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Walk The Talk

In today’s fast-paced world, everyone is busy, and the preferred method of communications is email. But if you really want to know what’s going on, or if you want to increase your profile and/or your influence, nothing can beat straightforward face-to-face contact and seeing things for yourself. You can keep in touch with the latest issues, find out what people want and get feedback on what your team are doing.
 
Management by walking about (MBWA) has largely been forgotten – but it’s just as relevant now as it was in 1982, when Tom Peters wrote “In Search of Excellence: Lessons from Americas Best Run Companies”.
 
See and be seen
MBWA should work with two key audiences – your own team and your key stakeholders. You need to see them and be seen by them.
 
How many of your own team do you touch base with on a daily, or even weekly basis? It’s easy to find excuses: perhaps some of them don’t sit near you, or they may be located with internal client teams rather than with you.
 
And where are your key stakeholders? Are they on the same floor or in the same building? Or in another building? (It’s more difficult if they are on another site or in a different country!)
 
There are some very simple ways of carrying out MBWA: 
  • Why not just go and see someone rather than email them?
  • Take a different route to the car park, the canteen or the loo.
  • Use a different coffee machine or water cooler.
You can vary the time of day when you do any of these things, so you may then get the chance to chat with someone who otherwise you wouldn’t have seen. And if you feel awkward, think of a small excuse to visit someone – like borrowing their stapler, or popping by to ask them for someone’s contact details.
 
And just by walking through different areas, especially marketing ones, it is easy to see what they are working on, or changes in people or organisation, simply by the display material around and who’s sitting at what desk.
 
So why not try something new to increase your personal, informal contacts – and then see what a difference it makes! It costs nothing to make the effort – but it could turn out to be a very good investment of your time.
 
Also think about getting the book In Search of Excellence and reading for yourself - it is a classic. And try putting \'MBWA\' into Google - there\'s quite a lot on it there.
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