Management by walking around
(MBWA) is the best and effective way of managing your company or business,
being in the middle of things makes your more aware and faster to react.
Mangers at the top are often behind closed doors and are not aware of the daily
processes in the organization. Having a large gap between top management and
other employees can very dangerous, in fact it might destroy any successful
business. It’s very important and critical for mangers to monitor all
operations very closely, which is why they need to think about MBWA as a way of
managing people.
Take any large supermarket chain
as an example; often you will never see top management walking around with customers
in the store. All you will see are employees and maybe floor mangers, that is
why by having open doors employees can talk to top management and give them their
ideas. Not only that but mangers can be more contacted with both employees and customers,
by using MBWA they will understand all the on floor activities in the supermarket.
Management by walking around will make the gap between top and bottom small
which will help the overall performance of the store. On the other hand by
having a large gap top management would not understand customer preference,
target market and other important aspects. In the previous example you can see
how effective and critical the gap can be when making big business decisions.
Working environments are linked directly
to effictvness and productivity, which is why mangers need to make sure they
can provide the best working environment for their employees. By being close to
their employees they can determine what is needed to create and find that
productive environment. In my opinion management by walking around is the best
way to move your business forward, even though some might argue that it has
many disadvantages I still think it’s a must in some organizations.
Do u agree with MBWA? Does it
have disadvantages? Where does it best apply?
I agree and disagree with MBWA for a couple of reasons. I think MBWA is best applied in pure projects in which a manager is appointed to manage a specific project only. However, having top managers involved in operations and monitor everything in opearations is not a good strategic management tactic because this will absorb the limited time available for the top management such as the CEO to formulate new growth and development strategies and monitor their effective and efficient implementation that will support the company in moving forward and gaining new contracts and building the image of the orgranization therefore increasing the revenue and net profit of the organization. However, i suggest unexpected visits should be conducted to the different sites and the CEO should conduct weekly meetings with the operation managers responsible for the sites in order to learn more about the challenges and discuss ways to overcome those challenges.
Moreover, the CEO should use all communication tools to communicate with the opeartion managers and should receive reports about the performance of every segment which will assist him in creating future business plans that will ensure growth and profitability.