A weekly newsletter about letting the workplace speak
Issue 39/Volume 3                www.VisualWorkplace.com                Sept 28, 2016
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Thought for the Week
There's only so much people can hold in working memory before they forget it. Information in working memory is easily interfered with. For example, if you're trying to remember a name and phone number, and someone starts talking to you, you're probably going to get very annoyed. You're also going to forget the name and number. If you don't concentrate, you'll lose it from working memory. This is because working memory is tied to your ability to focus attention. To maintain information in working memory, you must keep your attention focused on it.
- Susan M. Weinschenk, Ph.D, from 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
Visual Poem/Puzzle
Listen to Gwendolyn this 
Thursday at 10am (Pacific) on
  


There is an enemy in your company--and it's 100% invisible. You can't see it because it literally is not there. Yet its impact is massive on every level of the enterprise, from board room to marketing to operations to the field staff. And the only way you have even the smallest chance of destroying it is by focusing on what it causes...its footprint. Can you name that enemy? Can you name its footprint? Join us this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth reveals that enemy and shows you how to find it, stalk it, and destroy it. Hint: It takes 8 to 10 minutes to recover from an interruption, any interruption, no matter how long or short? To recover doesn't merely mean to get back to the task-at-hand. It means: to get back to the level of focus and attention you had before the interruption. And some of us get interrupted so often that we are convinced interruptions are a part of our job description. In some companies, we are called supervisors.   
Feature Article
The Elephant on the Factory Floor   
by Gwendolyn Galsworth, PhD

Have you heard this? Just because this department is a bit dingy--and it's sometimes harder than heck to get the scoop on things--doesn't mean it's a bad place. Good work happens here. In fact, we've been doing darn good work in this area long before you showed up with a bucket of hope called workplace visuality.

There's an elephant in the room at the start of any change process, the pet of the local team. The elephant is called the past. And the team is the tribe that owns it. The past is the tribal think. And that past pre-dates your improvement initiative. It pre-dates your plans. The past is a formidable force. Here's another way to say this: Most human reason happens below the radar of awareness and is driven not so much by a desire to get good grades or win the Nobel Prize. Human reason is driven by the need to survive--and central to that is the need to belong. 
 
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Visual Tricks and Treats
Street Art by JPS
Great signs, clever visual devices, artistic or humorous graffiti. If you find one to share, send the image to cindy@visualworkplace.com    
And the Visual Fail Prize Goes To...

Have you seen a Visual Fail that made you laugh?  Send the image to cindy@visualworkplace.com,
and we'll put it here and credit you with the funny find!