Gwendolyn is somewhere in the wilds of sub-Saharan Africa. The lion has eaten her intended article for this week. Her treatise on 5S will continue next week. Meanwhile, from our archives:
The Translation of Inform
ation into Behavior
by Gwendolyn Galsworth, PhD
The world of work shares a single basic transaction, used millions of times a day: The translation of vital information into human behavior.
But operationalizing this formula is not that simple. Workplace information can change quickly and often-schedules, customer requirements, engineering specifications, operational methods, tooling and fixtures needs, material location, and the thousands of other details on which daily life in the enterprise depends.
To share that information, most companies depend on
OJT (on-the-job) and classroom training, binders of SOPs, reference manuals, online instruction, and blueprints to share that information--followed by lots of supervisors and managers to answer our many questions. These are indirect methods, with varying levels of effectiveness.
The belief is that once we get the right information, we will do the right things, the right way, on time and safely. We will behave in keeping with that information and good things will result--namely, well-made products, delivered on time and/or wel
l-
provided services, presented
with a smile. Those same companies assume these indirect methods are capable of translating vital information into exact behavior.
Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Other things happen instead.
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Management believes indirect methods will produce needed behaviors.
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Visuality converts information into exact behavior.
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