Visual Workplace Radio: Let The Workplace Speak

What is a visual workplace? Why is it important? And how does it produce remarkable bottom-line and cultural results on your journey to operational excellence? Listen as Gwendolyn Galsworth—visual workplace expert, practitioner, and author of seven books—answers these questions and explains why workplace visuality is the glue that holds all other improvement methods together. Learn how visuality strengthens lean yet remains its own distinct strategy. Understand the difference between visual devices that tell and those that embed behavior. Hear how visuality creates cultural alignment by liberating information and, in the process, liberates the human will. Whether you work in a factory, bank, hospital, military depot or open-pit mine, tune in and build your knowledge and know-how of visual workplace technologies and the principles and practices that drive them. Join Gwendolyn on the first show in her new series with Voice America/Business and learn how to let the workplace speak.

We are in the homestretch. Just 8 of the 25 leadership tasks remain—tasks that help ensure the success of operator-level visuality: Work That Makes Sense (WTMS). Do 25 tasks seem too many? If so, how many is enough? Could we get away with 18 tasks? Or a tidy 10? Your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, says 25 is the right number for her—because she needs a sturdy set of principles, truths, and sub-routines to frame, launch, anchor, support, and maintain WTMS. The purpose of the first seven (parts 1-2) is to orient and focus your launch. The next six (part 3) ensure you hit the ground running. The five tasks in part 4 anchor the methodology. And a final set of eight—last week’s topic and this—keeps your conversion going and growing: 1) Keep hit lists up-to-date; 2) Show up for every blitz; 3) Create memories; 4) Follow up/Follow thru; 5) Track your KPIs; 6) Open a store; 7) Organize walk-abouts; and 8) Build visual best practices. Tune in/Learn More. Let the workplace speak.

Imagine this: a beautifully-baked cake left in the rain—dissolving into nothing. That’s how it can feel when your improvement initiative hits the skids. You launch. You follow the rules. You gain momentum and start getting results. Then—bamm!—you hit a roadblock and things grind to a halt. This week, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, continues her march through the 25 leadership tasks she developed to prepare, launch, anchor, and support a visual conversion. She’s down to the final eight. But where, you ask, did these come from? They came from her lifelong study of implementations, looked at from many angles and in different light. As an improvement practitioner, you can do this too—the way French painter, Claude Monet, did when he visited the Cathedral at Rouen and responded with his 30 studies in light. It was the same structure but he learned to see it differently. Let that be you. As you implement, probe, adapt, and add—some or all of the 25. Tune in/Learn more.

Did you prepare to get started? Did you get ready for success? Did you launch? Yes! Congratulations! Next question: Can you relax? Next answer: Sorry, no! Yes, you accomplished 12 of the 25 tasks that need to be in place to support improvement success. But more is needed. You have simply graduated to the next level of vigilance. You still have stay on your toes—but in a new way. This week, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual workplace expert, maps out the list-that-needs-doing after your launch. Better said, this is not so much a list as a set of core principles that can really mess things up if you are not aware of them—or not yet experienced enough to understand their importance. Let’s change that. Today Gwendolyn will treat five of thirteen “tasks” that remain: 1) Pay attention to beginnings; 2) Handle big ideas wisely; 3) Balance I-driven with consensus; 4) Promote iterations/cultivate cycles; 5) Don’t standardize too soon. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak.

How do you celebrate the completion of the ordinary? Who would want to come to that party? Getting ready for a successful visual conversion begins many weeks before the first training session—and it looks like a long list of mundane, humdrum tasks. There is good reason for that: It is. But if you don’t do them, the likelihood of failure looms large. This week, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, will walk you through the next six tasks on her 25-item list of how to get ready for a splendid visual transformation. This set of six is undertaken by your trainers and supervisors: 1) Define the new role for supervisors; 2) Decide on a border protocol (so they last a year but can be removed overnight); 3) Develop a color code system for borders; 4) Create ways to keep visual workplace supplies handy (and why); 5) Set up a communications center; and 6) Give money away to operators, with few strings attached. All before you launch.

Is it realistic to troubleshoot your next improvement process before it gets started? Can you really plan your failures away—even when lots of people are involved? According to Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, the answer to both questions is a resounding YES. Join us this week as Dr. Galsworth continues her march through the 25 leadership tasks that she considers mission-critical for a highly-effective visual conversion. These tasks or behaviors either prepare us for success—or trigger a set of early victories that allow the company to build momentum, moving from strength to strength. This week she adds four tasks to the set of seven the senior manager or ranking site executive undertakes before the first person gets trained: 4) Target the change through your Laminated Map; 5) Resource success through your Improvement Time Policy; 6) Get your supervisors aligned and on board; and 7) Get Maintenance aligned and on board. All before you launch.

Q: How many ways can your improvement initiative fail? A: Nearly uncountable. Q: How many ways can you succeed? A: Well, that depends on how many of 25 success principles and practices you implement—before and during your roll out. Join us this week as your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, begins her march through the principles and practices she considers mission-critical for a highly-effective improvement process (a visual conversion)—behaviors that build your site’s improvement infrastructure. Listen as she explains the first three of seven behaviors that you, as the ranking site executive, need to undertake before the first person gets trained: 1) Name in advance the financial, cultural, and visionary outcomes you want; 2) Set up your accountability team prior to launch; and 3) Identify a vision place—an actual physical location that demonstrates that what you want is not just possible but already exists in inspiring fullness. All before you launch. Tune in/Learn more.

Some US politicians have provocative notions about Mexico and its society. They talk about keeping the Mexican people out of the USA—while, in the view of other political leaders, we should be looking for ways to bring more Mexicans in. Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, spent last week in one of Mexico’s main industrial cities—Queretaro. She was there under the auspices of the Opex Academy-Shingo Prize to conduct visual site assessments, meet with business leaders, and spread the word about workplace visuality and its power to inform and transform. And what a trip it was. Although Gwendolyn has worked in Mexico’s maquiladora centers since 1986 -Juarez, Matamoros, Reynosa-, this time she went deeper and further—and encountered that country’s beating heart. Tune in this week as she shares what she discovered: that nation’s rich value system that we in the USA would do well to appreciate and cultivate in our own lives and companies. Tune in-Learn more.

Did you know: 50 percent of our brain function is dedicated to seeing and interpreting visual data? Yes, that’s the way we make sense out of all that we see—and we humans see a great deal. In 1985, the host of this radio show, Gwendolyn Galsworth, had an encounter that revealed this but not in a way she recognized at the time. The players: 1- an operator, 2- an indexed final assembly line at Toyota, 3- an impact wrench, 4- five lug nuts and 5- a bucket of pink powder. The stage was set. Hidden in plain sight, that pink powder was much more than it seemed—and much more powerful than its fluffiness might suggest. As she slowly realized that that powder was in fact a performance partner in Toyota’s production process—plus key to the perfect quality for which the company was then famous. Listen as Gwendolyn supplies the details of this scenario and describes the two prime principles of visuality that she derived from it -with examples. Tune in-Learn more. Let the workplace speak.

Is there a part of us so hidden from view that decades can pass without anyone noticing that we possess a rich and creative interior life? And is it possible that even then we ourselves may not take it that seriously—until one day we do? We just do. And that changes our lives, permanently and in ways that are dazzling. Tune in this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host, has the rare treat of interviewing a man who started life as an artist, then became a master plumber and very successful businessman for nearly four decades—only to set it all aside in order to become an artist again. That man is Gwendolyn’s brother, Gary Galsworth, known around Hoboken, NJ, as: Gary da Plumber. As they talk, Gary shares his journey from, and then back to, his path with heart. Finding it was not that hard—but following it took guts. But just for the first few steps. Then it became the only way. During the show, Gary reads poems from his two books, Yes Yes and Beyond the Wire—both available on Amazon.

Question: How big are chronic information deficits in the workplace? Answer: HUGE!!! Imagine Godzilla and you are approaching the right size. Find the footprint of this beast and you will have a gauge for the massive volume of motion that missing answers trigger at work—whether you are in a hospital, office, factory or open-pit mine. This week on the Visual Workplace, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, will map out four handy ways you can calculate the size of the beast, even as you plan its extinction. Visuality is a system of thinking first—then a system of doing. Put that thinking into action by: 1- Staying alert-looking-listening: 2- Using a memo pad and pen: 3- Naming the location of your main work: 4- Having a pedometer or stopwatch handy. Gwendolyn explains precisely how to use these simple elements to stalk the enemy, wrestle it to the ground, and cremate its broken body! Hurray. Lean can’t help—nor Six Sigma nor CI. Visuality to the rescue. Tune in-Learn more.

There is an enemy in your company—and it’s 100 percent 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, your host and visual expert, 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. Tune in-Learn more.

George Bernard Shaw, the 19th century Irish playwright, once declared: “The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” An amusing thought perhaps—but, for most companies, the result is not funny. If you make a habit of blaming bad communication for problems and mistakes—including assembling a part the wrong way or administering the wrong med—you miss the real problem. Listen as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, presents a four-part logic that explains why things go wrong at work, and only one part is “bad communication.” That logic is called The Four Workplace Conditions, derived from the work of Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, former head of quality at Sumitomo. Follow the four stages as performance deteriorates from ideal to just plain wrong because people: a- don’t understand, b- they cannot execute, or c- no one has yet identified what’s right. Here is a new way of keeping track of results—and all in support of greater visuality at work.

Where do you land on this question.Do heroes just happen in the case of rare individuals or can we take steps to groom the hero’s mindset in all of us? Which one holds the truth for you? And what is the impact of that? This week on visual workplace radio, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, shares her response on this in the eighth and final show in her Hero Within series. Along the way, she draws sharp parallels between heroes in the workplace—and the habits of management, habits of mind, and habits of heart. Here’s another set of questions? Why do the sharks at your city’s aquarium not eat every other fish in that pool? And why don’t elephants break free and run away when they are tied in place by a rope so tiny that even grandma could tear off? The answers to all these questions have a great deal to do with the understanding companies need to enable every employee to become a hero at work—and how visuality can help. Tune in tolearn more. Let the workplace speak.

If building a workforce of heroes is part of a company’s vision, then how can supervisors help? What is their role? Join us this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, reveals the all-important part supervisors—and we include managers in this term—play in helping value-add associates find and cultivate the hero within. New supervisory behaviors kick in early, even before the first training session. But they aren’t easy. In fact, most supervisors loudly object to adopting them—at first. Then they learn for themselves the power behind not supervising—not managing—people who are just beginning to learn what it means to become improvement contributors. This particular bend in the methodology may surprise you as well and is especially important in a visual conversion where the individual holds the key not only to robust visual solutions but to the sustainability of those visual outcomes—and your growing profit margins. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak!

Is there a tried-and-true profile of a hero? A time-tested, widely-accepted persona that the rest of us can model ourselves after? Or is it possible, for example, for the hero of a tale to also be a grade-A grump? Join us this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual expert, shares her first-hand account of the shop floor story that taught her the answer and a lot of other valuable lessons. The grump in this instance was a machine operator named Charley and—harking back to last week’s show on the value field—a gripping struggle over a table that everyone (except Charley) wanted to toss into the trash. Even though everyone in his union-based plant was trying hard to learn what R-E-S-P-E-C-T meant in everyday work, Charley’s case was so extreme that his co-workers decided to take certain liberties with that definition—and they lived to regret it. In this sixth show in her hero within series, Gwendolyn provides the telling details. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak!

What happens when your operational methodology collides with your cultural goals? What happens is: something’s gotta give. Join us as your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, links the value field (where work happens)—with the beating heart of every successful work culture: spirit (a broad equivalent to the term respect). Learn how this cultural element can work for or against your improvement goals as Dr. Galsworth shares two stories from her own deployment history. The first is about Paulette and how she and her co-workers re-defined their value field so they could drill deeper into their info deficits. The other is about Charley and the table in his value field that everyone (except Charley) wanted to toss into the trash. In this fifth show in her hero within series, Gwendolyn shares what to do/not to do when faced with grumpy people and very positive people—because they can both contribute hugely to your implementation success. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak!

Do we really have to like all the people all the time—especially if “some people” are not cooperating with our very important improvement agenda? Can’t we just make them? Or are we forced, in today’s PC-zealous world, to “show respect” for the individual—even when some are clearly indifferent to the corporate intent and others actively push back? Join us this week as your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, shares her take on this tricky scenario. Listen as she shares The Parable of the Rowers. Learn what she advises: Don’t cave in and sacrifice your improvement vision—and don’t push your agenda strenuously. Learn instead the telling difference between inertia and resistance—and how to handle both. Keep your eye on the main event: getting visual improvement going and growing in the company. To do so, you may have to learn a new and very different way: allowing, even encouraging, people to be themselves, without fear of penalty. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak!

How do visual principles and practices create heroes at work? What are those mechanics? In this third show in her series, The Hero Within, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, un-nests the power of the second of the two questions that drive workplace visuality: What do I need to share? Building on last week’s discussion, Dr. Galsworth maps out the details of why this question works and how to put it to immediate use in your company. Have your pocket memo pad ready! She also reveals how this second driving question builds connectivity and alignment among team members and across departments—and how it shifts the identity of the people applying it. This impact is huge. And it is important to define it so managers and executives realize they are not just investing in a 15% to 30% increase in productivity when they bring visuality on board, they are also capitalizing a spirited and engaged workforce—heroes at work. Tune in/Learn more. Let the workplace speak.

Would it surprise you to know that operator-led visuality is not a team-based methodology? Not at first. At first, the process focuses on strengthening the individual—both in skill and identity. Listen as your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, describes the individual journey that each individual (the “I”) engages when they learn why and how to gain control over one’s corner of the world through visual solutions. As a result, the company gains a 15%-30% increase in productivity. The individual gains that part of themselves that was previously not welcomed at work—the part they left in the back seat of the car, with the window slightly cracked so it is still there when they clocked out at the end of the shift. Operator-led visuality invites that part in—to participate, to express, and to invent visual solutions, some never been seen on the planet before. This is a boon to the corporate good. Tune in. Learn more about the journey of the I. Let the workplace speak.