The relentless pursuit of reality

Managing By Walking Around (MBWA) was a standard approach when I was at HP. Seems closely related with keeping your ear to the ground. There's also a thought here with co-leadership styles, where one person has an external focus, attaching to external realities, whilst the other connects closely with the internal reality. :D

Phil, I think one of the problems is that some leaders are incapable of moving their thinking and understanding from the Ivory Tower to the shop floor. It is essential to stop, look, listen and feel the heartbeat of the organization and to take this into consideration when developing any strategy. Leaders such as Richard Branston appear to have a really good handle on the heartbeat of their organisations. I have worked for leaders who had no concept at all of the pulse within their organisation and then were surprised when their strategies failed. It didn't dawn on them that they failed because 'their strategy' didn't become 'our strategy'. Kate

Hi All - It was Dave Hasenbalg who posted the post, above, actually. Sandrit, I completely agree about putting managers regularly on the frontline to give them a taste of reality. There was a BBC TV show in the UK called 'Back To The Floor' where they took a CEO of a big company and filmed them while they spent a week out in their stores, or factories, or call centres/centers or making deliveries to customers etc. etc. There were about ten episodes, with ten different CEOs. In EVERY SINGLE ONE, after a couple of days, the CEO had stopped talking and telling people what to do and was instead listening, with their mouth open, silent, and a sense of slight confusion, to what people out in the field told them was really going on in their business. In every single one of them, the show ended with the CEO walking into a Board Meeting and explaining that they now knew what really goes on in the business and had come back with a number of changes the Board had to make so that people on the frontline could do their jobs properly. The biggest change from "Make way, here comes the Boss" at the beginning of the week to a humble "I thought I knew how my business was run: turns out I don't" came in the form of the former CEO of the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's, who started the week smiling, smug and pompous and ended the week looking dazed, confused and humble. He, of all the CEOs on parade in the series, had been the most out of touch. A few months later he was replaced. There's a lot more to say on this whole 'leaders should be on the front line regularly' theme, as I think it's crucial, but I've posted too long here, so will write it separately rather than go on about it. I've got some nice examples I'll put in a separate post. Phil

Here's a thought then, if it does a single director a power of good to spend a week on the shop floor, then what would you expect the effect would be if, when that director came back to mahogony row, he brought a couple of the shop floor guerrilla leaders with him. I would expect the following, but feel free to change, disagree, deride, applaud etc. And, the assumption here is that said guerrilla leaders have been selected precisely because they are willing to speak their mind,not willing to be cowed by the rank of those around them etc. 1) Although it would take longer, the pulse would make itself felt in mahogony row. This would become almost a regular sanity check on any new initiatives. If you can't explain it to the guerrilla leaders, then how can you expect the shop floor to accept it. 2) There would be some seriously effective 360 feedback loops forming, which I am sure would make the levels of management between mahogony row and the shop floor up their game a bit. 3) Some of the thinking behind the company strategy would make it's way back down to the shop floor without having passed through the middle management filters. This will help to give a better, balanced view to the shop floor of exactly why they are doing what they are doing. Comments please :-) Colin.(Currenly too deep in the woods to get a clear line of sight to the trees)