Life Coach - Step 28 of 100 - MBWA

Management by Walking Around

Actually MBWA has two action items

• Get out of the office onto the ground / shop floor / training area

• And ask questions

A leader should be seen, heard and and understood.

Hearing is generally through policies and instructions that are sent to ranks. Seen is only when the troops get to see the leader and this I believe is becoming very rare. As a Lieutnant I saw my CO only when he used to take the PT parade report and the finals of any competition. So much for building leadership in young officers. I guess he delegated that to the Company Commanders. The Company Commanders were mostly the operational kind who wanted me to get the work done and not spend time in making me think and learn.

So mostly the leader is cooped up in his office in the comfort of the chair, AC / Cooler having debriefing meetings, conferences, etc.

What the CO needs to do is to get off the chair and get moving. And go where? - go wherever the troops are or would be.

For example go to the firing range, visit the company training camps, go to the drill square, go to the weapon cleaning areas, maintenance area, the langar (mess for troops) wherever the troops go.

I prescribe that a CO should at least spend 50% of his total time on ground with troops. And by troops I do not mean adjutant and the subedar major or other officers. I mean the troops.

And what does the CO do after getting there - ask questions. What kind of questions?
Let us consider this example. The CO is on the firing range and one detail (group of 8 firers) has finished firing and the scorecards are available. Assume that one has scored the max points and is a marksman, one has failed and rest 6 are either rated satisfactory or good. Questions for the CO to ask the Company Commander or the Officer on the range.

1. Is the marksman part of our battalion firing team?Has he scored such results before too?
   
2. The guy who failed, what were his scores in previous firing events.
3. The guys who are with satisfactory and good scores, what are their trends over last one year.
4. Are these guys firing with weapons that are on their names?
5. Have these weapons been zeroed for the main firer?
6. When will these weapons be cleaned?
   
7. Did the weapons have a pre-firing check before being fired from?
   

There are tons of questions the CO could ask just by being on the ground.

MWBA has two advantages
The CO is seen taking a serious interest in activities of the unit
The jumior leaders start taking interest in their areas of responsibilities.