Page 390 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

376 M a n a g e m e n t o f H u m a n R e s o u r c e s M a n a g e m e n t S t y l e s 377

their processes. They work with the leaders above them in the organiza-
tion to improve the organization’s systems and the organization as a
whole.

Autocratic Management Style
The premise of the autocratic management style is McGregor’s Theory X:
the belief that in most cases workers cannot make a contribution to their
own work, and that even if they could, they wouldn’t. Theory X practitio-
ners would favor the autocratic management style. Autocratic managers
attempt to con trol work to the maximum extent possible. A major threat
to control is com plexity; complex jobs are more difficult to learn and
workers who master such jobs are scarce and possess a certain amount of
control over how the job is done. Thus, autocratic managers attempt to
simplify work to gain maximum control. Planning of work, including
quality planning, is centralized. A strict top-down, chain-of-command
approach to management is practiced. Procedures are maintained in
exquisite detail and enforced by frequent audits. Product and process
requirements are recorded in equally fine detail and in-process and final
inspection are used to control quality.

Management by Wandering Around
Peters and Austin (1985, p. 8) call Management by Wandering Around
(MBWA) “the technology of the obvi ous.” MBWA addresses a major
problem with modern managers: lack of direct contact with reality. Many,
perhaps most, managers don’t have enough direct contact with their
employees, their suppliers, or, especially, their cus tomers. They maintain
superficial contact with the world through meetings, presentations, reports,
phone calls, email, and a hundred other ways that don’t engage all of their
senses. This is not enough. Without more intense contact managers simply
can’t fully internalize the other person’s experience. They need to give
reality a chance to make them really experience the world. The difference
between reality and many managers’ perception of reality is as great as
the difference between an icy blast of arctic air piercing thin indoor cloth-
ing and watching a weather report of a blizzard from a sunny beach in the
Bahamas.
MBWA is another, more personal way, to collect data. Statistical pur-
ists disdain and often dismiss data obtained from opportunistic encoun-
ters or unstructured observations. But the information obtained from
listening to employees or customers pour their heart out is no less “scien-
tifically valid” than a computer printout of customer survey results. And
MBWA data is of a different type. Science has yet to develop reliable
instruments for capturing the information contained in angry or excited

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