VALUE
IMPROVEMENT
LEADERS
TOPIC #21 | April 13
466 words + 1 activity | 15 minutes (3 to read email, 12 minutes for video)
VISUAL WORKPLACE MANAGEMENT
PRINCIPLE
Visual management elements can accelerate workplace processes and increase quality.

APPLICATION
Examine your daily life for examples of visual workplace management elements and consider how you can apply similar elements in your process.

How do we work together?

Years ago I was in a leadership development workshop and one of the exercises required competing teams to assemble a complicated tent as fast as they could without speaking. The learning objective continues to elude me. Pantomiming is a crucial leadership skill? How to be frustrated in the woods? I didn’t need that exercise to know that working together requires communication. Efficient, reliable communication is at the heart of visual workplace management.  
“Hey June, when you see Ward, tell him <important thing for Ward to know>.”

The everyday communication pattern in that headline has two reliability issues. 1) It features dependency on human memory (June’s now and Ward’s later), and 2) the information has to wait until Ward and June are in the same place to be passed along. June and Ward may be from a time before texting but, “Send him a text,” is the proper response today. In fact numerous communication channels are superior to remember to tell him. 

Expand June and Ward’s 1-to-1 model scenario to include hundreds of messages per hour, on different value streams, needing to pass among dozens of players. Now you have our noisy, complex workplace model. We communicate via channels. Examples given: texts, sticky notes, conversation, MyChart. Visuals are a family of communication channels. Examples given: Inpatient boards, signs, telemetry monitors. Visual elements are powerful and often overlooked.
The Power of the Visual

Like standard work and forcing functions, visual cues in the workflow reduce the cognitive load and help process stakeholders make the right decision faster. The triple goal of visual elements is to be:
  • Self-explaining
  • Self-ordering
  • Self-regulating
The higher goal of visual management systems in complex workplaces is that they allow us to:
  • See as a team
  • Know as a team
  • Act as a team
“Visual” is more than being able to see it. “Visual” means it’s available at a glance in the flow of the work. For example, a procedure document in a file is not visual; standard work (if done right) is visual. Using this definition, information in the EMR is visual if it’s available at the right place at the right time to whomever needs it. Information in the EMR isn’t considered visual if the person needing it must hunt it down.
Seeing Visual Management Is the Best Teacher

Now that your curiosity about the power of visual management has been sparked, enough reading. The best way to understand visual management it to see real examples, and our video is chock full of them. Time to change the channel and watch the video (11:57).
LINKS

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Questions? Email: kim.mahoney@hsc.utah.edu