How do you know “how it’s going?”
Be honest: in the whirlwind of daily operations, have you lost sight of your larger strategies and goals? The relentless pressures of day-to-day tasks can consume so much of our attention that it’s easy to default to "business as usual," leaving those larger objectives you set at the beginning of the year to wither. Before the urgent overwhelms the important, let’s build in some simple mechanisms that will keep those goals front of mind.
What would it look like to have a management system that allowed us to easily detect whether we were on track, or had deviated from it? Lengthy meetings and convoluted PowerPoint presentations aren’t necessary, nor are they the most effective way to understand and communicate progress on a regular basis.
Visual management allows us to instantly “see” our performance, and understand at a glance how we’re performing against our targets. The goal-setting process defined where we want to be in our daily operation, building towards our imagined future state. Now our visuals should show us where we actually are relative to that target, thereby creating a clear visual gap. It should be easy to tell whether we’re “winning” today.
Simple charts (as shown to the right) or red and green indicators provide easy ways to illustrate where performance is relative to the goal, without any additional explanation. For example:
Actual units produced, relative to a daily production target
Percentage of tasks complete, compared to what we had planned that day
Defects noticed, compared to a quality target
How many interviews were conducted as part of a recruiting plan
These metrics should be updated by those closest to the work, fostering a deeper connection to the data and a sense of ownership and accountability. If your operation takes place in one physical location, draw your visuals on a whiteboard with a marker. Don’t bother with anything digital unless you must. Simple and direct beats flashy and complex, because what we really want this system to do is provoke action.
The value of visual management lies not in monitoring alone, but in our reaction to what the picture is telling us. If the process is not running as intended or desired (i.e. is red), what are we doing about it? When performance deviates from expectation, this should trigger an exploration, followed by a countermeasure or experiment to try to close the gap. If the gap is because we’ve set ourselves a new, higher bar (an improvement goal) and we haven’t achieved that level of performance yet, what are we going to do today to try to get a little closer to it? If the gap is because we’ve fallen off of a previously attainable standard (a stability goal), what is causing the dip, and how can we address those causes in order to get back to normal?
In order to maintain steady production*, let alone improve it, teams must be equipped with the basic skills of root cause analysis and scientific experimentation. Viewing gaps as opportunities for collective improvement rather than personal failures fosters a culture of continuous learning and innovation. We celebrate the red, because that’s where the resources are hiding.
Effective visual management raises awareness of how we’re doing relative to our goals amidst the buzz of day-to-day operations. By providing clear, real-time visibility to gaps relative to our expectations or desires, it empowers teams to make informed decisions and drive positive change.
Visual management can also be fun! What examples have you seen that incorporate the team’s creativity, while also providing timely data? Send me a picture at laurel@growingwildconsulting.com.
Next time, we’ll cover the conversation you should be having with your team at the visual management board.
*By “production”, we simply mean performance of the job at hand. This need not only refer to the physical creation of goods, but to any service, task, or pattern completed in relation to an expectation.