Management by Wandering Around (for Remote Leaders)

In a growing company, it’s easy for leaders to feel disconnected. You start to become a little out of touch with the team or the work, even a little lonely.

Management by wandering (or walking) around (MBWA) is one way to fix that. It let’s you put a finger in the air, tap into the zeitgeist, kick the tires, wipe for dust.

There’s an anecdote about Henry Ford having a bank of phones he could use to call any employee to answer any specific question. If you have a specific question, start with that approach. But what if you have less-specific questions? Something on your mind like:

• How are people doing?

• How are projects going?

• Any new or persistent broken windows?

Wandering around can help collect that subjective, qualitative data. The goal is to reconnect and gain a deeper understanding of the current state.

Going for a “walk”.

If you’re in an office, you could walk the factory floor, the sales loft, the production studio, the bullpen. Talk with people, share lunch with them, make conversation in the hallways & happy hours. Ask your ad-hoc questions.

If you’re reading this, your team is probably remote, distributed. We can get many in-person benefits by deliberately recreating those moments.

Here are some things I try to do when that old uncertainty settles in:

• Catch up on Slack channels. Engage in team rooms and social groups. What are the recent topics? Any queries left unanswered? What is the mood?

• Watch Zoom recordings. Read facial expressions. Was attendance heavy or lite? Was discussion one-way or involve the group? What were the outcomes?

• Have one-on-one calls. Reach up, down and across the organization. Check in with folks you may not regularly work with. Get to know folks you may not ever work with. What’s their perspective? What’s on their minds?

• Test the equipment. Read pull requests, code reviews, error reports, build logs, backlogs or changelogs. Run the code. Use the product.

(My own bias is SaaS software and software engineering, so that last point may not apply to you. But I hope you get the idea and can substitute other items from your areas of responsibility!)

It’ll feel awkward or artificial at first. Schedule social time, lean into asynchronous communication but be available for direct communication.

I usually come away a little happier and with the context I wanted. I also have fresh questions, and that’s OK too; the cycle never ends. 😅

Maybe you do some of these things today, and now you can put a name to this behavior. But if you’re not already doing it, try wandering around. It really helps me.