IIIOrganization & Project ManagementGuide
Go and See: The Walk-Through of Your Own Company
Reports, key figures, and meetings show how work is supposed to be. How it is, you only see where it happens. The walk-through of your own company, called a gemba walk in lean thinking, sounds trivial. Studies show that it can achieve a great deal and sometimes even do harm, depending on what happens after the walk.
Key takeaways
- Gemba is Japanese for the place where the actual work happens. On a gemba walk, leaders go there, observe, ask, and listen.
- The thinking model behind it is the difference between work as it is planned and work as it is actually done.
- In hospitals that consistently carried out regular leadership walk-throughs, the safety climate improved markedly. In a randomized study with 56 work areas, by contrast, a walk-through program did harm on average when the problems found were not solved.
- A walk-through only pays off with a loop afterwards: every problem gets a responsible person, and employees learn what became of it.
Why owners often know their own company only from reports
As a company grows, the way the owner perceives it changes. In the beginning they stood in the workshop, the warehouse, or on the phone themselves. Later they learn much from meetings, figures, and conversations with managers. That is efficient, but it has a side effect. What appears in reports has already been selected, summarized, and often smoothed. The cumbersome form, the missing workstation for the new colleague, the detour to the warehouse rarely show up there.
Lean thinking counters this with a simple principle: go and see. This leads to the guiding question of this article: when does a leadership walk-through of your own company bring real improvements, and how must it be done so that it is not experienced as an inspection? To answer it, we first clarify the terms, present the thinking model of planned and actual work, look at the findings, which are surprisingly mixed, weigh two readings, and finally describe a 45-minute walk-through.
Whoever knows their company only from reports knows the version others have written for them.
What is a gemba walk?
Gemba is a Japanese word meaning roughly the actual place. In lean thinking it refers to the place where value is created: the workbench, the warehouse, the reception, the office desk where quotes are written. A gemba walk is a planned walk-through by leaders to these places in order to observe, ask questions, and listen. It is not an inspection round and not a tour for guests.
Related to it is management by walking around, made known by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in the 1980s. In healthcare, a particularly well-studied form has developed since 1999, leadership WalkRounds: members of hospital leadership regularly visit wards and ask staff about risks to patient safety (Frankel et al. 2008). The differences lie in emphasis, not in substance. All three forms bring leaders to the place of work and make employees the source of information.
| Feature | Gemba walk | Inspection round | Tour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | understand how work is done | check whether rules are followed | show how it is supposed to look |
| Attitude | ask and listen | judge | present |
| Subject | process and obstacles | people and violations | showcase areas |
| Result | problems with a responsible person | reprimands | an impression on the guest |
The thinking model: work as imagined and work as done
Why a walk-through shows more than a report is explained by a pair of terms from the safety researcher Erik Hollnagel, which the article on writing work instructions presents in detail. Work as imagined is work as those who plan and describe it imagine it, usually at a distance from the workplace. Work as done is work as it is actually performed, under time pressure, with whatever tool is at hand, and with the special cases nobody anticipated.
There is always a gap between the two. It is not a sign of carelessness, but of adaptation. Employees find workarounds when the specification does not fit and keep the company running that way. For leadership, this gap is invisible as long as it only looks at reports, because reports mostly describe planned work. The walk-through is the tool with which leadership gets to know the actual work.
An everyday analogy makes this tangible. A city planner can draw a beautiful path through a park at their desk. After a year, the lawn shows a beaten track straight across the grass. The track is not a rule violation but the most precise information about where people actually want to walk. Whoever only looks at the plan never sees it.
What studies show about leadership walk-throughs
The most thorough research on walk-throughs comes from hospitals. Frankel, Grillo, Pittman, and colleagues (2008) followed seven hospitals in Massachusetts from 2002 to 2005 that wanted to introduce weekly leadership walk-throughs according to a guide with seven steps. Only two of the seven consistently kept up the procedure. In these two, the safety climate, measured with an established staff questionnaire, rose markedly: in one hospital from 62 to 77 percent, in the other from 46 to 56 percent. The share of wards with weak scores below 60 percent fell from 10 of 21 to 3.
Source: Frankel et al. (2008)
It is noteworthy why five hospitals failed. The authors name three prerequisites that only the two successful hospitals met: leadership commitment, a responsible person with experience in quality or safety, and time and resources to follow up on the problems collected and give feedback to employees. They also observed that hospitals that asked for support on their own initiative stayed considerably more engaged than those recruited to take part.
The most important counter-finding comes from Tucker and Singer (2015). They randomly selected hospitals to introduce an 18-month improvement program based on walk-throughs, with 56 participating work areas. Leaders observed work on site, collected improvement ideas, and were supposed to solve the problems together with staff. On average, the program worsened performance. Areas that first tackled easy-to-solve problems and therefore actually took action did better, as did areas in which a senior manager was explicitly responsible for ensuring that the problems found were resolved. The authors conclude that the presence of leaders only helps if it enables active problem-solving.
Source: Saadati, Nouri, Rezapour (2019); Alsowaida et al. (2022); Tucker, Singer (2015)
Two further case reports show what a working loop can achieve. In a hospital in Tabriz, 1,372 problems were recorded in 174 walk-throughs of 90 minutes each from 2013 to 2017, most often concerning the work environment, and 75.5 percent of them were resolved (Saadati, Nouri, and Rezapour 2019). In the pharmacy department of an academic medical center, 17 walk-throughs produced 98 staff suggestions, of which 95 were implemented (Alsowaida et al. 2022). Neither report has a comparison group.
Closeness or disruption? Two readings
There are two readings of these findings. The first sees the walk-through mainly as closeness: leaders show themselves, listen, and strengthen trust. The results of Frankel and colleagues speak for this, as does the finding of Burnett, Parand, Benn, and colleagues (2008), who showed in interviews at 20 organizations of the British National Health Service that walk-throughs also teach leaders a great deal about their organization and their own leadership style.
The second reading sees the walk-through as a possible disruption: it raises expectations, takes time, and produces lists that nobody works through. The finding of Tucker and Singer speaks for this. Whoever collects problems and does not solve them sends a clear message: it is not worth saying anything.
Walk-through without a loop
- problems are collected
- nobody is responsible for the solution
- employees hear nothing more about it
- less is said on the next walk-through
Walk-through with a loop
- problems are collected and sorted
- each has a responsible person and a date
- feedback on the next walk-through
- easy problems are solved immediately
I consider both readings correct, and they describe two outcomes of the same tool. Whether a walk-through creates closeness or does harm is decided not while walking, but afterwards. For a small company that is good news. The owner can solve many problems personally and quickly, and according to Tucker and Singer that was exactly the most effective approach: start with the easy ones and act.
The walk-through in 45 minutes
The following procedure is intended for an owner or manager in a company with ten to a hundred employees. It takes place every two weeks, always at the same time, and changes area each time.
Choose an area and a topic (beforehand)
One area per walk-through, such as goods receipt, quote processing, or assembly. Plus a topic, such as waiting times, tools, or handoffs. The team knows in advance.
Observe (15 minutes)
Watch how an item is actually processed. Do not intervene, do not correct. Note where people wait, search, or ask.
Ask (15 minutes)
Ask open questions and listen. What held you up this week? What should I know that I don't? What would you change if you could?
Sort (5 minutes)
Separate together: what can be solved immediately, what needs clarification, what is a bigger issue?
Commit (5 minutes)
For each problem: who takes care of it, by when? Whatever you can solve yourself right away, you solve.
Give feedback (5 minutes next time)
Start every walk-through with the status of the problems from the last time in the same area.
- The walk-through is a fixed date in the calendar and is not sacrificed to day-to-day business.
- There is a simple list: date, area, problem, responsible person, deadline, status.
- At least one easy-to-solve problem is dealt with immediately on every walk-through.
- Criticism of the process is not treated as criticism of people.
- Employees learn what became of their input, even if the answer is no.
Whoever keeps encountering the same errors on walk-throughs will find the substitution test in the article on errors as process signals, which helps clarify whether the cause lies in the process or with the person. Suggestions that arise on the walk-through can be followed up with the weekly procedure from the article on continuous improvement on a small scale. And whoever wants to see the whole path of an order combines the walk-through with value stream mapping.
The lesson beyond the case
In the end, the walk-through is a promise of trust. Whoever asks promises to do something with the answer. This promise weighs more heavily in small companies than in large ones, because the owner cannot disappear behind a department. How trust and control in a team are connected is described in the essay on trust in the team.
The limits of the findings are clear. Almost all studies come from hospitals, most are case reports without a comparison group, and the only randomized study found no benefit on average. For a trade or service company, they indicate the conditions under which walk-throughs work, not proof of a particular effect.
Conclusion: when does walking through your own company achieve something?
The guiding question was when a leadership walk-through brings real improvements and how it must be done so as not to be experienced as an inspection. The answer has two parts. The walk-through shows the actual work that appears in no report and creates closeness when it asks rather than judges. But it only becomes effective through the loop afterwards: every problem gets a responsible person, easy problems are solved immediately, and employees learn what became of their input.
As shown, the evidence is mixed, and that is exactly what makes it instructive. Walk-throughs improved the climate where they were carried out consistently with feedback, and worsened performance where problems were left lying. Going is easy. The difference lies in what happens after going.
What you can put into practice right away
- Set a fixed date every two weeks for a 45-minute walk-through.
- For the first walk-through, choose an area you have heard little from recently.
- Prepare three open questions and announce the walk-through to the team.
- Create a simple list: problem, responsible person, deadline, status.
- On the first walk-through, solve at least one problem immediately, and start the next one with the status of the rest.
Frequently asked questions
What is a gemba walk?
A gemba walk is a planned walk-through by leaders to the places where the actual work happens, in order to observe, ask questions, and listen. Gemba is Japanese for the actual place. The walk-through is not an inspection round but serves to understand the actual work.
How often should a gemba walk take place?
In small companies, a fixed rhythm of about every two weeks with changing areas has proven useful. More important than frequency is that every walk-through starts with the status of the problems from the last time.
What questions do you ask on a gemba walk?
Open questions about the work, not the person: what held you up this week? What should I know that I don't? What would you change if you could? Then listen instead of immediately explaining or correcting.
Do leadership walk-throughs achieve anything?
It depends on what happens afterwards. In hospitals that carried out walk-throughs consistently with feedback, the safety climate improved markedly. In a randomized study, a walk-through program did harm on average when problems were not solved. Solving easy problems and clear responsibility for the solution worked best.
What is the difference between a gemba walk and management by walking around?
Both bring leaders to the place of work. Management by walking around emphasizes presence and conversation, while the gemba walk from lean thinking puts more emphasis on observing the process and looking for obstacles. At their core they are closely related.
Sources
- Frankel, A.; Grillo, S. P.; Pittman, M. et al. (2008): Revealing and Resolving Patient Safety Defects: The Impact of Leadership WalkRounds on Frontline Caregiver Assessments of Patient Safety. Health Services Research, 43(6), 2050-2066.
- Tucker, A. L.; Singer, S. J. (2015): The Effectiveness of Management-By-Walking-Around: A Randomized Field Study. Production and Operations Management, 24(2), 253-271.
- Saadati, M.; Nouri, M.; Rezapour, R. (2019): Patient safety walkrounds; 5 years of experience in a developing country. International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 34(2), 773-779.
- Alsowaida, Y. S.; Kovacevic, M. P.; Belisle, C. et al. (2022): Implementation of Pharmacy Executive Quality and Safety Walkrounds at a Tertiary Academic Medical Center. Hospital Pharmacy, 57(2), 211-216.
- Burnett, S.; Parand, A.; Benn, J. et al. (2008): Learning about leadership from Patient Safety WalkRounds. International Journal of Clinical Leadership, 16(4), 185-192.
- Peters, T. J.; Waterman, R. H. (1982): In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper & Row.
