Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak

Does it surprise you to learn that operator-led visuality is not a team-based methodology? Not at first. At first, it strengthens the individual—both in skill and identity. Listen as visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, explains how, when visuality liberates information, it also liberates the human will. This is an outcome that is unique to the visual workplace. It is, also, an indispensable requirement for letting the workplace speak—through people. You can never gain and hold on to the 15%-30% increase in productivity that Galsworth promises—and delivers—if you don’t make room for that part of your employees they leave in their cars, with the window slightly cracked, so it will be there when they clock out at the end of their shift: their will. Visuality invites that part to join in: to participate, express, contribute, and invent visual solutions—many never been seen on the planet before. Does this happen overnight? Rarely, but in operator-led visuality, it does happen. Guaranteed.

What if every CEO, manager and supervisor commit to the single cultural outcome of making every employee a hero in their own eyes? What would change as a result? What would have to change? And how would that happen? Join us this week as your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, describes how visuality is designed to make every employee a hero at wo—and why this s a core outcome to your journey to operational excellence. In each of us is a deep and abiding need to contribute—a longing to create something of value and share it. Not just in our everyday lives but also at work. Especially at work. There is a hero within—the desire to master and excel. Because visuality is, at its core, a language that is meaningful, practical, and I-driven, it ready for this challenge, prepared to assist every boss make the following part and parcel of their job description: to ensure people at work become heroes in their own eyes. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak.

Does it surprise you to learn that operator-led visuality is not a team-based methodology? Not at first. At first, it strengthens the individual—both in skill and identity. Listen as visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, explains how, when visuality liberates information, it also liberates the human will. This is an outcome that is unique to the visual workplace. It is, also, an indispensable requirement for letting the workplace speak—through people. You can never gain and hold on to the 15%-30% increase in productivity that Galsworth promises—and delivers—if you don’t make room for that part of your employees they leave in their cars, with the window slightly cracked, so it will be there when they clock out at the end of their shift: their will. Visuality invites that part to join in: to participate, express, contribute, and invent visual solutions—many never been seen on the planet before. Does this happen overnight? Rarely, but in operator-led visuality, it does happen. Guaranteed.

What if every CEO, manager and supervisor commit to the single cultural outcome of making every employee a hero in their own eyes? What would change as a result? What would have to change? And how would that happen? Join us this week as your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, describes how visuality is designed to make every employee a hero at wo—and why this s a core outcome to your journey to operational excellence. In each of us is a deep and abiding need to contribute—a longing to create something of value and share it. Not just in our everyday lives but also at work. Especially at work. There is a hero within—the desire to master and excel. Because visuality is, at its core, a language that is meaningful, practical, and I-driven, it ready for this challenge, prepared to assist every boss make the following part and parcel of their job description: to ensure people at work become heroes in their own eyes. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak.

Changing the consciousness of your company (and therefore its operational capability) can never happen through sheer dint of effort—as legions of exhausted and disappointed change-agents can attest. It happens when we tie into the deep force within us that is the source of all positive change. In combination with us, this force works to inspire, transfer, and translate the new thought. The kind of changes that take place as you implement, for example, the principles and practices of workplace visuality change the way that work gets done in your company -- and change you in the process. This is what you want to happen. This is what is meant to happen. Tune in this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual workplace expert, completes the discussion she launched last week into chaos theory, morphogenic fields, fractals and leadership. Adding to this powerful mix, she shares the story of the 100th Monkey, tying its relevance to the transformation that every enterprise wants.

Strange how most of us think that change happens—and how companies learn and improve. Stranger yet is how we seek to validate the progress we think we are making by identifying exact causes and the concrete logic of the physical. But what if an entirely different set of causes pertain? What if an all-but-undetectable logic produces tangible, physical outcomes? What if reality ain’t what it’s supposed to be? Yikes! Tune in this week when your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, takes you into the world of chaos theory, fractals, and morphogenic fields. Listen as she shares scientific and personal research about the largest gap in human knowledge: “What we don’t know that we don’t know.” The implications are compelling for all of us, leaders included. When leaders decide to deploy a structured process to move their organizations forward, forces are set into motion that will challenge that decision—even as other forces are triggered that invisibly support it. Tune in/learn more.

Question: Which is more important—visual or lean? Answer: Bad question. Visual and lean share a single destination: operational excellence. Listen this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, explains why visual and lean represent a single comprehensive improvement strategy but with a telling difference in focus, process, and metric. They are allies, yet importantly and exquisitely different. Visual’s name for the enemy is information deficits; its macro metric is motion/moving without working. Its goal? Build flow. Build adherence. Lean targets the critical path; its macro measure is time and its corollary, speed. Its job is to dis-entangle the path that value follows—and then put pull in place. Which is more important: time or information? Another bad question. Like the wings of a bird, visual and lean are separate yet equal in impact. Ask a bird which of its wings is more important, and it will answer by flying off. Tune in/learn more. Let the workplace speak.

What happens when supervisors use metrics that drive—instead of measures that merely monitor? This week, Gwendolyn Galsworth (host/visual expert) shares the telling difference as part of her Visual Leadership series. The focus? The role of supervisors and managers as leaders of improvement. Too many managers falsely believe that posting KPIs on a dashboard will trigger improvement. They are wrong. When they deploy visual metrics instead, they illuminate cause, build local ownership of the problem, and use those metrics to drive us down the causal chain—the natural bridge to visual problem solving (VPS). Traditional PS organizes the noise around a problem. VPS doggedly pursues cause in the nested, multi-layered construct where cause resides. There is no silver bullet solution. Listen as Gwendolyn also shares her perspectives on—and experiences with—CEDAC®, ScoreBoarding, Rolls-Royce/Aerospace, Sheldalh, and Sumitomo’s great practitioner, Dr. Ryuji Fukuda. Let the workplace speak.

Question: Don’t computers make visual displays redundant? Answer: No, the reverse is true; displays are often the only means by which we can, in real time, find and share data from multiple sources (including but not limited to from computers) and cultivate operational excellence. As importantly, displays provide supervisors with the margin and means to master daily dilemmas and become leaders of improvement, not merely logistical expediters. Join Gwendolyn Galsworth in this second installment of the indispensable role displays play in not just improving performance but, as importantly, in providing harried supervisors with that modicum of margin that allows them to grow and lead. Listen as Gwendolyn shares her “10 + 5” add-ons for building more powerful displays and a more actionable understanding of what production data really mean. Learn more as she describes the legendary impact Charles Minard’s visual display had in depicting Napoleon’s disastrous march on Moscow in 1812.

Change is never easy, especially when we are the focus. Join Gwendolyn Galsworth in the next show in her visual leadership series as she discusses the power of visual displays to help supervisors/managers learn the behaviors of becoming leaders of improvement. No longer harried expeditors of logistics, these hard-working lieutenants use displays to organize information into a single, centralized format so they can: a) see the dynamic relationship between complex layers of fast-changing data, b) derive meaning, c) make precise, useful decisions, and d) take timely, independent action. Through displays, supervisor gain control over their corner of the world, even when the pressure is on. Listen and learn how displays become the anchor for the supervisors need to know—morphing overtime into vital action centers for change. And, in the process of changing the workplace, these leaders-in-the making gain the internal margin they need to change themselves. Let the workplace speak.

How can structural limits be useful to Executive Leaders? Study the X-Type Matrix and find out. In this episode in her visual leadership series, Gwendolyn Galsworth delves into the importance of the very limits the X-Type incorporates in its layout. More than any other visual leadership tool, the matrix teaches executives their most important function: how to say yes to the few and wait to the many. As the X-Type teaches us discipline and clarity, it also guides us in developing greater skill in deciding and driving on ever finer levels of detail and effectiveness. The X-Type teaches—and it does not waiver. It doesn’t give an inch. You learn ... or the tool stops helping you. Set it aside, blame the tool—but the X-Type merely waits until we learn the lesson it was designed to teach: We will fail as leaders if we do not curb our appetite and cultivate discernment—lean-ness in thinking and action. This is why the X-Type Matrix is the supreme vehicle for attaining our improvement future.

Why do some executives shake their heads in disgust at mention of the X-Type Matrix—while other sing its praises and credit it for not just saving their company but their jobs. The answer to the first: They were taught incorrectly and badly. The answer to the second: They were taught well. The X-Type Matrix is a single-author tool that allows the visual executive (YOU!) to translate, align, and integrate your company’s vision, mission, and strategy into actionable, cross-functional goals, and projects. Listen this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, visual expert and your host, defines the X-Type Matrix in detail and explains: a) how a leader develops it; and 2) how that same leader deploys it through others. Once in place, the X-Type connects with the projects, targets, outcomes, and resources required to achieve coveted enterprise outcomes. It is your annual plan on a single page—precise, actionable, and exciting. Yes, there are mistakes to avoid and victories to win. Tune in/Learn more.

What does it mean for a leader to name the horizon? And why is that important? When a leader names the horizon, he names where he wants the company to go together. The horizon is the destination (for example, a 40-Day Engine). Join Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, as she continues her description of her Operation System Improvement Template (OSIT). “Deciding,” she tells us, is where visual leadership begins. The nine OSIT elements provide the foundation for this, allowing the leader to name: 1) customer; 2) vision; 3) mission; 4) values & beliefs; 5) strategy; 6) macro metric; 7) strategic principles; 8) tactical systems; and 9) methods. Attempting to run your company without a fleshed-out OSIT, she says, is comparable to the difference between skiing down the powdery slopes of your favorite mountain—or getting caught in a blizzard on that same mountain, without skis, without food, without a compass, and without anybody even knowing you are there. Tune in/learn more.

Have you seen this? Executives in front of dashboards and LCD monitors, eating up KPI and OEE data. Some, real time. Executives love it. We ask why. The answer is simple: Because they get answers to the question: “Should I worry—or can I relax?” This week, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, explains that such tools provide executives with information but not with meaning, context or direction—without which executives cannot function effectively. As remedy, Galsworth presents the first of her top three visual tools to help leaders decide and drive (their job): Operations System Improvement Template/OSIT. At first glance, OSIT may look like just another version of the Toyota House (temple), capturing key TPS elements and ready for the office wall. But when fully understood and used, OSIT becomes the premier tool for defining the company’s corporate intent and connecting that to the strategy and principles required for stability and then dynamic growth. Tune in/learn more.

What does a leader of improvement do on the supervisory level? Does that new role overlap with such traditional supervisory duties as expedite and firefight? This week, as her series on Visual Leadership continues, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual expert) maps out the seven elements that define improvement leadership for supervisors and managers—and then explains how visuality is the glue that holds them all together. With “improve” as the anchor element, she walks through the other six: stabilize, measure, target, problem-solve, coach, and model. Then she shares a simple way for supervisors to self-diagnose and put those skills into action, without over-reaching or making too sharp a turn away from their current duties. First understanding. Then practice one new behavior at a time with a buddy—then another. Easy does it. It’s best to eat this particular elephant one bite at a time. Change is never easy, especially when you are its focus. But excellence requires it.

What is visual leadership? Why is it so important? How do leaders become more effective? What does “effective leadership” mean anyway? These are just a few of the questions your host and visual expert, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, tackles this week with the next installment in her visual leadership series. The fact is: Compelling, natural leaders are rare in any field—regardless of industry or venue. Executives, managers, supervisors! To make a compelling leadership contribution to the enterprise, you need to do more than simply chase down information, monitor KPIs, submit reports, and show up for meetings. You need to change your job description, and in the process, change yourselves. Fire the boss that you are—and hire a new one. You need to transform your identity. But identities shift only when we see and understand ourselves differently. Tune in as Gwendolyn maps out the seven behavioral elements that executives engage in order to become powerful leaders of improvement, visually.

Why do some executives and plant managers struggle to become effective leaders? What does effective leadership mean? How can visuality help leaders be more effective? In this show, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual workplace expert) scans the fourth door in her 10-Doorway Model: the making of an executive leader through metrics, problem-solving and hoshin (policy-goal deployment). To Dr. Galsworth the task of executive leaders is to: decide and drive. She does not embrace the popular but mistaken notion that effective leaders can only be born. Instead, she offers new leaders (and harried managers) a set of highly visual tools that—when learned, applied, and mastered—confers the holy grail of leadership: the ability to say YES to the few and WAIT to the many, with confidence and knowing. Along the way, she anchors your understanding in vivid examples--for instance, Captain Sully’s emergency landing in the Hudson on that cold grey January day in 2009. Let the workplace speak.

Do not confuse managing with leading. Yes, they need each other but they are not the same thing. Each has a central role to play but sequence matters. Join us for the second show in the Visual Leadership series of your host and visual expert, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth. Over 35 years of hands on experience in the field of visual transformation taught her that managing is a peace time activity; and its behaviors align: We keep things going and stay on an even keel. We monitor, track, and check. And then we check again. Management is about stabilization. Leadership is about growth. Management creates short term safety and a knowable future. Leadership creates short term risk and future expansion. Change is not easy but leaders make it possible. Listen as she shares how the head of one of Indias greatest family conglomerates pivoted his senior team into the first leadership step on a single Saturday morning but only after half the group quit. Tune in or Learn more. Let the workplace speak.

Lean is capable of improving the operational profile of so many companies and fast. Yet we ask: When lean turn arounds are so rapid, can culture be transformed as well? While it is imaginable, for most companies it is unlikely. And while many techniques impact the work cultural, none in the view of host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, is more powerful than visuality in transforming a work culture completely and sustainably. This week Gwendolyn launches the first show in her Visual Leadership series and describes how visuality does it. Hear how and why her visual approach engenders fierce commitment and very personal expression. Learn how visuality creates connectivity in an enterprise, even tough ones. Understand the power of margin that slightest bit of internal personal space that can and does liberate human potential and trigger a spirited, engaged and unified workforce. Learn for yourself, why she says: Visuality doesn't just support an aligned work culture. It creates it.

What is the set of practices and mechanisms that must be in place before your company can successfully launch a process that establishes continuous systematic improvement as a way of life in the enterprise? This week’s show on Visual Workplace Radio is the third and final in a series that describes that. In it, your host and visual workplace expert, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, describes the last three of the eight requirements she considers indispensable, in this case, for a highly-effective deployment of workplace visuality. They are: the Laminated Map, the Area Hit List, and the Visual Workplace Blitz. Working together, these processes help us find, hold, and drive meaningful improvement outcomes. Join Gwendolyn as she drills deeper into the vital behind-the-scenes preparation that supports the march of improvement through your work areas, across functions, and onto your bottom line. Once again, we understand: a journey's destination is part of its first step. Let the workplace speak.

Success in implementing improvement is not just about what to do--but when to do it and by whom. This week on Visual Workplace Radio, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, presents the second of three shows on an Improvement Infrastructure: the eight behind-the-scenes elements that work synergistically to ensure your deployment outcomes. Continuing, she introduces the purpose and logic of the 3-Legged Stool—those key site leaders that prepare for an effective launch and support long-term outcomes. Then she explains what an official improvement time policy is and why it is indispensable to the on-going success of your improvement journey. She knows what you know: In the battle between production and improvement for time, production always wins. That is as it should be. Your company is in the business of producing products and services. But without a written improvement time policy, there is a real danger that needed improvement will never happen. Tune in/Learn more.

Success in implementing improvement is not just about what to do--but when to do it and by whom. This week on Visual Workplace Radio, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, presents the second of three shows on an Improvement Infrastructure: the eight behind-the-scenes elements that work synergistically to ensure your deployment outcomes. Continuing, she introduces the purpose and logic of the 3-Legged Stool—those key site leaders that prepare for an effective launch and support long-term outcomes. Then she explains what an official improvement time policy is and why it is indispensable to the on-going success of your improvement journey. She knows what you know: In the battle between production and improvement for time, production always wins. That is as it should be. Your company is in the business of producing products and services. But without a written improvement time policy, there is a real danger that needed improvement will never happen. Tune in/Learn more.

With so many powerful improvement methods available—including visuality, why do so many fail and fail early? Firsat, companies have not put an improvement infrastructure in place prior to launch. There is no framework for success. Second, most companies don’t have a concrete means for tracking early victories and converting them into powerful next steps. This week on Visual Workplace Radio, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, shares the two sets of start-up requirements that companies need at the start of every improvement process (including visual conversions) in order to ensure intended outcomes happen and are long-term and sustainable. Listen and learn about the first four: 1) the Three Outcomes—the overriding goals of every transformation; 2) the importance of naming/knowing a Vision Place; and 3) importance of tracking bottom-line results; and 4) the meaning of great training materials. This is the first of a two-part series you won’t want to miss.

With so many powerful improvement methods available—including visuality, why do so many fail and fail early? Firsat, companies have not put an improvement infrastructure in place prior to launch. There is no framework for success. Second, most companies don’t have a concrete means for tracking early victories and converting them into powerful next steps. This week on Visual Workplace Radio, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, shares the two sets of start-up requirements that companies need at the start of every improvement process (including visual conversions) in order to ensure intended outcomes happen and are long-term and sustainable. Listen and learn about the first four: 1) the Three Outcomes—the overriding goals of every transformation; 2) the importance of naming/knowing a Vision Place; and 3) importance of tracking bottom-line results; and 4) the meaning of great training materials. This is the first of a two-part series you won’t want to miss.

Borders are the work horses of operations—yet rarely utilized to their full potential. Over the past four shows, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, mapped out the vital importance of borders—as one of the three elements of the visual where and its most powerful. Then she walked through the logic of borders and why you apply them to everything that casts a shadow—from easy-to-move items like benches and carts to items bolted in place like machines, tall shelves, and sinks. You also learned that, as you get smarter, your borders will get smarter, reflecting not only your operational intelligence but the inexhaustible spirit of continuous improvement. You learned that borders boil down to brain function and the pattern of work. Last week Gwendolyn mapped out the first four of the seven elements that turn borders into a thinking system for operators: impact/results, brain function, and info deficits. This week she concludes with the final three. Let the workplace speak!

Why bother with borders? Because borders create flow—the foundation of operational excellence. Taiichi Ohno (co-architect/Toyota Production System) told us: “Flow where you can. Pull where you must.” Lowly borders are key to that. They are the work horses of your operations. Yet, they are rarely well utilized because they are not well understood. Tune in this week as your host and visual expert Gwendolyn Galsworth walks through the seven core elements in the effective implementation of borders, led by your operators. Learn the dynamic fit between: brain function, i-Driven change, missing answers in the workplace, the smart location of function—and the financial and cultural impact of borders when operators learn to use MOTION as a lever. Across 30+ years of hands-on practice, Galsworth has witnessed the synergy of these six factors produce a seventh: 18 different types of borders, invented and deployed by operators. Wouldn’t you want to bother with that? Let the workplace speak.

How can a line impact performance? After all, it is according to John Casey (19th century Irish mathematician) merely: a straight one-dimensional figure, with no thickness, and extending infinitely in both directions, without any ‘wiggles’ along its length.” Why not reject that definition and turn your “lines” into functions, renaming them “borders.” Liberated from their restricted past, your newly-defined borders are now free to trigger a revolution in operational improvement. Listen this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual workplace expert) completes the 12 reasons for borders and her march through the 18 border types. Learn about person-width and photocopied borders, range of function, dashed, and slanted borders. Hear about directional and double-function borders, borders as controls, barriers and foam borders, and another visit to time-based borders that allow operators to apply core lean principles while retaining a powerful visual focus. Let the workplace speak.

What happens when your so-called 5S lines find a new life and purpose as borders? What difference does that make—and why is it important? Tune in this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth shares how borders produce excellence, ownership, and commitment on your operational floor. That HOW is directly linked to the brain’s relentless effort to find and interpret visual data. This pattern-seeking mechanism of the brain is both built in—and as involuntary and insistent as our heartbeat. Listen as Dr. Galsworth tells the story of her own discovery of this remarkable function of the mind when an operator team implemented a set of borders that transformed the behavior of forklifts drivers—to everyone’s happy surprise. Hear about the unbreakable connection between the pattern seeking capacity of the brain and the built-in capability of the human mind for continuous improvement. Borders have an incredible power to transform even as they create a sense of safety and alignment. Let the workplace speak

Until a company understands the logic and power of borders, they are treated as merely so many lines—useful for neatness and order but not much more. Few people expect “lines” to improve performance; and they don’t. Borders, however, do. And mightily. Borders function. What a surprise to discover that borders (especially when combined with robust addresses) can measurably increase productivity enterprise-wide even as they build a spirited, engaged, and contributing work culture if none yet exists. If such a culture does exist, borders strengthen it, almost immeasurably. On this week’s show, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host, author, and visual expert) presents the first of twelve reasons that validate the role of borders on a functional as well as cultural basis. Listen to this first in her new series on operator-led visuality, as Dr. Galsworth describes examples of seven of the 18 types of borders—so you can imagine/re-imagine the role robust borders can play in your company.

Remember the well-worn adage: The only way to achieve employee empowerment is to turn the top/down pyramid on its head—into the bottom/up pyramid? But what do we do with the top/down structure? The wrong step is to reject it and throw it out. The right step is to engage a process that blends the two power structures into a single, coherent framework of governance and participation. In the third and final show of this sub-series, Dr. Galsworth describes the 3-step process for liberating the hidden power of the empowerment paradigm through the re-distribution of power. Doing this launches executive and value-associate alike on a curve of learning and change that re-defines the roles of each and the outcomes for which each is responsible. Executives identify and drive the company’s vision, mission, values, strategy, systems (WHAT, WHO, WHY). And value-add associates learn to hold a steady focus on HOW. An effective work culture is balanced blending of the two. Let the workplace speak.

The world of work can sometimes resemble politics in a hotly-contested election—with further polarization the method of choice for handling differences: Go to your corner and come out fighting. Though showy, playing our differences against each other is not a long -term win. This week, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, recounts the true story of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice groups doing the hard work of seeking and finding common ground. In so doing, they demonstrate the importance of our learning a new way and breaking the myth of either/or choices. No less so in the workplace where the process begins with an executive decision to invert the power pyramid and develop a new power proposition. Executives then learn a new way as do value-add associates. The result? Alignment and the simultaneous definition of areas of commonality and areas of enduring differences. In short: unity. And throughout, managers and supervisors are caught in the middle. Tune in/learn more.

What does it mean for supervisors to keep a low profile during a visual conversion—and why is that important? After an overview of the factors in determining a company’s true level of organizational readiness for change, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual conversion expert, digs into the critical contribution your supervisors (and managers) make in cultivating—rather than pushing—the transition from a traditional top-down work culture to one that is empowered. This does not mean supervisors/their bosses surrender their decision-making role or abdicate their own leadership power. Not at all. It means they identify their power contribution and clearly distinguish that from the power contributions that value-add associates can and must make for the enterprise to grow and transform. Hidden within this process are what Gwendolyn’s calls the two pyramids of power—the top/down and the bottom up. Listen as she describes the telling differences between them and how each functions.