Managment By Walking Around

When I was in undergrad, I used to hang around with a diverse group of people in the union. One of the things that I remember from our discussions is the management style of MBWA (Management By Walking Around). I (not being a business major) have no idea if it is a real strategy, but my business major friend said it was so I will assume it exists. The most famous practitioner of this style is Bill Lumberg from Office Space (the "Yeah..I'm going to need you to work this Saturday (sip form the coffee) if that's ok", guy). Walking around trying to keep people from goofing off and inspire them to work harder.

Now there may be something to say for this but there is an obvious flaw here. If the boss is running around all day, the drones look at him and conclude that he is doing no work. He soon gets the reputation of a lazy man that only got his job because he kissed the right bum and now is surviving by stealing other peoples ides. This reputation only gets worse if, when asked about the work his division is doing the boss seems uninformed and equivocates until he can pass the ball to a subordinate. In the end the boss loses the confidence of those he manages and becomes a joke.


What is happening to President Obama and his presidency is that he uses MBWA. In the last few months during the healthcare debate, before that for the stimulus debate, and for everything else that he wants to manage, he loves to walk around. As far as I can tell in the first eight months of his presidency Obama has spent 5 whole days in D.C. and the Whitehouse. the rest of the time he is running around in Europe, Latin America, or some backwater in the U.S. Every day he gives a speech in these places and tries to inspire new confidence in every one that listens.

When he lands back in D.C. at the end of his trip he goes out to meet his bosses (he got to where he is by kissing the media's bum after all) and answer their questions. But he is wretched in this aspect. He stumbles around, equivocates, tells horrible jokes and then passes the ball to an "expert" from congress. Even when something gets done, like the stimulus bill, he seems to have no idea what it is made up of and at a loss as to how it works.

All of this gives our new President an aura of incompetence. But it is the worst type of incompetence: lazy incompetence. I don't know anyone that would argue that he isn't able to understand these things, or that he couldn't write a bill if he wanted. No, he can, we all know he can. But he seems to prefer his coffee and the freedom to fly around the world when ever he wants to doing real work. This, I think, explains his amazing drop in popularity and the fear the citizens have of his speechifying. Tonight we will hear his speech and a large number are afraid of hearing, "Um...yeah...i'm going to need you (sip of coffee) to give up everything that you think of as medicine...if that's ok...and ummmm...we're going to need you to work a few saturdays to pay for it."