Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 21)

Managing By Wandering Around (MBWA)

by

Charles Lamson

In their best-selling book, In Search of Excellence. Peters and Waterman (1982) introduced the concept of MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around). This immediately caught the attention of many managers, because the authors claimed it was associated with excellence; it made sense; it confirmed the practice of many, and, it was easy. Immediately upon reading the book, many managers who had not spent much time in the work area started frequenting the workplace, only to create chaos rather than excellence. The reason was they didn't know what to do in the workplace while they were there.

The manager's presence in the workplace may be an antecedent for both punishment and reinforcement. Unfortunately, in some cases, it resulted in more punishment to both management and non-management. In such cases, the manager used the wandering to learn what was going wrong, rather than what was going right.

A more serious problem is that an upper-level manager who wanders around without the front-line supervisor may reinforce or punish the wrong behaviors. This can happen for two reasons:

1. The manager may not know the proper methods or procedures that are supposed to be followed in the conduct of the job. Although a manager may have at one time been an expert on a particular job, being away from it every day may mean he/she is not aware of new methods. This could lead to reinforcing a performance that is not up to date or punishing one that is.
2. The manager may draw conclusions about the performance from too little data, because the wandering is infrequent. When going on the floor, a manager might catch a performer sitting down and punish him when he was resting from doing something extraordinary. On the other hand, he might provide reinforcement to someone who appears to be working, not knowing that she had been causing problems with co-workers and supervisors all day and only started working when he appeared.

The way to apply MBWA correctly is to wander with a purpose and in the company of a supervisor. Following are some tips for making MBWA successful through work sampling.

1. One purpose of work sampling, when down at levels below your direct reports, is to determine how well your organizational structure functions. When you talk to individuals, you are trying to diagnose the antecedents and consequences that drive their performance. Under the heading of antecedents, you want to know if their process is capable of producing what you want or if it interferes with performance. Are there interference issues that you need to resolve? Are communications of the most important issues clearly understood? Under the heading of consequences, you need to know if your policies and programs promote performance or interfere with it. Does the structure of the work encourage performance or interfere with it. Does the structure of the work encourage performance or make good work difficult? You should also find information that tells you which performance systems work, whether incentives, promotions, or procedures are working, and which ones need altering.
2. The second purpose of work sampling is to determine how well your management process works. Here you are looking at how people are managed. Your purpose is not to correct individual deficiencies or to reinforce behavior as you observe. Though that might seem to be an inevitable part of your investigation, correcting and reinforcing are functions of the immediate supervisor. Your purpose is to determine how effective your managers are at promoting discretionary behavior from their direct reports. Are they using their resources wisely and well? Are your managers participating in the process or are they impeding the process? You should expect to collect information that allows you to reinforce your direct reports' contributions to success, or information that allows you to more effectively pinpoint managerial behaviors to coach.
3. Sample work with the supervisor to ensure that you both are seeing the same things and to train him on what your criteria for success are. If you both see the same things, you will quickly calibrate what is important and what is not. Your commentary should be directed at the supervisor rather than at the performer. If something is done well, it is the supervisor who should be the target of your comments. If something is not done well, it is the supervisor who provides you with the information you need to be an effective participant in its correction.
4. Use this opportunity to strengthen the position of the supervisor rather than undercutting it. This means that you reinforce individuals only at the supervisor's direction. Your goal is to have her direct reports see that their boss is a contributing part of the reinforcement process. This pairing of reinforcement with upper management will make the supervisor's social reinforcement more powerful. When you must correct a direct report, do it privately. Consequences delivered by higher levels of management directly to the individuals involved, without the participation of the supervisor, can weaken that supervisor's ability to manage.

Most of the wandering around that any supervisor should do is among direct reports. While it is reinforcing for many managers to see the front-line activity in the organization, the primary responsibility of a manager is to reinforce direct reports. Upper managers should assist in reinforcing at all levels but usually at the direction of lower-level managers or supervisors. Komaki (1986) discovered that the most effective supervisors and managers spent more time in what she called job sampling than the ineffective ones did.

You can only deliver positive/immediate consequences to your direct reports when you are in the work area. Managers who opt to stay in their offices can only provide consequences for results, not the behaviors that produced them. Because of this, MBWA should be a part of every reinforcement plan. It is not something you do separately from Performance Management (PM); it is an integral part of the PM process.

*PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS & JAMES E. DANIELS, PGS. 168-170*

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