"Herb, could you come to my office please?" There are better ways to command than from behind a desk.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: Methods to manage a business

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO THERE WAS A STORY ON TV ABOUT THE REOPENING OF THE Statue of Liberty to visitors following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York. The piece sort of revolved around the Park Service manager responsible for the place. He talked of how he saw his job as being in charge of the quality of the experience offered to "his" visitors.

After Liberty Island begins to fill up with a couple boatloads of people, the manager's technique is to roam everywhere, mixing, talking, asking and answering questions and generally trying to discover what people wanted from their visit, and then seeing to it that they get it. He calls it "Management by Walking."

It looked like most people got back on the boat happy.

After seeing the story, I couldn't help thinking about some managers I've seen who look at management in a totally different way.

Some treat management as something to be administered smartly from the corner office.

When an instruction needs to be given, or a correction needs to be made, or praise needs to be handed out, everybody is summoned to the big guy's office so that protocol is observed, and so that everyone is totally aware that whatever the decision is about, it came down from above.

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I worked for a guy once who had an office three times as big as any other in the company, and his desk stood on an eight-inch platform. All meetings with him were conducted in that office. Everyone knew he was sending a message by making his office a stage on which he would communicate anything that was important to him, and yet he had no problem leaving that office when a potential business deal called for it.

The biggest office, the nicest chair, the seat at the head of the table and the last word are all things that most people expect the boss to take, and actually some people might even prefer it that way. But a really good...