Chapter 5Managing By Walking Around
Safety performance always gets better when the supervisor is out on the job seeing what's going on, and just as important, being seen by those doing the work. The challenge is finding the time to actually do that, as supervisors are some of the busiest people on the planet.
That's where Managing By Walking Around fits in: it's the calculated use of the time and presence of the leader. For safety, one of the best ways to perform the calculation is to consider the most likely reasons why people get hurt doing the kind of work your team performs. Once you understand what those most likely reasons are, the best places, times, situations, and people to observe become rather obvious.
Then the game shifts to observation: analyzing the details. What are you seeing that's good…and bad?
Preparation Questions
- What are the top ten reasons why people get hurt doing the kind of work your team performs?
- To be able to see what real performance looks like for each of these questions, and based on what you know about the work your team performs, how would you structure your Managing By Walking Around efforts (think what, when, where, and who)?
Debrief Questions
- Where did you go in your Managing By Walking Around?
- Why did you choose to go there?
- What did you see when you were there that was good?
- What did you see when you were there that was not good?
- Based on what you saw and learned, where else should you go?