TL;DR
- Management by wandering around, or MBWA, means leaders regularly leaving their desks to see the work and talk informally with the people who do it. The aim is to stay in touch with reality.
- Tom Peters and Bob Waterman made the idea famous after hearing about it at Hewlett-Packard in 1980. Peters described it as staying in direct touch with the people who do the work.
- Done well, it is unscheduled, curious and followed by action. Done badly, it is an inspection. Remote teams need a deliberate equivalent, because nobody can wander past a home office.
The higher a manager rises, the more their picture of the organisation comes from reports, dashboards and other managers. Each layer smooths the story a little. Management by wandering around is the simplest correction there is: get up, go to where the work happens and ask people how it is going.
This article explains what management by wandering around is and where it came from. It sets out how to do it in six steps, gives questions to ask, shows how to adapt it for remote teams and lists the mistakes that turn a good habit into an unwelcome inspection.
What you hear on a walk is most useful when you capture it and act on it. See how New Dynamics continuous feedback keeps those conversations going between walks.
What is management by wandering around?
Management by wandering around, often shortened to MBWA, is the practice of leaders regularly leaving their offices to see the work at first hand and talk informally with the people who do it. It is also called managing by walking around.
Three features define it.
- It is informal. There is no agenda, no slide deck and no appointment.
- It is direct. The leader talks to the people doing the work, without their managers acting as interpreters.
- It is regular. One visit is an event. A habit builds trust.
Its purpose is to stay in touch: to learn what is really happening, to remove obstacles, to notice good work and to be known as a person and not only as a name on an email.
Where MBWA came from
The practice is associated with Hewlett-Packard, and it became famous through the 1982 book In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman.
Peters told the story himself on his blog in 2005, in a post called MBWA after all these years. In 1980, he and Waterman interviewed HP's then president, John Young, who told them that HP's hallmark “MBWA” was “more important than ever as we experience explosive growth”. The two consultants had never heard the term. Peters writes that Managing By Wandering Around “quickly became our favorite ‘excellence’ idea”, and explains what it meant:
“Technically, it meant staying in direct touch (damn the bureaucracy!) with the folks who do the work.”
He saw it as an answer to a kind of management in which big business “had become an abstraction”, run by the numbers, with front-line people treated as interchangeable parts.
MBWA and the gemba walk
Lean management has a close cousin. The Lean Enterprise Institute defines a gemba walk as “a management practice for grasping the current situation through direct observation and inquiry before taking action”. Gemba, it explains, means “actual place” in Japanese, and lean thinkers use it to mean the place where value is created.
| MBWA | Gemba walk | |
|---|---|---|
| Main purpose | Stay in touch with people and reality | Understand a process in order to improve it |
| Structure | Loose and conversational | Focused, often following one process from start to finish |
| Typical question | “How is it going? What is getting in your way?” | “What is the standard here? What happens when it goes wrong?” |
| Shared principle | Go and see for yourself, and show respect | Go and see for yourself, and show respect |
Both rest on the same belief: you cannot manage well what you have not seen.
Why it works
You learn things reports do not tell you. People mention in passing what they would never put in writing: the workaround everyone uses, the tool that fails every Friday, the customer complaint nobody logged.
Problems surface earlier. Bad news travels slowly up a hierarchy. A leader who is present hears it while it is still small.
It builds trust. People speak more freely to someone they know. Our guide to making an open door policy real makes the same point: a door that is open is of little use if nobody feels able to walk through it. Wandering around takes the door to them.
You can recognise good work on the spot. Specific thanks, given at the moment, is worth more than a line in a newsletter. See our positive feedback examples.
It shows what you value. Where leaders spend their time tells people what matters.
These are practical arguments from experience. We are not citing studies that measure the effect, and results depend heavily on how it is done.
How to do it well: six steps
- Go regularly. Put time in your calendar each week and protect it. Vary the days, the times and the teams, so that you see the night shift and the Friday afternoon as well as the Tuesday morning.
- Go alone. An entourage turns a conversation into a visit from head office. Leave the local manager behind some of the time, and tell them why.
- Ask open questions. Be curious about the work. Good questions are listed below.
- Listen more than you talk. Aim for the other person to do most of the talking. Do not defend, explain or solve on the spot. Take a note.
- Act on what you hear. Fix the small things quickly, and pass the larger ones to the right manager without blame. Nothing kills the practice faster than concerns that vanish.
- Report back. Tell people what happened as a result: “You told me the scanner kept failing. It is being replaced on the 14th.” That is what makes the next conversation more honest.
Questions to ask on a walk
About the work
- What are you working on today?
- What is going well at the moment?
- What is the most frustrating part of your week?
- What slows you down that we could fix?
- If you could change one thing about how we work, what would it be?
About customers
- What are customers telling you lately?
- What do they ask for that we cannot give them?
About support
- Do you have what you need to do this properly?
- Is there anything I should know that I probably do not?
- Who has helped you recently? I would like to thank them.
Questions to avoid
- “Why isn't this finished?” The walk is not a progress review.
- “Who did this?” Look for causes. Leave blame out of it.
- Anything that invites criticism of a colleague or a manager by name.
Our one-to-one meeting questions offer more prompts for deeper conversations.
MBWA for remote and hybrid teams
Nobody can wander past a home office. The purpose still holds, and the practice has to be rebuilt on purpose.
Acas notes in its guidance on managing employees who work from home that “it can be harder to notice problems people are having if you're not meeting face-to-face”. It advises managers to ask people how they are feeling, to be aware of changes in behaviour or tone of voice and to listen carefully to concerns. It also warns that constant or unnecessary contact can cause stress, so the aim is contact that is useful.
Practical equivalents:
- Short, unscheduled check-ins. A five-minute call or message: “No agenda. How is your week going?” Keep them short and occasional.
- Virtual office hours. An open video room at a set time each week, where anyone can drop in.
- Skip-level conversations. Talk now and then to people two levels down, with their manager's knowledge.
- Join the team's spaces. Read the team channels, and sit in on a stand-up as a listener.
- Visit in person when you can, and spend the time with people, not in a meeting room.
Treat remote and office-based colleagues alike. If the people you bump into get your attention and the rest do not, you have created two classes. Our remote team building activities can help.
Common mistakes
Turning it into an inspection. If people tidy up and tense up when you appear, you are auditing. Ask about obstacles, and leave the checking of output to another day.
Undermining the local manager. Do not give instructions that contradict theirs or make decisions that are theirs to make. Pass on what you heard, and let them act.
Hearing and not acting. One ignored concern teaches people that the walk is theatre.
Always visiting the same people. It is natural to stop where the welcome is warm. Make a note of who you have not spoken to lately.
Doing the talking. A walk in which the leader explains the strategy at each desk is a roadshow.
Wandering at the wrong time. Do not interrupt people in the middle of focused or safety-critical work. Ask, “Is now a good time?”, and accept no for an answer.
Relying on it alone. Informal conversations reach the confident. Pair MBWA with structured channels, such as regular one-to-ones and an engagement survey, so that quieter voices are heard too.
How to tell whether it is working
- People raise problems with you before they become crises.
- You can name a recent change that came from something you heard on a walk.
- People keep working normally when you appear.
- Local managers see your visits as help.
- You know more names, and more about the work, than you did six months ago.
Frequently asked questions
What is management by wandering around?
Management by wandering around, or MBWA, is the practice of leaders regularly leaving their offices to see the work at first hand and talk informally with the people doing it. The aim is to stay in touch with reality, remove obstacles and build trust.
Who invented management by wandering around?
The practice is associated with Hewlett-Packard. Tom Peters and Bob Waterman heard the term from HP's president, John Young, in 1980, and made it famous in their 1982 book In Search of Excellence. Peters described it as staying in direct touch with the people who do the work.
What is the difference between MBWA and a gemba walk?
MBWA is loose and conversational, and it aims to keep leaders in touch with people and reality. A gemba walk comes from lean management and is more focused: the Lean Enterprise Institute defines it as grasping the current situation through direct observation and inquiry before taking action.
What questions should you ask when managing by walking around?
Ask open questions about the work: what is going well, what is frustrating, what slows you down, what customers are saying and whether people have what they need. Avoid questions about unfinished tasks or blame, which turn the walk into an inspection.
Does management by wandering around work for remote teams?
The purpose carries over, but it has to be deliberate. Use short, unscheduled check-ins, virtual office hours, occasional skip-level conversations and visits in person. Acas warns that constant contact can cause stress, so keep it short and useful.
What are the disadvantages of management by wandering around?
It can feel like surveillance if handled badly. It can undermine local managers, favour confident employees, interrupt focused work and raise expectations that are not met. It takes time, and it works only when leaders act on what they hear.
Your next step: take one walk this week
- Block forty-five minutes in your calendar.
- Choose a team you have not visited lately, in person or online.
- Ask three people, “What slows you down that we could fix?”
- Fix one thing, and tell them that you did.
For prompts and an agenda for the deeper conversations that follow, read and download our one-to-one meeting guide. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.
Want what you hear on the floor to feed into feedback, goals and reviews? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your current routines. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.
