Management by Walking Around for Project Managers
| Posted in Project Management | Posted on 12-01-2010 | 591 views
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You cannot manage people from an ivory tower, you have to interact with your team, speak with them on daily basis and melt the ice that may stand as a big demotivator in many organizations, Management By Walking/Wandering Around (MBWA) is a simple yet effective technique to have a robust relationship with your team built on mutual trust, understanding, and agreement.
MBWA is one of the most effective techniques to be practiced in workplace, many executives use it to send “I am here!” silent message to the staff members, I am sure you have experienced that at some time of your professional career, where you were sitting and completely engrossed with your monitor and suddenly you had found the top person ( aka HIPPO ) in your organization standing a couple of metres away from you and asked “What are you trying to solve?!” this is called Management by Walking Around, it looks very simple and requires no skills to practice, however it is very effective and one of the most motivational techniques you can ever use, as a project manager you need to be in touch with people, you have to understand their problems and help solve those problems, in this post I will give some ways to start practicing MBWA, once you practice it you will love it and you will definitely feel the difference, while the post is addressing project managers it also can help managers of all levels to practice MBWA.
Daily Stand-up Meetings
This is one of the main themes of Scrum, however while practicing MBWA the Stand-up meeting does not have to be daily, it just can be a quick meeting to wrap up with the team about issues, progress, status, et cetera. The beauty of the Stand-up meetings is that that it should look spontaneous and unplanned, like you can tell the team “Let’s make today’s meeting a stand-up one, we’ll sit for 10-15 minutes and speak about the project”, you do not have to be using Scrum to have a stand-up meeting, in fact it can kill the boredom of the usual meetings where too much is getting wasted, you are not supposed to be formal during the meeting, use motivational words and thank the team for their small achievements ( to run meetings efficiently, read my post Better Meetings.
Catch Them Doing Something Right
One of the traits of The One Minute Manager technique developed by Kenneth H. Blanchard is to catch the employees doing something right, no matter how small you need to recognize them for doing right things, this will motivate the team members and boost their productivity level, if you pass by a team member and find him doing something right thank him and express your happiness for seeing him doing the right things, this will always energize team members to do the right things and work on improving the project deliverables and consequently improve the whole organization.
Introduce Unknown members to Customers
Often times your customers will not be aware of the entire team, they may be interacting with the team leader but will barely know about the developers, and so you can use the first meeting that will be held at the team’s premises and walk the customers around the workplace introducing team members to the customers and explaining their roles and responsibilities, this one is a real motivator.
Ask Fresh Questions
The questions should not be related to the project, you will need to socialize with the team and know more about their interests, hobbies, families, concerns, et cetera, you can use any of the following questions (placeholders in italic):
- How was your weekend?
- How is your commute? How long does it take you to reach office?
- Have you seen Avatar movie or AC Milan vs. Inter Milan or Oprah’s Show?
- Have you read latest book of Dan Brown?
- Have you tried the beta version of Microsoft Office 2010? ( Give them indirect tips to stimulate their knowledge )
Tell Good News Loudly
Nothing motivates the team like the good news, try to use good news no matter how small it is to delight the team, go to their cubicles and say loudly “Guys I have some good news, WE…”, don’t forget to use We and refrain from using I.
Recap
Management by Walking Around is a powerful technique to be used by executives, managers, and project managers, it is one of the traits of a successful manager, and it has to be nurtured and applied wisely, it also has to be practiced spontaneously, if you feel like you are not willing to use it, then never force yourself, if it is used wrongly it will demotivate the team members and have a counterproductive effect on them, you will need to make it brief and fast do not spend a long time walking around and don’t make them feel that you are auditing them!
Share your Experience
If you are using Management by Walking Around and have more techniques that work better for you, or if you used some techniques and did not work with you, please share your experience and leave a comment!
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I can’t agree. Management by walking around most of the time is simply wrong.
With just a couple of minutes spent with a person a manager can’t learn what’s really happening and won’t be able to remember what people were talking about let alone helping them.
Occasional landing of VIP asking project-related question introduces a lot of hassle since, you want it or not, people will always filter messages sent to HIPPOs.
If you limit MBWA to occassional chit chat you better do it at the watercooler, not while walking around. You gain a little but you lose a lot in terms of interrupting people, adding context changes etc.
Spreading news (either good or bad) should be done in more organized way. You don’t want to tell something only in one room and then let the gossips spread around. You’re likely to prefer telling news during team meeting or something.
Managing by (randomly) walking around is wrong on so many levels. Of course you shouldn’t shut your office either, but if you’re going to talk with people have a damn good reason to interrupt them or better catch them when they’re free to chit chat.
I have a better idea – take your own desk to the biggest room which your people sit in. And while you’re there try not to talk or walk around as much as listen.
Hi Pawel, Thank you for your viewpoint
MBWA is a time tested technique and big companies such as HP used it and it worked well!
The main objective of the MBWA is to be amongst your team members and do not just isolate yourself from them, they will feel motivated and you will get to know more about your team, understand their problems and feel their frustrations.
About good news, you can simply say it and then follow with a formal email! it is all about energizing people, some people work in some organizations where they always starve for good news.
MBWA is not about chit chat it is about establishing genuine relationship with the people who work for your, and all relationships start by small chats, a simple conversation can boost a team member’s morale, however it has to be true, and to be true it has to come out of you based on strong belief that you care about the well being of the team.
Sitting in the middle of the room will not help by any means, I personally do not like to get very close to team members, they can simply show that they are working while they may be playing, if you very close to them they may get tense.
MBWA is not a new technique as it is often played by HIPPOs and CxOs, I just tweaked it to fit project managers!
We differ much on this one. Maybe it is so because I still try to look at the situation from line worker’s perspective. It’s just awkward when some VIP comes in and asks random questions to people he doesn’t even know.
Tell me, how motivating it is when clueless HIPPO comes and interrupts you in whatever you’re doing at the moment? And you don’t even know how to answer his questions. I haven’t seen any relationship built this way.
On the other hand if you get your desk into your team’s room you don’t do it, by any means, to check whether they’re working or not. I’d even recommend to ignore situations when you see someone isn’t working (if it happens only by occasion). Sitting with your people is about being with them at these moments where you have a real chance to buddy with them. When they start joking laugh with them. When they tell about their problems offer help. When they have some issue you know how to resolve offer help and build some reputation. Show them you’re the first to stay late whenever things go wrong. None of these can really be done by sitting on the next floor and occasionally walking around.
Hi @pawelbrodzinski,
MBWA is one theme and it is not a silver bullet as you can see and as I believe, the desk’s idea is cool but it also won’t work with all group types, the essence is to have sort of casual interaction with teams, MBWA does not tell us to go and inquire about status & progress, it also has given great results with giant enterprises such as HP.
At the end of the day, the project manager should be smart enough to use what works for him and his team, whether it is MBWA or getting his desk in the centre of the room!
Cheers
Good post Kareem and I completely disagree with you Pawel. In my experience project resource management is not something done by formal approaches only. In fact one of the biggest complaints of project teams is that they never see the Project Manager and never know what is going on.
Sure you could send out emails, and schedule formal meetings but they rarely work. I always operate a daily quick catchup for at the very least the team leads. However for the remainder (the troops on the ground) so to speak I always make sure I pop around every so often to see what’s going on, and catch the buzz. Obviously this is much harder to do with offshore or international teams as I’ve found but with those on site the effort is much appreciated.
Managing project teams is an absolutely vital part of successful project management. In my experience the best way to do this is via a combination of formal and informal means. Oh and by treating the team resources as humans who want face to face contact with their PM on an ad hoc basis.
Regards
Susan de Sousa
Site Editor http://www.my-project-management-expert.com
Susan, as you said formal communication does not work with everything, building good relationships with the team members is the key, I always believe that respecting people let them own what they work on, and this is one of the sources of real motivation, conversely I am very much against task oriented style, people are so smart and not like before, if they feel that the only thing the project manager cares about is the task they do, this would lead to de motivation and will make people feel insecure and also it will kill the chance of creativity
Susan,
I believe you didn’t understand me. I don’t advise to hide in the office and interact with the team by decrees. Couldn’t be further from that.
What I’m trying to say is that most of the time walking around is not enough. Instead of daily routine be with your team all the time. Listen to them. Talk with them. Be at hand whenever they need you, even if they wouldn’t go ask for your help if you sat in a different room. Walking around one in a while doesn’t really solve these issues.
[...] Original article in English by Kareem Shaker, Dubaï, Émirats Arabes Unis. [...]
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