Why you don't need an office

There is a Japanese expression called 'Gemba'. Translated it means simply 'the actual place', either the crime scene, the place a journalist is reporting from or where an event is happening. As a business philosophy it was born in Japanese manufacturing, with issues being addressed on the factory line rather than in the abstract. The idea is that problems are not solved sitting in meeting rooms talking about what needs to be done, the best way is to go to where the actual problem is happening and discuss it there. All the additional information about what is going on makes the issue quicker, easier and cheaper for the company to solve.

The most valuable place in the company is where the value is created - in the factory.

Manufacturing made massive leaps in the 20th century, first with the methods of Henry Ford, and then later with the advent of the manufacturing giants in the far east, and the Toyota Production System and their principles of minimising waste and continuous improvement.

There are some great stories of this approach in action. At the Honda factories, they have a ritual called something like 'staring at the engines' which happens weekly. The factory workers all stand in a circle and look at one completed engine that has come off the production line. They stare at it for 45 minutes. This level of detailed inspection is able to show up tooling flaws and wear in the machines that make the engine.

The picture above is of Soichiro Honda, the founder of the eponymous company, sitting on the floor with a couple of engineers drawing ideas for engine improvements on the floor. For this reason, so the myth goes, he always carried a piece of chalk in his pocket, all the better for writing on the factory floor.

Finally, there is the Toyota Production System, a formalised set of principles that was largely responsible for the second great leap in manufacturing being exported out of Japan. A story exists of new recruits being placed inside a chalk circle on the factory floor and asked to count how many things they can see. If after an hour they hadn't seen enough, they would be invited to stay.

People often talk about managing by walking around (MBWA), however, the key difference between that and Gemba principle, is that MBWA is essentially a visit - a tour - to check everything is going alriight, whereas Gemba is about being there and working there. Compare this to having an office and sitting in it. Where is the value created in your business. Maybe sit there?