The visual elements in a workplace have a profound effect on its employees. Most organizations, however, do not recognize the power of design, art, sculpture, and graphics to create the vibrancy and energy that can drive productivity and innovation. "Seeing Is Believing" explains how to use these elements to improve communications, connect individual tasks to organizational goals, and greatly enhance employee commitment and job satisfaction.
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Editorial Reviews
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"""Liff and Posey reveal a dimension of organizational life in the Knowledge Era that we can no longer take for granted -- the sea of visual cues that pervades the workplace. Seeing Is Believing provides rigorous arguments and compelling cases to show how vision maps, customer photographs, performance charts, instructional posters, ‘walls of fame,’ and historical artifacts can engage employees, reinforce a performance ethic, and bring an organization’s mission to life.""
-- William M. Snyder, Principal, Social Capital Group, co-author of Cultivating Communities of Practice
""Liff and Posey have created a masterful work on visual management. Any manager who is unaware of how this new paradigm can improve communication, focus, and productivity will be seriously disadvantaged. Read this book!""
-- Kimball Fisher, author of Leading Self-Directed Work Teams and co-author of The Distance Manager and The Distributed Mind
""You may recognize a productive workplace when you see it, but if you have ever wondered about the principles behind creating such a workplace, this is the place to start. Both practical and visionary, Seeing Is Believing has ideas and tools for senior managers and change agents at all levels of the organization.""
-- Marty Cohen, Director, Associate Services, The Conference Board; former Senior Vice President, Client Services & Programs, Work in America Institute
""A compelling easy-to-read handbook on improving organizational performance by rallying employees around the mission and the metrics. Liff and Posey richly illustrate the method with vivid examples from successful practitioners in manufacturing, government, health care, and education. An original and totally replicable approach!""
-- Bob Stone, author of Confessions of a Civil Servant, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
""This book offers a well grounded approach to changing an organization to improve performance and employee contribution. But what is fascinating is the creative addition of visual conditions and the application of fine arts concepts to even further enhance results.""
-- Bob Wroblewski, Director, HR Planning & Administration, Weyerhaeuser
""If a picture is worth a thousand words, why are so many organizations devoid of visual excitement and coherent visual information? And, what difference would it make if, from the moment you walked into an organization, you saw and felt its purpose, its customers, its accomplishments? Seeing Is Believing expands the meaning of ‘communication’ to include the visual, and tells readers how to use visual information to help people stay energized and focused in their information-overloaded world.""
-- Patricia McLagan, Chairman, McLagan International, Inc."
Book Description
"Take a look around your workplace and try to find the following items:
A statement of business objectives. I think it’s in that pile by the copy machine.
A schedule of divisional goals. Everyone got that e-mail last year.
Clear performance standards. They’re in the employee handbook.
Team workflow documents. On the bulletin board, sticking out from under the first aid sign.
Regular communication and motivation from management to employees. We have the quarterly meeting, and we send out memos.
Stop. Is the information your employees need every day truly accessible? Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s present. When information is hard to find, outdated, nebulous, or incomplete, the effect is profound. If they can’t see it, it’s as good as nonexistent.
The fact is, the visual elements in a workplace have a tremendous impact on execution, morale, and productivity. And it’s not just about information access. A visually dynamic workplace energizes employees, builds pride and ownership, and conveys the strength and currency of the organization. Design and graphics, art and color, sculpture and dimension -- all have profound effects. Far from simply prettying up the office, your organization needs to create an environment of visual stimuli that convey goals and expectations, that engender a collaborative attitude, and most important, that cannot be ignored.
This book represents a milestone in the science of workplace design. Whereas there are countless approaches for improving the comfort factor of work environments through color, lighting, furniture, and spatial flow, Seeing Is Believing is the first book to link visual elements directly to specific organizational objectives and individual tasks.
The authors have created a step-by-step plan for creating and implementing a Visual Management program in any environment. You’ll learn how to create a dynamic VM system that:
Replaces information overload with information sharing and dramatically improved workflow
Seamlessly incorporates clear information exchange into an aesthetically pleasing and energizing workplace that will make people want to come to work
Resonates with workers of every generation, whether they identify with Life magazine or MTV
Enhances relationships not only among employees, but also with customers, business partners, investors, and the public
Ensures uniform understanding of crucial requirements and desired outcomes
Seeing Is Believing features many examples of how VM has improved performance in corporations, government offices, schools, and other organizations. The dozens of photographs and illustrations not only show the theory in action, they also show the many different approaches and alternatives you can consider in creating a VM program that’s perfect for your workplace.
Somewhere buried in the piles of paper and the daily torrent of e-mail, your organization does have great ideas, worthy goals, talented employees -- and a lot of potential. Bring them all together with Visual Management. Because seeing is believing."
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful idea poorly presented,
By
This review is from: Seeing Is Believing: How the New Art of Visual Management Can Boost Performance Throughout Your Organization (Hardcover)
Seeing Is Believing describes visual management, a "system that reinforces tried-and-true management principles and techniques through the use of fine arts techniques." That is, the book explains why and how one should use visual artifacts to communicate the organization's vision, mission, and values and gain employee support of the aforementioned; create a customer-focused environment; communicate performance goals and progress; and provide a rewarding work environment for employees, among other things. Examples of visual management include bulletin boards, posters, art works, and war rooms (entire rooms devoted to such displays). The arrangement of furniture in the workplace and the general décor also play into visual management.
The first three chapters of the book are concerned with defining visual management, explaining why it is important, and where it came from. If you ask me, the chapters could have been condensed into one. Chapter two spends an unnecessary amount of time trying to convince the reader that we have become an increasingly visual society (duh!), citing examples such as computer interfaces and the video displays on cell phones. The authors then go on to claim that this visually-oriented technology boom has forced us to become visual learners, as if learning visually is a new phenomenon (I guess the authors are not familiar with Howard Gardner's research around multiple intelligences and learning styles). After suffering through the first three chapters, the reader is finally presented with some actual examples of visual management in practice via several brief case studies. Again, the writing is less than scholarly. No data is presented to back up any of the conclusions presented. For example, the authors claim that the visuals at a particular manufacturing plant "help to reinforce success and foster a sense of pride among the employees", but provide no qualitative or quantitative data to support this claim. Chapters five and six provide a roadmap for becoming a visual management organization. The six-phase process (plan, frame, create, focus, detail, and renew) is discussed in detail along with some examples. The final chapter helps the reader assess if visual management is right for his/her organization. Although I believe visual management tactics make sense and are worth any manager's attention, I feel this book does a poor job of getting the message across. With the exception of a handful of citations throughout the book, the authors fail to share the research that informed their writing.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
VM: Bringing the art & science of management to a new level,
This review is from: Seeing Is Believing: How the New Art of Visual Management Can Boost Performance Throughout Your Organization (Hardcover)
It's hard to imagine that anyone could read this book without having an "aha" experience. Much of what Liff and Posey say is so logical it's hard to believe we haven't already been applying this technique. Liff and Posey do an excellent job of setting the stage as to why Visual Management is a necessary and logical approach in our current visually rich environment. In essence, they clearly explain the why, what, how, when, who, and where of visual management. They also provide plenty of visual examples to get our creativity flowing. This is a must read for managers who want to share information effectively and increase performance.
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