The floor walk card is the simplest tool in this kit. It is a card you carry for five shifts, and on it you make a mark every time you notice something below standard, then write one of three words beside the mark: fixed, delegated or passed. Beside that, whether anyone on the team saw you. At the end of the week the card tells you what the team already knows about your standard.
Where it comes from
Chapter 3 of the book is about leading by example, and the general managers in it describe the practice in almost physical terms. Aaron Kaupp, then general manager of Le Royal Monceau, Raffles Paris, put it in a sentence that has stayed with me.
“If a general manager picks up an empty coffee cup on their way through the lobby, or stays in the office until the middle of the night to greet a VIP guest, that shows dedication and passion.” Aaron Kaupp, then General Manager, Le Royal Monceau, Raffles Paris
The cup is the point. A leader who passes a fault in front of the team has just set the standard, whatever the manual says, because the team counts what you pass far more carefully than what you say. Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy, drew the same line in fewer words: if you walk by a problem, you are the problem. The card exists so that you can run the count yourself before the team does it for you.
What is on the card
Five rows, one per shift, each with space for a dozen marks. For each mark: a word or two on the fault (smudged glass, guest waiting, station set wrong, colleague struggling), one of the three words, and a tick if someone was watching. At the bottom, a tally for the week: fixed, delegated, passed, and passed while watched.
There is also a line for the one fault you passed most often, and a box for the public admission the exercise asks of you: once in the week, in front of at least two people, name something you got wrong, say what you should have done, and say what happens now.
How to use it for five shifts
Carry it on every shift and mark as you go, without editing. The card only works if the passed column is honest, and no one else needs to see it. On the fifth day, count the columns. Then pick the fault you passed most and fix it yourself, visibly, on each of the next five shifts. That second week is the actual lesson; the card is how you find out what it should be about.
What to look for
Look at the ratio of passed to fixed on the occasions when you knew you were being watched. That number is the standard the team is working to, whatever you believe your standard to be. Most managers who run this find the count is lower than they expected and that the fault they pass most is a small one. Small faults passed in public are how a standard erodes, and fixing one of them in public is how it comes back.