing how difficult or impractical they are to implement. Executives can also lose sight of the primary challenges their employees face.
The practice of "management by walking around"
CMBWA) works against the insularity of the executive suite. To practice MBWA, managers reserve time to walk through departments regularly, form networks of acquaintances in the organization, and get away from their desks to talk to individual employees. The practice was exemplified by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who used this management style at HP to learn more about the challenges and opportunities their employees were encountering.
Many other organizations followed suit and found that this style of management had advantages over a typical desk-bound approach to management. A recent study of successful Swedish organizations revealed that MBWA was an approach common to several firms that received national awards for being great places to work.
The popular television program Undercover Boss took
MBWA to the next level by having top executives from companies like Chiquita Brands, DirectTV, Great Wolf
Resorts, and NASCAR work incognito among line employees. Executives reported that this process taught them how difficult many of the jobs in their organizations were, and just how much skill was required to perform even the lowest-level tasks. They also said the experience taught
Executive offices in major corporations are often far removed from the day-to-day work that most employees perform. While top executives might enjoy the perquisites found in the executive suite, and separation from workday concerns can foster a broader perspective on the business, the distance between management and workers can come at a real cost: top managers often fail to understand the ways most employees do their jobs every day. The dangers of this distant approach are clear. Executives sometimes make decisions without recognizing how difficult or impractical they are to implement. Executives can also lose sight of the primary challenges their employees face.
The practice of "management by walking around"
CMBWA) works against the insularity of the executive suite. To practice MBWA, managers reserve time to walk through departments regularly, form networks of acquaintances in the organization, and get away from their desks to talk to individual employees. The practice was exemplified by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who used this management style at HP to learn more about the challenges and opportunities their employees were encountering.
Many other organizations followed suit and found that this style of management had advantages over a typical desk-bound approach to management. A recent study of successful Swedish organizations revealed that MBWA was an approach common to several firms that received national awards for being great places to work.
The popular television program Undercover Boss took
MBWA to the next level by having top executives from companies like Chiquita Brands, DirectTV, Great Wolf
Resorts, and NASCAR work incognito among line employees. Executives reported that this process taught them how difficult many of the jobs in their organizations were, and just how much skill was required to perform even the lowest-level tasks. They also said the experience taught