Effective Management:

Intellectual Cross-pollination

Managing by Wandering Around (MBWA)

Getting In Touch With Your Employees, Customers, and Suppliers

– Mark McCormack

Problem Addressed

Main managerial productivity problem of many companies is that managers are remote from the detail, out of touch with their people and their customers. As W. Edwards Deming, an American who introduced the idea of quality management to the Japanese, put it: "If you wait for people to come to you, you'll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place."

 Case Study  Hewlett-Packard

At Hewlett-Packard, where the MBWA theory was practiced, executives were encouraged to be out of their offices working on building relationships, motivating,  and keeping direct touch with the activities of the company. The practice of MBWA at all levels of the company reflects a commitment to keep up to date with individuals and activities through impromptu discussions, "coffee talks", communication lunches, and the like.

Main Benefits

MBWA is an informal top management practice. It makes the entire workplace less formal. It was MBWA that made leadership more effective in many well-run organizations.  MBWA frequently goes together with an open-door management policy.

It "lets senior management hunt for and enjoy chatting with the creative thinkers in the guts of the organization".⁵

At first, employees may suspect that MBWA is just an excuse for managers to spy and interfere unnecessary. 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 organization is under exceptional stress; for instance, after a significant corporate reorganization has been announced. It is no good practicing MBWA for the first time on such an occasion, however. It has to have been a regular practice before the stress arises.

Tom Peters, the guru of Excellence, saw "managing by wandering around" as the basis of leadership and excellence. Peters called MBWA the "technology of obvious".

Seven MBWA Principles...

What Leaders and Managers Should Do...

Intellectual Cross-pollination...

Harnessing the Power of Diversity...

 Case in Point  Dell Inc...