By Ace Starry
MBWA - Management By Wandering Around
I'm a real fan of MBWA management technique. When you find
yourself in a position where you have to deal with several employees
or several hundred, this technique is most effective and easy to
accomplish. MBWA, if you don't already know stands for Management By
Wandering Around. If you see me wandering aimlessly about the
library; Atrium; or my favorite place, the Undergraduate Reading
Room; don't think that I'm merely checking out the undergraduate
girls. Actually I am practicing this popular management technique.
(If you believe this then you probably went to A&M undergrad.)
There is a lot more to management than just wandering around
aimlessly. There is computing sales quotas aimlessly, filling out
reports aimlessly, doing budgets aimlessly and many more things
which can be done aimlessly. But, wandering around does actually
accomplish something. An often-made mistake among managers is that
they get so bogged down in corporate hierachy that they forget to
just wander around. The result is that they "lose touch."
Learn about success by watching those who succeed, I always say.
Sam Walton, of the famed Wal Mart and Sam's Wholesale Stores, for
example, would visit every one of his stores at least once a year.
This idea was conceived when he had only 18 stores, and last I heard
he still visited every store when he had over 750. Sometime he even
rode with his distribution truckers from store to store. They say
that you can still see his ghost wandering around the distribution
centers eating doughnuts at 2 a.m.. (They used to say the same thing
about me and the Undergrad's reading room.)
It is amazing the things you learn when you wander around. When I
was a regional director of marketing, I used to visit each of our 45
properties at least once a quarter. You should have seen the looks
on the faces of the managers when I arrived at their doors
unannounced the first time. On time I found the doors to the office
wide open and not a soul around. I waited for 20 minutes and then
decide I should use this opportunity to demonstrate the advantage of
the doors being locked with nobody around. I loaded the typewriter
(yes we had typewriters back then) phones, fax machine, television
and microwave (yes we had microwaves too) into the back of my car
and left.
I rarely would say anything negative to the managers when I
visited, the shock alone damned near killed them. I usually would
take a lot of notes. The smaller problems that were not so obvious
would be mentioned in a letter that I would later write to the
manager. This letter would always say how nice their property looked
and what a great job they were doing. The obvious problems, (like no
one showing up for work, or an office that looked like a garage
sale) had a way of magically solving themselves before I came for my
next surprise visit.
Always be Positive in Your Management Style
Let me admit it; at first they hated me. However, after they
started getting used to the idea that I was likely to just check in
from time to time, I grew on them like a cultured fungus.
What they didn't discover until after a few of these visits was
that I was taking notes on the things that I liked about the
property and the great job the management team was doing. I have
found that one real way to motivate people is to make them have to
live up to their own expectations. If you tell people that they are
great and they do a great job enough, they will begin to believe it.
Not only that they will begin to do it.
Goerthe the Berman philosopher, was, according to some, the
smartest person to ever walk the face of the earth. (But did he take
calculus, statistics and management science in he same semester? I
think not.)
I believe hi is the on that originally said, "A man will rise
to the limits of his own expectations." Since he was probably
as smart as the average Texas MBA or the combined Harvard B-school
class, I decided early in my career to use this adage to my
advantage. I'll bet that I have sent out more letters telling people
what a valuable employees they are than LA has traffic tickets.
(Okay, not that many.)
So when you ride the elevator don't forget to tell the operator
what a great job he does. If you press the right buttons, he'll
press the right ones for you.
Keep pushing the buttons to get to the top..
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