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.

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

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.

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!

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

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.