On the Active Ingredients podcast, I speak with life science leaders about what the job really taught them. I recently hosted Craig Sommerville, an independent consultant in Supply Chain Strategy and Transformation at Springbank Consulting Ltd. We talked about the deliberate career move that took him from GSK’s head office back to a manufacturing site in Scotland, the ‘red thread’ that links every employee’s objectives to the wider business purpose, and gemba with purpose, the shop-floor habit this article covers. Tune into the full podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music.

Most leaders treat the gemba as a formality. Sommerville treats it as a tool with a job to do. In this article, we look at what separates a gemba that builds trust from one that costs a leader their team’s engagement.

A walk around the shop floor looks like the easy part of leadership. You turn up, ask a few questions, people see your face, and everyone feels better for it. You have led sites and built teams who trust you, so why would a walkabout need any more thought than that? Then your teams’ engagement scores tank, and that’s a problem.

The Problem: Why Most Shop-Floor Walks Don’t Land

Craig Sommerville has seen the full range, from the walkabout that leaves a team energised to the one that leaves them wondering why the leader bothered.Both happen at the gemba, a Japanese term from the Toyota Production System, meaning the real place, where the work that adds value gets done. In the organisations Sommerville has worked in, the version that works has a name: gemba with purpose.

At its best, “the leader goes out with a defined purpose in mind and conducts a short, sharp gemba… It’s engaging, it’s energising, it’s inspiring.” At its worst, “it’s a little bit hierarchical, where it’s almost like a royal visit.” Engagement drops, the tone turns critical, and staff are left wondering what the visit was for. A leader who wants their team’s trust cannot afford a walk that feels like an inspection.

This isn’t a small operational quirk. In pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing where the workforce is highly technical, a leader’s credibility on the shop floor determines how much trust they are given elsewhere.A Site Director or Head of Manufacturing who gets this wrong isn’t just having an off day. They are teaching their organisation that visits from senior leadership are something to be endured rather than valued.

The Solution: Building A Gemba With Purpose

Step 1: Name The Problem Before You Walk

Sommerville’s method starts well before the walk. “Gemba with purpose is not just a walk around,” he explained. “You start the gemba with a view as to what problem you’re going to solve specifically, and keep it focused on that problem.” That single decision, naming the problem before you walk, decides whether the conversation that follows is useful or just noise. A generic “how’s it going” invites a generic response. Nobody benefits. A specific question about a named, live problem invites a specific, useful conversation.

Step 2: Solve The Problem And Read The Room

The walk does two jobs at once. The first is solving the stated problem, with the people doing the work. The second runs alongside it. “What I’m looking for also is a temperature check, listening for the mood, checking the body language, checking the engagement, but also checking for the problems that exist,” Sommerville said. He is reading the room as much as the process, working out what role he needs to play to help the team solve what is in front of them. Skip either half, and the walk turns into an audit or small talk instead.