In 2009, Harvard Business Review published an article by management scholar Rosabeth Moss Kanter called Management by Flying Around (MBFA). The article argued that even though email, text, and video calls (Skype!) were available for companies with offices in multiple cities, it was still important for upper-management leaders to get on a plane periodically and get an up-close look at operations. The “face time” provided by companies that used MBFA practices boosted team productivity.
MBFA is the knowledge-worker equivalent of the Toyota concept of “going to the genba” — going to the place where work gets done.
Times have changed, though. The pandemic suspended flights and office operations. We all learned through trial-and-error (ok, mostly error) how to successfully accomplish our work from the comfort of our homes. And, as lovely as Skype was (is?), technology has improved.
These days, MBFA is in flux because it’s no longer necessarily clear where work is done. But it’s done somewhere. Even though services like Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams allow for easy and clear communication, there’s still something missing.
It’ll be interesting to see how this all develops over the next few years. At one of my clients’ workplaces, a decree was just passed down that employees would return to the office three days a week. To me, that’s the wrong approach. “Three days a week” is a strategy that is heavy on control and light on context.
It misses some important questions: Why do people need to come to work anyway? What’s the point of a workplace? And what is the magic that happens when people come together?
And there is some magic. This has become clear to me over the last few months as I’ve had the privilege of working, in person, with a developing leadership team. Our work in person is dramatically different than our work on a screen. This is both obvious and novel.
A better approach than “come back three days a week” might be to help people identify what kind of work benefits from being conducted in person (including things like casual meetings over lunch) and be clear about what can be done just as (or even more) effectively by working remotely.
Where is work done in your workplace? Do you see benefits from face-to-face interaction or is MBFA already an artifact of a bygone era? And what part of your work, if any, do you long to do in person again? Email me at [email protected] and let me know.
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