What a CEO should ask in the hall, and what better not

When the executive team walks through the hall, something strange happens: everyone knows beforehand. The aisles are clear, the boards updated, the answers prepared. You see a plant that does not exist on normal days.

On top of that comes a second effect. As soon as you as the boss ask a question, people hear an expectation. If you ask why the material is lying here, it will be cleared away by tomorrow. Not because the problem was solved, but because you saw it. You generate activity, not improvement.

And third: most walk-throughs have no afterwards. What you saw stays in your head. No note, no feedback, no follow-up question the next week. The organisation learns: the boss walks through, and then nothing happens. Next time the attention is accordingly.

The executive gemba walk has a single purpose: to understand what prevents people from doing good work. Not to inspect whether they are doing good work. That difference decides everything that follows.

Whoever inspects gets justifications. Whoever wants to understand gets information. That is why three rules apply for me on a gemba walk: I do not solve problems on the spot. I give no instructions. I do not judge people. What I do is ask, listen, take notes, and later clarify with those responsible what I have seen.

That is hard for managers, especially those with an engineering background. They see a problem and know the solution. But every solution you voice on the spot takes responsibility away from the team and authority away from the shift leader. The better way: "What have you already tried? What do you need to solve this yourselves?"

The quality of a gemba walk lies in the questions. Not in their number, but in their direction. These have proved themselves in the walks I have accompanied:

• "What is the target for today, and where do you stand?" Shows whether the team knows its KPIs and whether they can be influenced at all.
• "What held you up most yesterday?" The most important question of all. It delivers the real obstacles, not the ones from the report.
• "How often does that happen?" Separates the isolated case from the pattern.
• "Who knows about it?" Shows whether deviations flow upwards or get stuck below.
• "What have you already tried?" Gives the team back the role of problem solver.
• "What would you need from me?" The only question after which you have to do something.
• "Where is that in the standard?" Shows whether standards exist, are known and are lived.

What I avoid: questions that can be answered with yes. "Is everything running?" is not a question, but an invitation to reassure. And questions about blame. "Who did that?" ends every honest conversation for months.

Most executive teams only walk through the hall. They skip the office, because nothing becomes visible there: no machines, no inventories, no boards. Yet in manufacturing companies a large share of lead time sits in the office: in order clarification, production planning, purchasing, invoicing.

In the office the gemba walk is different, but not harder. You sit down next to a clerk and have an order shown to you, from receipt to handover. You ask where it sits when it is not being worked on. You ask how often queries have to be made, and to whom. You ask what is maintained in Excel because the system cannot do it.

A plant with several assembly lines had improved manufacturing over years. On the first gemba walk in the office it turned out that before the first manufacturing step an order passed through several in-trays and a hand-maintained list that only one person understood. The executive team was surprised, the clerical staff were not. Nobody had simply ever asked them.

A gemba walk without follow-up is a stroll. Three things are indispensable.

Note what you have seen. Briefly, in your own words, with place and date. Not as a list of defects, but as an observation. "Material in front of line three is on the aisle, shift leader says a rack has been missing since the conversion."

Report back what comes of it. If you asked what the team needs from you, you owe an answer. Within a few days, in person or via the line manager. Even if the answer is no. Nothing destroys trust faster than a question from the executive team that is never followed by anything.

Recognise patterns, do not solve isolated cases. The value of regular walks lies in the fact that after a few weeks you see what repeats: the same material shortages, the same queries in the office, the same unclear responsibilities. Those are the topics for the leadership circle and the roadmap. The isolated case belongs in the shopfloor meeting, the pattern belongs to you.

The most common reason gemba walks fall asleep: they sit in the calendar as an appointment and get postponed as soon as something urgent comes up. And something urgent always comes up.

What helps is a fixed, short routine that is not negotiable. A fixed time slot, every week, in rotating areas, hall and office alternating. Not long, but reliable. Whoever knows that the executive team is somewhere in the plant every Thursday morning stops preparing for it. Then you see the real plant.

Do not go alone. Take the department head with you, let him ask the questions, and observe how he asks. The gemba walk is also a place where you see your managers leading. And now and then take someone from the office into the hall and vice versa. Nothing builds understanding between the two worlds faster than looking at the other side's work.

And finally: the effect comes late. The first walks yield little, because people wait to see whether it is meant seriously. The effect comes when the organisation has learned that you come back, that you ask instead of ordering, and that something follows from what you see.