Interview with Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth

Interview with Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth

Premise

Today, we have the honor of interviewing Gwendolyn Galsworth, a prominent figure in the field of visual workplace/visual management and the founder of Visual Thinking Inc. Gwendolyn has dedicated her career to developing and promoting the concept of workplace visuality through research, consulting, and training in various countries worldwide. Originally from the United States, she has worked in America, Australia, Mexico, India, China, and Europe, spearheading numerous significant projects and international collaborations in the field.

Her pioneering work has helped define and codify the concept of the “visual workplace,” earning prestigious recognition, for example, from the  Shingo Prize. Through her award-winning books and her role as a teacher and hands-on practitioner, Gwendolyn has inspired thousands of professionals to adopt workplace visuality as a key improvement strategy  for enhancing efficiency and productivity in business and industry.

Today, we’ll explore some of these things with Gwendolyn—and, if time permits, her views on the application of visual management in culturally diverse contexts, including the possibility of working in Italy.

Davide: Could you briefly tell us, tell me, about your experience and background in the field of visual management.

Gwendolyn: First, thank you for this conversation, the first of what I hope will be chances to talk about visuality—which I also call visual thinking, visual workplace, and, sometimes,  visual management. The field has many layers and many levels. It can take a while to build an understanding. As things now are, many good people think that they know what a visual workplace is. Well, I’d like to add to their understanding as much as time permits. 

The thing about visuality is that the more you use it, the more you learn. I have been in this field for over three decades and am still learning—new insights, new knowledge, new strengths. Let’s take the notion of  visual management (VM), for example. A popular term nowadays—but not exactly understood. Many folks think that VM covers all workplace visuality. In fact, VM refers to only a narrow segment—measures, dashboards, LCD monitors, and a few other things in its more advanced forms.

As the term implies, VM Is about the management function, about using visuality to manage … to oversee, handle, cope, administer. But what about the many other workplace functions that visuality can clarify, stabilize, improve, and grow? What about visual performance, visual quality, visual safety, visual machine maintenance, visual teams, visual leadership, visual pull, visual standards, visual linkages, and so on and so forth. When I make these distinctions in function, I am not just playing around with words. I am saying that “managing” is just one of a company’s core functions—as visual management is just one category of function to which visuality contributes. Words matter. Differences matter. Understanding that helps build scope and capability.

To increase safety, quality, timeliness, and overall enterprise effectiveness, we need to deploy the full spectrum of visuality across the full spectrum of operational functions—not just management. With this in mind, we see that visual management contributes only about 10% of the overall power of visuality in the workplace. That 10% is important—but is not a substitute for the other 90%.

We can afford to forget about the other operational functions or they will remain un-visual—secret, hidden, buried, mute. Name them.  See them. Expect them to speak—let the whole workplace speak … not just the management part.   

When I began developing this field back more than three decades ago,  I called it “the visual workplace.”  That is still a good term; but I was an infant to the concept then. Ten years later, I began work with Rolls-Royce Aerospace; and a super-brilliant RR business analysts, Steve Pollard, liked calling my work “visuality.” His term entered the lexicon. More years went by, and the more I worked on visual conversions, the more I understood that creating a workplace that speaks was about the thinking first—and the devices later. The idea of visual thinking surfaced. Realizing the importance of this,  I renamed my company Visual Thinking. Yes, it’s all about the thinking.

And it’s about partnership … but perhaps not quite as one  might think.

Nowadays, we talk a lot about the need for a workplace to be neat, clean, and orderly.  Standardized. But I want to talk about a higher level of need—the need of each workplace to have a voice. To speak. Each and every workplace. What is the language which that voice speaks? What are the words of a workplace language? The answer is visual devices. Visual devices are the vocabulary of a workplace that speaks.

And where does this language of devices originate? Where does it come from? It comes from the information needs of the people who work there. Their need for information … their questions. Questions pull information into place.

But we can go further—not just using questions to get answers … but turning those answers into visual devices. Bingo. That’s where visual devices come from! And that’s how creating them creates a continuous improvement work culture.

Think of that! And, do you know what, Davide? Only three questions drive the workplace. (The first is why—but that is often asked last.) The other two are more immediate and very operational.

• “What Do I Need To Know?” … What do I need to know that I don’t know right now in order to do my work? Answer that question, whatever the right answer may be … then turn that answer into a visual device, into a physical mechanism that provides that answer to you, when and as you need it. To you—and anyone else who needs that same answer. And then ask and answer that same question again and again. And again. Visuality: The liberation of information is the liberation of the human will.
• The second question is the flipside of the first: “What Do I Need To Share?” … What do I know that others need to know that I need to share in order for them to do their work more safely, more precisely, more on time, and so on? Share that information by turning it into a visual device.

Need to know/Need to share. Two questions that drive visuality in the workplace—any and every workplace. Visuality is a universal language that everyone can learn to speak—and, in doing so, they make the workplace speak.

The partnership blossoms between us and the inanimate objects of our day and our work. That partnership is the connection between us—and the things at work. Between, for example, the operator and her bench, the operator and his tools, his machine, his material, his spec sheets, his performance, and on and on. Visual thinkers, each one. They are the ones who create a visual language of devices. Answers get embedded visually—in the form of devices—into the living landscape of work. Not just by operators, but also by supervisors, engineers, middle managers, executives, planners, accounting, material handlers, marketing staff, HR. You name it! In a fully-functioning visual enterprise, the workplace becomes a visual partner to everything that company does, thinks, creates, and wants.  And to everyone.

Let’s get away from our tricky reliance on human memory. Because “human remembering” is unavoidably linked to “human forgetting.” Let’s stop looking for the guy or gal with the answers and, instead, make a partner out of the physical workplace so precise, timely, and complete answers are always within sight/within reach whatever our work is … through the visual devices we created for just that purpose. Let’s let our workplace speak directly to us. In detail. This is a partnership designed to last a lifetime—and always keep growing. You see?

Davide: Great, and what about your international work? What  significant projects have you undertaken during your international career, particularly in the USA and Europe? In Japan too?

Gwendolyn : I’ve worked a great deal in the US—but even more internationally. In Australia, Mexico, Poland, China, India, the UK, Romania, Canada,  and elsewhere. And yes, a few gigs in your remarkable land, Italy.

I began in the US of course. But almost immediately I went to Japan … not as a thought-leader or consultant. I went as a grown-up student, nominally leading Executive Study Missions there. In my heart, I knew I was in Japan to learn.

At the time, I worked at Productivity Inc., a company that started as a book publisher but soon became the premier source of knowledge, know-how, and know-why from Japan. We used to lug suitcases back from Japan full of books. Books by the masters—Fukuda, Nakajima, Harada, Yamada, Ohno, and Shingo. Yes, a ton of books by Shigeo Shingo, my sensei.

Productivity’s owner, Norman Bodek, had been an insurance salesman from Connecticut. Through an unlikely series of events, he found himself in the epi-center of that revolution in manufacturing called the Japanese Miracle.  Dozens and dozens of those books got translated, at about $100,000 USD a pop—and they went out world-wide. Norman wanted to get his money back so he gave me the job of turning the books into training courses. Very smart. Very successful. Shingo called him son.

The eight years I spent at Productivity were groundbreaking. We worked hard and made a terrific contribution.

While there was lots of buzz around kanban, jidoka, white boards, lines and labels, and color-coding, the visual workplace/visuality did not yet exist as a concept or paradigm. I myself did not connect the dots until I found myself failing at 5S … badly and repeatedly. 5S had been a success in Japan but American operators didn’t like it, at all. They said they felt like children—especially in the context of “clean up after yourself.” That was bad enough. But there I was, a woman who was saying such things. Nope, not appealing to them … or to me.

It took me a while to discover that Japanese companies originally deployed 5S as a compliance activity—an obedience model. That is why 5S audits worked so well. Though value-add associates in Japan were given opportunity to get more creative in 5S,  when 5S arrived on our shores in 1980, it did not bolster creativity, employee involvement, or empowerment. It was not expandable. The mantra was: Do 5S. Audit 5S. Repeat.  

American hourly employees understood—and immediately pushed back. Push back became the main activity in far too many 5S efforts.

I trudged on. Eventually, I got past neat, clean, and orderly… and past so-called “labels and lines.” Eventually, I hit upon a giant breakthrough concept: thinking—visual thinking. I asked operators to become visual thinkers.

They lit up like Christmas. Like ducks to water, they dove in. I responded and focused on developing a learning/application pathway that transformed 5S into a western-equivalent that I titled Work That Makes Sense.  It has been wildly successful. This, Davide, was my international work at that time.

Along the way, I discovered astonishing facts about us humans. Such as: 50% of a human’s involuntary brain function is dedicated to finding and interpreting visual data. That is, we humans have on-demand access only to about 10% of our brain. The brain’s remaining 90% is entirely involuntary—out of our willful control … automatic as in our breathing and heartbeat.

But Eureka: 50% of the remaining 90% is the visual part. The brain is constantly and automatically seeking, finding, and interpreting visual data. The heavens opened. I forged forward, knowing that visuality (including visual management) was normal, natural, inevitable, and sure. A supreme and vital requirement of the way the brain functions in every single person at work. Eureka indeed!

And Davide, that’s just the short of it.

Davide: Exactly. And what about cultural differences? The differences you notice in the way that visual management/visuality is applied, from country to country. For example, I find that the English and European is quite different from the USA. 

Gwendolyn: Hmmm, yes, I have some thoughts about that. My international work has taught me one main thing related to your question: Local culture—local societal norms—really matters. You will find those norms in the training room, at gemba, and everywhere inside the company—inside the community we call “the company.”

Without exception, people are eager to learn visual thinking and how to create  visual devices—and then how to make them more and more powerful. Whatever the country, whatever the company, people love to learn how to think visually and use the methods that strengthen that.

The cultural differences between countries (and even between companies) are tied to their societal mindsets. Those mindsets can be very different and distinctive. You and I see that here in Italy. We see it in the UK, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, India—all very distinct from each other.

In some of these countries, it is important to be rational, logical, and clear. No generalizations please … or vague connections. The emphasis is on concrete, specific, lucid training and deployment.

In others, the focus is more exploratory. The improvement mindset in Mexico? Grateful, eager, inventive, and supportive of each other. The fabric of that culture is tied to family values—deeply and with amazing congruence. Naturally. The investigation is more spacious. People are very open. Very curious. Super smart. But I would never call them “driven.”  The Dutch are .… The Dutch are driven—and love every moment of that crazy intensity.

Australia? Rambunctious, demanding, determined, and super smart. A whole lot of fun.

By contrast, change-agents like you and me have to tread lightly in the United States. One learns to. My fellow-citizens tend to bring their egos  into the training room and  onto the floor. Yes, tread lightly. Mine is a country where judgment reigns supreme. Perception, not knowledge. That makes us a little fragile, as far as improvement is concerned. If Americans feel judged, they will likely turn on you. It’s an odd thing.

Absent the judging, citizens of the USA can be extraordinarily creative and contributing. Supremely inventive, innovative, tolerant, and fluid. A puzzling paradox. But I have learned to respect it. Of course, these are wide generalizations. But since you asked, that is how I answer, at least today. Good question, Davide!

Davide: Great. Before we close, is there anything else you want to say or share?

Gwendolyn: Hmmm. Well, perhaps this: I am not a marketer. I do not sell visuality. That’s not my job. My job is to discover it. Develop it.  Define it.  Adjust it. My job is to learn. And, as you know , I really really really love my job!

When I work with clients, I am on a path of discovery. I puzzle over many things on the inside: What works? What doesn’t work? What could work better? The main tool I use for this is thinking—visual thinking … coupled with a set of double-questions that I ask all the time—and that I train in-house practitioners and external consultants to use as well as everyone and anyone in the training room with me.

Shall I tell you what they are?  I’ll bet you’ll like them.

• What am I seeing? What does it mean?
• What am I not seeing? What does it mean?

Fantastic!  My job is to answer those questions again and again and again. Oh wonderful!

Yes, my full-time job is to discover the paradigm of visual thinking so that the workplace can speak. To discover, describe and define that heart of things and develop pathways that folks can follow to get there. Companies, consultants, employees.

My job is to discover more and more about the visual paradigm so people can learn to build their performance, success, prosperity, and community. And never forgetting that every community is a collection of individuals. In the language of  visual thinking, every community is a collection of “I’s.” That means that visuality must be i-driven to succeed ….

But that, Davide, is a conversation for another day. In the meantime, let’s you and I talk about bringing visual thinking to Italy! I used to teach Latin, you know …. Oh boy!  Salve.

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Gwendolyn Galsworth, PhD

Email: gwendolyn@visualworkplace.com

WhatsApp: +1-503-449-3774

Website: www.visualworkpalce.com