Question

Management by walking around (MBWA) This is mostly false, but with a caveat. Management by walking around (MBWA) is an organizational principle made famous with the 1982 publication of In Search of Excellence and based on a 1970s initiative by Hewlett-Packard-in other words, it's a dinosaur. But the idea of requiring managers at all levels of the organization to wander around their departments to observe, converse, and hear from employees continues as a common business practice. Many companies expecting managers and executives to do regular "floor time" have claimed benefits from employee engagement to deeper management understanding of company issues. While MBWA sounds helpful, it is not a panacea or cure-all. The limitations of MBWA are threefold: available hours, focus, and application. 1. Available hours. Managers are tasked with planning, organizing, coordinating, and controlling, yet even CEOs the managers who should be the most in control of their time -report 53 percent of their average 55-hour workweek is spent in meetings. We've yet to see a meeting conducted while touring the plant! 2. Focus. MBWA turns management's focus toward the concerns of employees. This is good, but only to a degree. As noted by Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, this is a problem. "Part of the key to time management is carving out time to think, as opposed to constantly reacting. And during that thinking time, you're not only thinking strategically, thinking proactively, thinking longer-term, but you're literally thinking about what is urgent versus important." Weiner and other CEOs argue that meetings distract them from their purpose, especially internal company interactions. 3. Application. The principle behind MBWA is that the more managers know their employees, the more effective those managers will be. This is not always (or even often) true. As we'll learn in Chapter 5, knowing something (or thinking you know) should not always lead us to acting on only that information. For example, a 30-minute test to determine personality traits and reactions to scenarios recently resulted in a 20 percent reduction in attrition for a Xerox call center, even though managers had previously been diligent in seeking information on candidates through interviews. There is no substitute for good, objective data. Based on the need for managers to dedicate their efforts to administering and growing businesses, and given the proven effectiveness of objective performance measures, it seems the time for MBWA is gone. Yet there is one caveat. We certainly don't argue that managers should refrain from knowing their employees, or that a stroll through the work floor is a bad idea. Rather, we find the regular, intentional interactions of MBWA do not, in themselves, make an effective management tool.

Answer 1

1. A good manager must be better leader first and demonstrate characteristics like critical thinking, collaborative, emotionally intelligent, empathetic, supportive, caring and appreciative and motivating to take on new opportunities and be able to manage and diffuse conflicts between team so that interpersonal relationships can flourish between teams.
2. MBWa kind of management has its own advantages like being closely involved to project deadlines, highly helpful in conflicts and taking lead for entire projects and to keep employees morale high by consistently helping through challenging times and most importantly being at pulse of every situation to act in oportune time.
3. To make MBWA more efficient and effective there must be cap on limits to meeting hours and total monthly meeting and rhe frequency of interaction on daily basis with employee should plunge to thrice a day interaction or 10 day in month and avoid micromanagement and excessive pressure on targets.