MBWA and Departmental Infrastructure for Managers

Any newly assigned manager must get a grip on the responsibilities of the new position. This is especially true if few of the workers under his/her purview are known to him/her. A “browsing inventory” of each worker’s workspace is a way to start. The use of bulletin boards, both organizational, departmental, or personal, and the kind of information on them can be a source of background information for the manager. Cubical decorations can also provide the new manager an unspoken, informative system of data impossible to acquire any other way. Other information can show the degree of control the organization/department has over each worker’s cubical design – and the worker’s degree of compliance to these “rules.”

Another tool of the manager is MBWA, or “Managing by Walking Around,” a technique favored by the late Sam Walton, CEO and founder of WalMart Stores. Sam would walk around all parts of a store, meeting and speaking with everyone he saw. In this way he would obtain a very good picture of the store’s organizational climate and culture, and he would learn personal things the workers volunteered about their lives, families, and jobs. When he would return to the store, his MBWA activity would be easier to use for gathering information from those who had already met him. Sam was not a micro manager, but he did contrast the information he obtained from workers with the information from his managers. Any deviations resulted in a greater level of scrutiny.

These two socialization techniques are the first steps in a manager “relating” to those working for him/her. This kind of “social networking” is not an attempt to blame supervisors and other managers, rather it is an attempt to pass the organization and department vision to the workers who contribute to its success. In this way the goals and expectations of the manager can be understood and be commented upon by all interested enough to do so.
Sometimes these techniques are not easy for the manager to perform because of personal limitations or management style conflict considerations. This personal shortcoming in managerial style can be overcome by developing the loyalty of the supervisors or decision makers directly under him/her – in effect using a very small but dedicated social network to do the work explained to them.
Dr LGG