The Little BIG Things video series at YouTube, comes to an end with this, the 80th video. It features Tom’s favorite lesson from In Search of Excellence: Managing by Wandering Around. On the blog on tompeters.com, on 5 October 2004, Tom tells the story of Bob Waterman and him preparing to go on the Today show, and flipping a coin to decide which of them would mention this one of their eight basics. From observations at (“a much smaller, more intimate”) Hewlett-Packard, they discovered this important management tool: get out and see (and be seen by) the people doing the work. In this last TLBT video, Tom relates how Starbucks’ Howard Schultz religiously sticks to the practice.
You can find the video in the right-hand column of this page or watch it at YouTube (time: 2 minutes 12 seconds). Also, you can get a PDF transcript of the video’s content here: Leadership: MBWA.