Seeing is believing: how the new art of visual management can boost performance throughout your organization.

Authors: Stewart Lift and Pamela A. Posey Publisher: AMACOM, New York, 2004 ISBN: 0814408087

Reviewer: Michael L. Moore, Professor of High Performance Work Systems, School of Labor and Industrial Relations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Stewart Lift and Pamela Posey are well-credentialed. Mr. Lift has had a long and award-winning career in the federal government's Office of Personnel Management. Dr. Posey (Ph.D. Harvard Business School) has spent many years in academia. In their resumes, both authors cite an affiliation with the Work in America Institute and other forms of public service in areas relating to human resource management and human capital development.

Seeing Is Believing is their first collaboration and is not a modest book, although it ends up having much to be modest about, in my opinion. The book promotes the authors' model of visual management (VM). Visual management is construed by the authors in the following way:

* Enacts a system for organizational improvement

* Fits almost any organization

* Focuses attention on what is important

* Improves performance across the board

* Adds new dimensions to processes, systems, and structures of the existing organization

* Utilizes graphic visualization techniques

* Adds visible and visual depth and consistency to an organization's messages about its goals

* Keeps messages about mission, goals and performance in front of employees at all times

* Converts information about the company, its customers, and its performance into visual displays

* Fits the high level of visual literacy found in today's work force

* Provides a holistic and systemic approach to performance improvement

* Provides a mechanism for continuous improvement through system alignment, goal clarity, engagement of people in the process, improved communication and information sharing.

After reading so much hype in the definition of visual management, the reader should be asking whether the authors provide a more parsimonious definition elsewhere or, at least, a statement of the core elements of VM and whether they present empirical evidence supporting their claims. I could find neither a clear definition nor any empirical evidence for the authors' far-reaching claims. The book contains eight chapters and an appendix of "Twenty Questions (and Answers)" about Visual Management. I review the chapters here to assess their impact individually and together. Along the way, I attempt to clarify the authors' meaning of VM and how they document its value, as their approach is not scientific in nature.

Chapter One, "Imagine a New Kind of Workplace," states that real organizations have achieved 30 percent improvements in customer satisfaction, 33 percent reductions in rework, 25 percent improvement in overall productivity, and an improvement of 20 percent in accuracy through the use of Visual Management. These impressive accomplishments are completely undocumented. Chapter One has no footnotes or end-notes and appears to be mostly self-serving statements of the wonders of Visual Management (exciting physical environments and employees happily aligned with company mission and unit and individual performance metrics). Chapter One then outlines how a decision-maker can best proceed with VM, VM consultants, the VM implementation process, and some likely costs (possibly as high as $400,000). Alignment in this book is conceptualized as vertical alignment. This discussion is narrower than modern conceptualizations of alignment derived from Hoshin planning concepts (Bechtell, 1995). It is typical to discuss the topic of alignment in five dimensions i.e., strategic, vertical, horizontal, process, and development anchored in the Plan-Do-Check-Act processes of Shewhart and Deming as popularized in the Total Quality Movement. The authors clearly intend their version of VM to increase alignment through photos and displays showcasing the history and mission of the organization.

Chapter Two, "Why Visual is Important," provides an overview of generational theory and outlines why visuals are an important part of communicating. Two of this chapter's references relate to the field of management, and one of those is the book The Organization Man (1956), written nearly 50 years ago. This chapter could be useful if the reader has been on a deserted island for the past 20 years and has never read any of the popular management literature. Otherwise, it adds little, although it argues that today's workforce is visually inclined.

Chapter Three is a "Foundations" chapter. Here we learn VM is derived from "people and systems alignment, performance improvement, customer focus, and proven management practice" plus buttressing from the fine arts. The authors stand foursquare on the principles of strategy, leadership, culture, and human resource management tied together in a systems framework. This chapter is overwrought but basically benign in the sense of being nothing new until it takes swipes at lean manufacturing in general and the 5S processes in specific (i.e., "not bad concepts"). The authors miss the point of authors such as Taiichi Ohno and Suzaki who offered clear theory and practices for using visual management several decades ago. The seminal works of these authors, The Toyota Production System (Ohno, 1988) and The New Shopfloor Management (Suzaki, 1993), are significantly better books than this one. Several pages on the fine arts and design principles involving color are worthwhile reading. The reader will be overwhelmed to learn that using VM involves elements such as mission, vision, guiding values, strategies, and goals plus human, technical, support systems, and their integration in operating structures. VM creates a third dimension to this complex systems model by discussing the role of visual enhancements to all listed components. Parsimony and the lessons of Occam's Razor are not endemic in this book. By this point, readers would remain confused about exactly what VM is and what they can do to install it or promote it.

Chapter Four, "Visual Management in Action," provides several well-illustrated case histories that are useful and well-written. The authors do a nice job of illustrating how the history of each organization can be incorporated into displays that add depth to simple mission statements. Other sections on rewards, recognition, and visual graphs of accomplishments against key metrics at the organization, unit, and individual level are typical of a lean manufacturing environment or modern organizations using "dashboards" or "balanced scorecards."

Chapter Five, "Road Map to Visual Management-Planning and Preparation," adds little to the principles of the organizational development literature for managing large-scale projects. Some examples are provided but their impact is rather less than the examples in chapter four. Several photographs are actually confusing and add little value.

Chapter Six, "Implementation," introduces the idea of process and work flow audits to clarify uses of physical space. These are important aspects of VM but receive rather cursory treatment. The chapter also touches on displays of customer and employee metrics typical of Suzaki's "glass wall management." It is worth noting that the authors claim to be providing a "new art" of management and never once cite a scholarly article on the subject, apparently preferring hortatory statements or references to popular writing.

Chapter Seven covers "Nuts and Bolts." Here we learn that consultants can cost between $5,000 and $100,000 to support this activity. Chapter Eight, "A Final Word: Remember, It's Not Just About Looking Good--It's About Working Good," is a four-page introduction to some of the elements the authors will stress when they consult.

Having reviewed the book, I am unclear about who its audience might be. It is clearly not designed to be read by academics or students at any level. It is hard to see the book's relevance to top-level executives of major organizations. They have seen all-purpose approaches to productivity improvement come and go. I think the book would appeal most to leaders of small organizations or units of larger organizations. They may be more susceptible to the Seeing Is Believing book's claims than more critical readers in the academic world or the executive suite would be.

Overall, I find it hard to recommend this book. Its approach can potentially confuse leaders, add costs, and ultimately create little value without ongoing guidance of sophisticated consultants. Following the Visual Management grammar and metaphors, I can say that Seeing Is Believing is less than meets the eye. I saw nothing new, nor did I see added value from the authors' organization of the existing literature. After reading nearly 250 pages, I am still not sure what Visual Management is.

REFERENCES

Bechtell, M. (1995). The Management Compass: Steering the Corporation using Hoshin Planning, New York: AMA.

Ohno, T. (1998). The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large Scale Production. Cambridge: Productivity Press.

Suzaki, K. (1993). The New Shopfloor Management, New York: The Free Press.