Knowledge Base · Seeing Problems
What is a gemba walk (a "go and see"), and how do I do one?
A gemba walk means going to where work really happens and watching it yourself, instead of judging it from meeting room reports. You watch the process, listen to the people doing it, and ask questions. The book calls it non-negotiable for any leader who wants to understand a problem before trying to fix it.
Gemba is a Japanese word for the place where things really happen. Walking the gemba means leaving your desk, going to that place, and watching the work happen for yourself. On a factory floor that means being out among the machines. In a call centre it means putting on a headset and listening in on calls. In a shop it means standing at the counter and observing how customers get served.
The point is not inspection or fault finding. The book's glossary puts the goal as observing the process, understanding the work, and engaging with the team doing it. The author describes site visits for maturity assessments, where he walked each floor and spoke with the staff doing the job, because surveys and performance data never told the whole story. Those visits produced 100-day plans based on the reality of the work, not on head office assumptions.
- Go to the place itself, not to a report about it.
- Watch first and listen. Go to listen, not to talk.
- Ask questions and be curious about workarounds and frustrations.
- Note what you actually saw, then decide what to investigate next.
Done regularly, the walk keeps a leader connected to the front line, where problems and good ideas usually show up first.
“Gemba is a Japanese term that roughly means “the real place.””
Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 3
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Related questions
- What is process mapping, and how do I map a process?
- What is the voice of the customer, and how do I capture it?
- How do I involve frontline staff in solving problems?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 3 (Learning to See) and the CI glossary in the book's Appendix.