WALKING AROUND
Sunday, April 24, 2022
When I was young (27ish) starting work with a new employer in a new industry (new to me), I noticed an outstanding trait of the owner/president/founder.
Denis wasn’t an early riser – always getting in about 9:30. He would doff his coat, pour a coffee and start wandering around the complex. Invariably, before 10:30 every morning, he’d been around every inch of our offices, checking in with everyone to see how they were doing, to see their disposition – not for small talk or detailed deal-talk, but just pressing the flesh in his effortless manner.
He never called meetings, but he always had the organization’s pulse in mind, and he set the temperature of the place without going near a thermostat. When I started in business for myself, a staff meeting was me looking in the mirror while shaving – but in time, we grew in numbers and space, and I tried to emulate that.
Since then, I’ve worked in many environments where someone was the branch manager or business owner – and I’ve not seen that practice replicated – nothing even close. I’m sure that Denis never read the book Managing by Walking Around, but to be sure, he was doing something very well thought through and beautifully executed. It helped that Denis had a jovial, genial personality – everyone envied that. In time I met his wife, Yolanda (Lanny) and worked with his son too. I learned it was primarily Lanny’s influence on Denis – something I appreciate more clearly now than I did 40 years ago, but those memories and lessons are inside me.
So, where am I going with this?
As we emerge from our pandemic-mode isolation and altered states, I think we need to start something new in managing our disposition – Living by Walking Around or even wandering around.
Let’s slow our pace and clarify our purpose. Let’s have more coffees, lunches and date nights. Let’s talk to servers and clerks less briskly; let’s wish them to ‘have a nice day’, or inquire ‘if they’ve found everything they were looking for today?’