Visual Management -- Communicate with your team/family!

I’m back!  Going to try to get a little more momentum on this blog again.

For this post I am going to talk about visual management.  Visual management is a fundamental principle in lean thinking.  The idea behind it is to visually communicate key information to the team regarding what’s going on, who’s doing what, and status of projects.

I’ve found using a family visual board extremely helpful for both me and primarily our nanny to improve our communication and coordination.  My husband utilizes it a little bit.  I still occasionally hear, “Why didn’t I know about this???”  To which I respond, “It’s on the board.”

Here is a picture of our current family visual board, which is in the kitchen/eating area of our home – it includes the week’s dinners, schedule highlights, things coming up next week, and there is a section for the flylady zone – but right now that is more of a stretch goal than anything ;)

Here’s a picture:

Since our kids are little, the primary schedule coordination that occurs is my training schedule with our nanny – this is where the board really helps to prompt conversations about when I need to leave early or if we are working different days that usual.

So what’s nice about a family visual board is that it can help to get your family more or less on the same page for the upcoming week.  My ideal is then to “huddle” (10 minute stand up meeting) at the board every Sunday evening to quickly review what the week is going to look like and make sure everyone knows where they need to be.  My hubby isn’t quite on board for that yet…but maybe when the kids are into activities.

So, how can you get started?

1.  What information would be helpful to communicate? Car pool schedule, activities, who’s doing dinner….
2.  Where can you post it?  On a wall, in a laundry room, behind a door?
3.  How will you post it – dry erase board is the best, but a chalk board might be more aesthetically pleasing, even a large wall hanging calendar could act as a first step.
4. Give it a try! 

One of the key things I’ve found about visual boards is they take a lot of adjusting – so jump in, put something up and then keep tweaking it until you settle on something that works for you.

Along these lines, I suggest you keep your board pretty flexible until you settle on a final setup.  That means, don’t spend time affixing tape lines and laminating labels until you’re pretty sure that is what you want.  My board had all written labels and lines for at least six months.  Here you can see the stages of development:

         

             

Remember PLAN-DO-CHECK-ADJUST.

Some additional resources:

• I’ve noticed Target has quite a few attractive board options – so you can check there for supplies along with a Staples or Office Depot.
• Here is a link to a pretty good visual management blog: http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/

Good luck!  Let me know how your experiments go and include photos if you can!