Open door policy vs. presence on gemba

Until I get tired of hearing or reading, “If you have a problem, don’t hesitate to come to me. My door is always open.” Somehow, over decades of professional work, I have not observed queues at the doors of directors or managers. Another type of leadership emphasizes the supervisor’s presence in the workplace of his subordinates. And that’s for most of the supervisor’s working time. In the Lean world , this is called gemba presence.

In this next episode, I propose to contrast the two practices. For such a confrontation, I chose two figures from history. One character is a legendary military leader. The second character is a legendary business leader. Interestingly, none of them had an open-door policy. Both were always on the front line.

I invite you to listen to this episode. In addition, I will explain in this episode why any true leader must meet 3G criteria. And it is by no means about the cell phone system.

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