Born to Walk by Dan Rubinstein

Author:Dan Rubinstein
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health
ISBN: 9781770906983
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2015-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

Puzzling over Murphy’s words in my home office months later, the lucidity of the mountaintop was hard to conjure. Not only because of the prescription-pad illegibility of my shorthand. Our brains, remember, work differently when we are on foot — a phenomenon that has not gone unnoticed in the business world.

Walking three and a half miles around his New England neighbourhood every morning helps the president of Advertising for Humanity, Dan Pallotta, rehearse speeches and come up with new concepts. “The first mile of my walk is just a racket of competing voices of judgment and to-do lists,” he wrote in one of his regular blog posts for the Harvard Business Review. “But after about two miles, no matter how low my mood may have been at the outset, those voices settle down.” Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs had his most serious conversations while walking. Louis W. Sullivan, U.S. Secretary of Health in the early 1990s, went for walks with colleagues while visiting his agency’s regional offices. He learned about policy debates and morale within the department, and staff got to meet the boss, something many had never experienced during their long careers.

Jobs and Sullivan practiced a habit known as MBWA: management by walking around. It was first popularized in the 1950s by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, founders of the eponymous electronics company, and became a buzzword in the 1980s after the publication of the blockbuster business book In Search of Excellence, whose authors called MBWA the “technology of the obvious.” With email replacing face-to-face contact in many offices, casual desk-side conversations can help managers connect with employees, and encourage staff to become more engaged. As long as the walkabouts are regular, and not an attempt to surprise or snoop, they can help foster a more cohesive and communicative organization. “If you wait for people to come to you, you’ll only get small problems,” said American management consultant W. Edwards Deming. “The big problems are [revealed when] people don’t realize they have one in the first place.”

The walking meeting, a natural fit within our free-flowing mobile business culture, goes further. A few years ago, when Silicon Valley executive and entrepreneur Nilofer Merchant had to discuss something with a busy colleague, the other woman suggested they talk shop while walking her dogs. It was a revelation. “You can take care of your health, or you can take care of your obligations,” Merchant says about time-crunched corporate culture in a TED Talk, “and one always comes at the cost of the other.” The average North American sits for 9.3 hours each day, and it’s killing us. Merchant now covers 20 to 30 miles in walking meetings most weeks.

As with beat cops in North Philly, these sessions produce ancillary benefits. The moderate activity gives you energy, and the fresh air and natural light can stimulate more creativity and open dialogue than the fluorescent je ne sais quoi of a shut-in conference room. “Getting out of the box,” says Merchant, “leads to out-of-the-box thinking.

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