This article seems to mirror a concept I have started employing everywhere in life, not just as a leader: go and see for yourself.
There is nothing that helps you understand how something works as well as going to the place where it happens and interacting with it, to build your own mental model of how things fit together. If you rely on reports or other people's retellings, you're interacting with their mental models, which are at least one step removed from the actual system you want to understand.
Of course, it's critical that people understand it's not about trust. I fully trust that people have reported to me things exactly as they experienced them. It's about understanding – I understand things better when I get to experience them too.
(Obviously, I've stolen this from Toyota management.)
There is nothing that helps you understand how something works as well as going to the place where it happens and interacting with it, to build your own mental model of how things fit together. If you rely on reports or other people's retellings, you're interacting with their mental models, which are at least one step removed from the actual system you want to understand.
Of course, it's critical that people understand it's not about trust. I fully trust that people have reported to me things exactly as they experienced them. It's about understanding – I understand things better when I get to experience them too.
(Obviously, I've stolen this from Toyota management.)