Why do carefully planned Gemba walks sometimes produce silence, posture-perfect rituals and a performance designed to impress rather than improve? Because presence matters — but not always in the way leaders expect. The same act intended to build trust can trigger the Observer Effect, where people change behaviour under scrutiny. For product and technology leaders who rely on continuous improvement, that response kills learning faster than any missing KPI.
The promise of Gemba — and the problem leaders often miss
Gemba walks, when done well, are a leadership tool for seeing systems, creating psychological safety and enabling small, frequent improvements. The classic manufacturing example comes from Toyota and the Toyota Production System, where leader presence is paired with humble inquiry and system-focused thinking — not surprise inspections. Toyota’s approach is instructive: leaders go to see, ask and remove obstacles.
Yet reality often diverges. I tried embedding myself in team ceremonies to practise this leadership behaviour. What I intended as coaching turned into a freeze: people performed for the room, blamed the process instead of exploring it, and the ceremony lost its function. That’s the Observer Effect in action — and it’s common. Healthcare transformations have vivid cases of the opposite working well. Michelle McMillin’s reflections and the UMass Memorial programme show how consistently-present, humble leadership creates learning cultures — but only when behaviour change is deliberate and well signalled. UMass’s Everyday Innovators is a practical case where leadership presence fuelled thousands of staff-driven improvements.
Three reasons the Observer Effect sabotages Gemba — and how to fix them
1. Presence without permission feels like evaluation
Walking into a team ritual unannounced places people in a defensive posture. The fix is simple but rarely practised: agree the purpose. Make leader visits routine and expected, and communicate that the objective is mutual learning, not judgement.
- Set a cadence: regular, short visits normalise presence.
- Co-create the agenda: ask teams what they’d like leaders to observe or help with.
- Use explicit language: open with “I’m here to learn — I won’t intervene unless asked.”
2. Leaders default to solutions instead of questions
Many senior people feel compelled to fix. That impulse turns walking into a rescue mission and removes agency from teams. Replace the hero script with a coaching stance: ask about constraints, invite hypotheses and defer solutions to those doing the work.
- Use small, curious questions: “What surprises you here?” or “What’s slowing this down?”
- Reserve five minutes after the session to unblock systemic impediments, not to prescribe fixes.
3. One-off appearances create theatre; consistency builds safety
Occasional visits from executives have the same effect as celebrity sightings: everyone dresses up. Consistency creates predictability — the bedrock of psychological safety. If leaders want honest signals, they must be present often enough to become background noise.
- Rotate attendance among leaders so presence isn’t a rare event.
- Consider proxies: trained coaches or middle-managers who practise the same behaviours daily.
- Measure learning, not performative metrics — e.g., number of ideas surfaced and tested rather than a polished demo.
Practical patterns that work for senior leaders
Here are pragmatic patterns I’ve seen work across industries and that you can pilot this week.
- Walk with consent: schedule a short “walk-along” and make it optional — people perform less when they choose to host you.
- Observer role card: create a one-page script for leaders: 1) observe silently for 5–10 minutes, 2) ask one question, 3) listen, 4) offer to help after the ceremony.
- Post-visit rituals: leaders share one learning with the team and one system change they will investigate — and then follow up publicly.
- Anonymous signals: use suggestion boxes or digital boards so teams can surface issues without timing visits to an executive’s calendar.
These practices echo the successful patterns in healthcare and manufacturing: deliberate cadence, humble inquiry and an emphasis on systems rather than people.
What product and technology leaders should do next
If continuous improvement matters — and it should for product teams shipping value — then leader behaviour is a design problem. Don’t blame teams for performing; redesign how you show up.
Start small: commit to a pilot where leaders follow a fixed script for six weeks, measure whether more issues are surfaced and whether experiments increase. Fund leader development that focuses on coaching skills and invest in proxies so leader presence isn’t a rare event. And finally, shift success metrics: reward leaders for the number of team-led experiments and for removing systemic blockers, not for polished demos or one-off wins.
Being present is powerful. Done poorly it becomes theatre. Done with humility, cadence and permission, it becomes a lever for learning — and that is the real promise of Lean.
If you want to redesign your Gemba programme, start by changing what leaders measure about their presence. That single shift often moves organisations from performance theatre to sustained improvement.
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