If you feel distant from your teams, consider trying a Gemba walk. This practice, derived from lean manufacturing, takes you directly to where the work happens. By observing and engaging with team members, you gain unfiltered insights into their daily operations. Relying only on middle management for updates can create blind spots, disconnecting you from the challenges and successes your teams face.
Signs that you might be too distant from your teams
- Surprise Performance Outcomes
Missed deadlines or project delays indicate a lack of direct insight. Without real-time feedback, it’s easy to get caught off-guard by unexpected issues. - Over-Reliance on Middle Management
If most of your information comes from middle managers, you’re not seeing the full picture. Their reports might miss critical ground-level details. - Declining Employee Engagement
When employees stop sharing feedback, it could signal that they don’t feel heard by leadership. This gap in communication often impacts innovation and morale. - Increased Turnover or Low Morale
High resignation rates or disengagement among team members are red flags. Employees may feel undervalued or disconnected from the company’s vision. - You Only Hear Good News
If feedback only highlights the positives, critical issues may be slipping through the cracks. Teams might hesitate to share challenges if they sense leadership is out of touch.
What is a Gemba Walk?
A Gemba walk involves visiting the actual workplace to observe workflows, processes, and team dynamics. It’s not about auditing or control. Instead, the goal is to see operations firsthand and ask thoughtful questions. This practice helps leaders understand challenges and opportunities directly from their teams.
Importantly, a Gemba walk should never feel like an inspection. It’s a learning opportunity for leaders to engage with employees and uncover valuable insights that go beyond reports or meetings. Done correctly, this practice builds trust, improves team morale, and helps optimize processes.
Benefits of a Gemba Walk
- Stronger Connections and Trust
By showing interest in their work, leaders make employees feel valued. This physical presence fosters a sense of inclusion. - Direct Problem-Solving
Seeing problems in real-time helps leaders make informed decisions and remove bottlenecks. - Increased Employee Empowerment
When leaders ask questions instead of giving orders, employees feel empowered to share ideas and concerns. - Fostering Open Dialogue
A well-executed Gemba walk encourages continuous communication. Employees appreciate leaders who base decisions on real-world insights, not just reports.
Risks to Avoid
Lack of Follow-Up
If no action follows the insights gathered during a Gemba walk, trust erodes. It’s essential to act on or acknowledge the findings to maintain credibility.
Perception of Micromanagement
If handled poorly, a Gemba walk may seem like an inspection, causing anxiety and lowering morale.
Distorted Daily Workflow
Over-structuring the walk or making it feel staged can lead to inauthentic observations.
Undermining Middle Management
Middle managers may feel bypassed, causing friction. Clear communication about the purpose of the walk can prevent this.
Managing the risk of undermining your leaders
One of the potential risks of a Gemba Walk is that middle management might feel undermined if they perceive the walk as bypassing their role or as an indication that leadership doesn’t trust them. Middle managers are typically the bridge between leadership and teams, so if they feel excluded or overlooked, it can strain relationships and reduce the overall effectiveness of the Gemba Walk. Here’s how to prevent that and maintain a positive dynamic:
1. Involve Middle Management Early
Before conducting Gemba Walks, communicate with your middle managers. Let them know the purpose of the walk is not to undermine their role but to gain a deeper understanding of the daily challenges faced by their teams. Make it clear that this is a learning exercise, not a performance review of their management.
2. Encourage Collaboration
Invite middle managers to participate in the Gemba Walks when appropriate. This can foster a sense of partnership rather than bypassing them. It gives middle managers a chance to share their insights while showing that leadership values their perspective.
3. Reinforce Trust
After the walk, provide feedback to middle managers and acknowledge their efforts in managing teams. Recognize the areas they are handling well, and if there are any improvements identified, collaborate with them on how to address those issues together, rather than dictating changes.
4. Clarify the Intent
Be transparent about the purpose of the Gemba Walk. Reinforce that it’s not about micromanaging or doubting their work, but rather about understanding the teams’ experiences from a different angle, ensuring alignment, and fostering continuous improvement.
Opportunities for a Gemba walk
If you’re looking for natural opportunities to conduct a Gemba walk without disrupting your teams’ workflows, consider attending regular Scrum events or meetings during overall planning. These moments allow you to observe real-time interactions, decision-making processes, and team dynamics. Here are a few key opportunities to incorporate a Gemba walk into your schedule:
- Sprint Review
The Sprint Review provides a chance to observe how teams showcase their completed work and receive feedback from stakeholders. This event reveals the team’s ability to deliver value, their collaboration effectiveness, and any challenges in execution. - Backlog Refinement Sessions
During backlog refinement sessions, you can see how the team collaborates to prioritize and clarify upcoming tasks. These sessions offer insights into how the team prepares for future sprints, solves problems, and manages work that is about to enter the pipeline. - Overall Planning – Objectives Review
A valuable opportunity to attend is the objectives review during a big room planning. In this session, teams align their goals with business priorities. Here, you can observe the team’s commitment to objectives, the clarity of their focus, and how they address dependencies. - Overall Planning – Risk Management Session
The risk management session of big room planning offers insights into how teams assess potential risks and define mitigation strategies. It’s an excellent opportunity to witness how teams address challenges and prepare for uncertainties.
Take the First Step with a Gemba Walk
Leaders can easily become disconnected from the daily realities their teams face. A Gemba walk offers an effective solution to bridge this gap, building stronger relationships, gaining real-time insights, and driving meaningful improvements. By visiting the “real place” and engaging directly with employees, leaders can better understand how to support their teams and enhance overall performance.
The key is to approach the Gemba walk with curiosity and a desire to learn, rather than a mindset of control or critique. When done right, it builds trust, boosts employee engagement, and helps leaders make informed, impactful decisions. So, if you’re feeling too distant from your teams, take that first step—schedule a Gemba walk and reconnect with the heart of your organization.
Some further topics that may interest you:
- Are you a Good or a Great team? What differentiates a good from a great team? Take the short assessment and see where your team is standing.
- How to Spot a Team Player: Finding team players is an essential part of building and developing a high performing team. Get some ideas how to spot team players.
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