See for yourself

Great leaders understand something that is often lost in today’s world of global connectivity – the critical, insight needed for effective leadership can come only from first-hand contact. The best executives get out of their offices to observe and engage with their frontline employees, competitors, customers, and suppliers on the job.

Most business gurus tout cleverly titled management concepts while ignoring this relatively simple practice. Each concept promotes itself as a silver bullet; most deliver benefits, but rarely to the extent advertised; and few prove sustainable over the long run.

To get the most out of first-hand engagement, consider the following principles:

• Go and see: no company embraces the principle of first-hand observation more than the Toyota Motor Corporation. A philosophy of genchi genbutsu, literally translated as ‘go and see’, permeates the organisation from the manufacturing floor to product development and even corporate staff functions. Toyota’s executive in charge of real estate visited every single property now in Toyota’s vast global portfolio of land and buildings before approving any of the investments
  
• Prepare to learn: in his autobiography, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton commented, “Most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from someone else.” Walton, like other great leaders, was a true student of his industry, always seeking out new learning opportunities. Louis Pasteur’s comment that “fortune favours the prepared mind” leads us further along the path of capturing the full value of direct observation and engagement
  
• Look for problems and solutions: although visits may suggest a focus on solutions, the real power of engagement comes from listening and understanding the problems from multiple sources. Some problems may suggest obvious solutions. Toyota, always seeking the simple but avoiding the simplistic, searches for root causes by applying the ‘Five Whys’ principle: asking several ‘why’ questions in order to determine a problem’s genesis
  
• Helping others: Tom Taylor, former executive vice president of merchandising for The Home Depot stores, demonstrated how frontline visits offer opportunities to learn and to coach by looking for problems from a customer perspective. The Home Depot merchandising group no longer sits at headquarters making decisions far from the action. They now go to the frontlines to see what is happening and think about their decisions from a customer’s perspective
• Making it personal: it’s no wonder that many employees view executives as Dilbert cartoon characters: clueless autocrats anxious to implement the next management fad as a ‘strategic initiative’. Embracing first-hand engagement as an integral part of your personal leadership style and embedding it in a company’s culture can break the fad cycle. It connects everyone to reality and forces a collaborative, problem-solving mind-set that can produce enduring results rather than just temporary improvement