GEMBA WALKS: A Key Practice for Ensuring Process Alignment and Cultural Continuity

As an organizational executive, one of the most effective tools I use to ensure aligned process execution and cultural continuity is the Gemba Walk. ?Whenever I am on location, a first action is to take a Gemba Walk with site leadership.?It allows me to engage with employees to reaffirm their importance to me and the organization, while also assessing operations.

Manufacturing is a physical process business. To know the business is to be aware of its people and physical processes. As such, when I am off-site and take a call, a first question to site managers is about their Gemba Walk and what insights they can share about the people and physical processes. It is that important and impactful.

As is known, Gemba is a Lean Japanese term meaning "the real place." It refers to where work is performed, value is created, or issues arise.?That may be the office, production floor, warehouse, clinical area, sales floor, construction site, or any other workplace.

For me, the Gemba Walk serves two essential purposes:

??. ?????????????? ??????????????????: As typically practiced, a Gemba Walk involves regularly visiting the workplace, observing operations, engaging with employees to gain their first hand insight, and ideally identifying opportunities for improvement. To keep it consistently effective, a neutral and learning Gemba Walk tone and behavior is imperative.

The core Gemba Walk principles include:

• Go and See: Observe processes firsthand.
• Ask For Insight: Engage with employees to understand obstacles and opportunities.
• Resist Immediacy: ?Focus on observation and learning rather than immediate changes unless necessary, and if done, address the issues and not individuals.

The purpose of the Gemba Walk is to gain insight, and unless there is a safety or compliance imperative, this should not be the time to make changes and corrections.?Process and 5S changes or personnel behavior and training adjustments can follow later through lines of authority to keep the Gemba Walk neutral.

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The same Gemba Walk allows observation of cultural elements such as management behavior, personnel work satisfaction, safety abidance, policy adherence, and more. These are vital for maintaining a consistent, integrous, and disciplined organizational and operational culture across sites that aligns with executive intent and expectations.

Regular management presence at Gemba or “the real place” sends a subtle, yet positive and powerful message that leadership is invested and interested in employees supporting and abiding the cultures and policies aligned with safety, compliance, processes, production, etc. as being important and imperative.

I strongly recommend regular Gemba Walks by all executives and management.?The outcomes of this simple action are immediate and impactful to personnel and process business consistency and success.