Broken Windows Management: Fix What Employees Live With Every Day

The problems people stop reporting

A broken process does more than waste a few minutes. When an employee reports the same obstacle repeatedly and nothing changes, silence from management becomes its own message. In his presentation for Broken Windows Management in Business, Dr. Tom DePaoli applies the broken-windows idea to organizational life: visible disorder, left alone, invites more disorder. He asks leaders to notice the frustrations employees actually encounter before those frustrations become accepted as the cost of business. The point is less about a tidy office than about whether people believe someone will act when work becomes needlessly difficult. An issue can be small on a report and large in the life of the person facing it every day.

Go to the work

Surveys and complaint systems can collect information, but the presentation warns against mistaking collection for action. Tom recommends getting out from behind a desk and experiencing the job alongside the people who perform it. A manager who walks a process can see the handoffs, repeated approvals, missing tools, and workarounds that a summary report may hide. Asking a team what it needs is a beginning; watching the work helps a leader understand the answer. Complaints that sound minor, or even implausible at first, may reveal a real bottleneck. Treating them seriously is a practical way to show respect. It also helps leaders separate a symptom from the process that keeps producing it.

Fix it quickly and fix it well

The book presentation favors direct, timely improvements over another elaborate tracking system. Give employees the resources and authority to correct problems within their reach. Remove steps that add effort without helping a customer or colleague. A quick win can restore confidence, but a temporary patch that fails again has the opposite effect. Tom calls for finding the root cause so the same irritation does not return next month. He also argues for steady housekeeping and operational standards all year, rather than a special cleanup when an executive or customer plans to visit. A visible fix should be the beginning of a more dependable process, not a performance for a visitor.

Make progress visible

The presentation suggests visual measures and storyboards to show what has been resolved. That record matters because a team can see its observations turning into changes. A leader can begin with one question: which problem have people stopped reporting because they assume nothing will happen? Pick an issue they value, establish who can resolve it, and return with an honest update. If the answer needs more time, explain what is being done and when the team will hear again. Broken Windows Management in Business develops this habit into an approach to morale and trust: listen closely, remove friction, and keep showing up where the work happens. Watch Tom's book presentation here, then explore the related book for his fuller account of the approach. For a team discussion, name one recurring irritation, decide who owns the next step, and review it together after a week. The follow-up is part of the fix: it tells employees their observations did not disappear into another system.

Hear Dr. Tom explain the idea in the book presentation, then explore the book for the full account.