Every conversation loses information. Something is always lost in translation, even among excellent communicators. If you only rely on your direct reports to get information about your organization you will be flying blind. This will happen in situations where everyone has the purest intentions. Add on top politics and personal interests and the problem compounds.
Here are a few tools I’ve used to get a richer understanding of what’s going:
- skip level one on ones
- metrics
- using the product as a user
- occasionally looking at a few “low level” artifacts like customer support threads, slack conversations, PR reviews, or user stories.
You’re essentially doing a virtual walk-around. Imagine in a physical plant, once a week, the CEO walks around the fence perimeter, through the stock rooms, observes the gate for a few minutes, walks the factory floor inconspicuously, makes herself coffee in the back cafeteria, and uses the warehouse bathroom. While she does this she occasionally asks a question here or there, praises a good effort, and very visibly picks up a piece of trash. It’s possible to do a similar thing virtually.
The observations from the above activities are invaluable sources of information. You cross reference it with what your direct reports tell you. You challenge them based on your first hand observations. Ask a lot of questions, and when they can’t answer them, encourage them to also become more intimately involved in their part of the organization.
No single perspective is enough to understand what’s going on
There is even a name for it: Gemba Walk, a LEAN practice.
Management self-help guru Tom Peters (of In Search of Excellence fame) built a whole method around it, called Management by Walking Around. It differs from Gemba Walking in lacking a specific focus.
Yeah this is interesting. I've always thought this walking around thing that some managers think they should do is pretty useless and even toxic. All you can see when "walking around" a knowledge worker office is what's on peoples' screens at that moment and whether they are typing. But this is useless information, and it's actively counterproductive for people to be self conscious about what's on their screen when people are walking around behind them.
But I like what you've proposed here as a virtual "walking around" a lot more! The kinds of things you're describing are a lot closer to the pulse of what's going on than seeing what's on random peoples' screens at random times.
Every conversation loses information. Something is always lost in translation, even among excellent communicators. If you only rely on your direct reports to get information about your organization you will be flying blind. This will happen in situations where everyone has the purest intentions. Add on top politics and personal interests and the problem compounds.
Here are a few tools I’ve used to get a richer understanding of what’s going:
You’re essentially doing a virtual walk-around. Imagine in a physical plant, once a week, the CEO walks around the fence perimeter, through the stock rooms, observes the gate for a few minutes, walks the factory floor inconspicuously, makes herself coffee in the back cafeteria, and uses the warehouse bathroom. While she does this she occasionally asks a question here or there, praises a good effort, and very visibly picks up a piece of trash. It’s possible to do a similar thing virtually.The observations from the above activities are invaluable sources of information. You cross reference it with what your direct reports tell you. You challenge them based on your first hand observations. Ask a lot of questions, and when they can’t answer them, encourage them to also become more intimately involved in their part of the organization.
No single perspective is enough to understand what’s going on
This is not micromanagement. This is being aware.