Knowledge Base · Seeing Problems
What are the most common gemba walk mistakes?
The common mistakes are treating the walk as an inspection, arriving with fixes already decided, going only when something has gone wrong, relying on reports instead of going, and never acting on what you saw. Chapter 3 of the book builds the gemba walk on Nehemiah's pattern: see for yourself first, then plan.
Mistake one: inspecting instead of learning. The glossary in the book's appendix defines the gemba walk as going to observe and engage, explicitly not to find fault. The moment a walk becomes fault-finding, the front line starts staging the workplace for your visit and the real problems go back into hiding.
Mistake two: arriving with the answer. A leader who walks the floor to confirm a plan they have already made will only see evidence for it. The book's example is Nehemiah, who quietly inspected the walls in person, at night, long before presenting any plan. Seeing came first; the plan was built on what he found.
Mistake three: sending a survey instead. When Dave was tasked with assessing how sites were implementing the improvement framework, he could have collected performance data remotely. He travelled instead, and found the workarounds, frustrations and ideas that never appear in a return. A report tells you what a process is supposed to be doing. The floor tells you what it is doing.
Mistake four: never closing the loop. If nothing changes after your walks, the team learns the walks are theatre. The book's assessments ended in co-created 100-day plans with named focus areas. Your version can be smaller, but something you saw must visibly turn into action, or the next walk will show you a cleaner floor and emptier answers.
Related questions
- What is a gemba walk (a "go and see"), and how do I do one?
- What questions should I ask on a gemba walk?
- How do I run a "Where does it hurt?" session with my team?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 3 (Learning to See).