Customer Reviews

Seeing Is Believing: How the New Art of Visual Management Can Boost Performance Throughout Your Organization

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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.

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.