Management by Walking Around examples from experience

Real life Examples

Discovering Management By Walking Around

Note: Management by walking around is a great tool to help you become a stronger leader. This page is supplementary reading for our program "how to get into your employees minds and motive them to achieve your vision". To review this program click here.

"How would you like to read real life examples from great leaders?" Learn from the experience of others, By Ian Pratt

Management by walking around – How I learnt about Persistence:

My first Management by walking around experience.

I was a young, enthusiastic, process engineer fresh out of TQM (Total Quality Management) training and working as a business improvement specialist in an lube oil blend plant.

The business issue

The Swot Analysis completed during our annual business planning session identified that hazard reporting was a weakness. First we trained our staff in hazard identification and reporting, however after several months had passed not a single hazard had been reported.

My task: Culture change – establish a culture where hazards are identified, reported and corrective action is taken.

Leadership and My Plan

I developed a management by walking around plan to address the issue of hazard reporting and change the culture. (My first tertiary qualification is in production engineering where is was emphasised that this technique is ideal for culture change)

My plan did not have the benefits of my now 18 years of experience in change management including business, process and culture change.

Essentially my plan was to get out of my chair and ask the employees to tell me about the hazards in their work area and hopefully convince them to complete the hazard report form. At this stage I figured one or two walks around the plant and we could pick a something new to change.

My Research

Before setting out on my first floor walk I contacted the maintenance department to check if any hazard reports had been received since I last checked, there were none.

My Floor Walk

I set out with fresh faced enthusiasm, and optimistic that the culture would be easily changed, walking through the plant introducing myself to each employee in turn and asking if they knew of any hazards in their area that should be reported, after 2 hours and meeting with every employee I returned to my desk with zero suggestions, not one employee knew of a hazard in their work area that should be reported.

My Reflection

This confused me; I had spent 7 years studying production engineering and were now half way through a six year degree in management where my lecturers constantly reinforced that management by walking around is the most effective technique for this type of challenge, why did my floor walk fail?

To reconcile this early failure I though about behavioural theory specifically classical conditioning and thought maybe I needed to repeat the exercise until the employees associated me with identifying hazards, then if they encountered a hazard and within a short period of time I were near by they would think “I need to report this hazard”.

I tried again, floor walking everyday talking to different employees each time, though visible to all employees, about hazards and hazard reporting.

Then on about my third week one of the employees said to me, as he saw me approach – “ah, its you – I have something to show you” – taking me to the back of his work station, he pointed to some steps and advised “I slipped on these steps yesterday and though I will point them out to you when you were next here”

Through persistence I managed to get the first indication of a future culture change.

What I learnt

Lesson 2: I had to be in the workplace shortly after an employee encountered a hazard so that they would recall the hazard and report it to me (frequency).

What Happened Next?

Well ……. I helped the employee to fill out the hazard report form, then with the employee walked it to maintenance and ask for a high priority to fix the hazard.

And

Over the next 6 months I continued floor walking eventually shifting the organisations culture through a series of stages and slowly reduced the dependency on me for employees to report (and fix) hazards.

And finally

Shifted my walk about management from asking about hazard identification, through to how many hazards have been reported to how many fixes have been implemented.

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