The best management tool available is amongst the cheapest, a pair of shoes.
Hierarchies are vertical, they filter and modify information as it goes up and down an organisation, but real things, those that customers pay for, get done in an organisation horizontally, and generally at lower levels, at the “coalface.” So, for someone at the top to really understand what is going on below, they must be where the action is, not in the boardroom.
In Lean parlance, a “Gemba walk”.
Get yourself a pair of shoes for Christmas.
