Tag Archives: visual management

Florence Nightingale; the mother of Infographics? (btw she was also a nurse……)

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20130127-152835.jpgThis week I’ve had a few interesting conversations following this exchange: Question, “What did Florence Nightingale do? ” Typical response, “She was a Nurse……(of course!)“.  But….. “did you know she was also a mathematician and in the 1850′s produced a remarkable graphic showing the causes of death of hospitalised soldiers during the Crimean war.  The graphic convinced Parliament to improve sanitary conditions, which lead to a huge decline in mortality in many areas. She was probably the mother of modern Infographics…..”

I got involved in a project to develop better ways of communicating numerical information several years ago which we called ‘graphical presentation of data’. I don’t think the word Infographic had been invented back then, so it’s nice to have something new and groovy to describe what we were up to. An associate at the time was very concerned about the potential for the manipulation of data and its misrepresentation using graphics to “tell the story you want“. We never really made much progress and I think that some of the concerns that troubled us are still evident. Some infographics I’ve seen are a biased, inaccurate, unethical or just badly put together.  If you want a useful (and entertaining) description of good and bad infographics have a look at halfblog.net and the campaign against crap infographics (more links at the end of the post).

20130127-152849.jpg

Back to Florence Nightingale. In the 1850′s she developed this graphic which was a circular histogram that she called a ‘Coxcomb’. The purpose was to illustrate the number and, more importantly, the different causes of deaths soldiers suffered during the Crimean War. The graphic illustrates difference between;

  • Red – deaths caused by wounds,
  • Black – deaths from other causes, and
  • Blue – deaths caused by diseases.

It’s clear from the Coxcomb graphic that far more soldiers died from preventable diseases than from their battle wounds.  The result was action to improve sanitary conditions which led to greatly reduced numbers of deaths.  This article by Understanding Uncertainty provides a detailed explanation and helpful animation of the graphic.

The significance for me is that Florence Nightingale was able to communicate a very important issue through the graphical presentation of hard evidence; the data. It has been suggested that this approach enabled Politicians and Civil Servants to understand the issue and take action. They would have apparently struggled to understand if the data had been presented in the format of tables or other statistical reports used at the time. Clear presentation which enabled understanding was the key to the success of Florence Nightingales’ Coxcomb. It is worth remembering that this was created over 160 years ago, and today the 1857 Coxcomb still sets a standard that many modern infographics could aspire to. Florence Nightingale could in my view claim to be the mother of modern infographics

One last observation. Writing this post was partly prompted by reading this blog post  from Ayrshire Health, and a very brief twitter conversation with Derek Barron (@dtbarron) about nursing research.  The gist was around how some research is presented in a very academic way that can obscure understanding. That got me thinking about Florence Nightingale again, thanks Derek.

I’m not aware of how much the mathematical research and data presentation capabilities of Florence Nightingale feature in modern nurse research and communication training. In my view you’ve got a very helpful role model.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. The graphical presentation of data (aka infographics) has been around for long time.
  2. It is an effective and quick method of clearly communicating complicated information, and can have a huge impact.
  3. Like any method of communicating there are good, bad and terrible examples of infographics and how to use them. Be careful how you use a powerful tool.

Photo Sources: Florence Nightingale picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Florence_Nightingale_CDV_by_H_Lenthall.jpg

Coxcomb Graphic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nightingale-mortality.jpg

Useful Links: mostly from halfbog.net

Good Examples. http://halfblog.net/2013/01/22/infographics-of-xkcd/

Not so good. http://halfblog.net/tag/crap-infographics/

I had to end this with a link to an Infographic. Here is the latest from Mashable showing the rise in Infographics: http://mashable.com/2013/01/26/infographics-marketing/

Do car dealers use the lean thinking from the manufacturing process?

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This is on the heels of recent posts about customer services. This morning, in the pouring rain and a howling gale, I dropped my mother’s car off at the garage for repairs. I hadn’t been there for about 7 years but was instantly reminded of why I stopped – shocking organisation which resulted in hassled staff and poor customer service.

Looking at what was going on I couldn’t help thinking, they could do with some Lean thinking here. A bit of Gemba Mat wouldn’t go amiss either. Admittedly it wasn’t a Toyota dealership, but I’m sure the manufacturers they represent would employ some sort of Lean thinking. Why on earth hadn’t it found its way out here?

This is what I experienced:

  • Lack of signs. The service department and sales were opposite sides of a main road. There was nothing obvious to say this and I initially went to the wrong place.
  • Drop off time. I was only offered 8.30am as was everyone else. This had negative consequences.
  • At drop off time the area around the Garage is highly congested with people dropping off vehicles, commuter traffic and the local kids heading to school.
  • There aren’t enough ‘service’ parking spaces at the garage. You either need to park on the main highway or in a nearby street.
  • If you are being collected, your lift will have to park some distance away; a big deal if it’s raining like today.
  • Everyone booking in at 8.30am leads to long queues and delays at the booking desk.
  • People are hassled because they are running late, this translates into irritation with the booking clerk.
  • The booking clerk gets annoyed, and a vicious circle develops with the next customer in line.
  • Just to add the icing on the cake, the detailed information provided over the phone hasn’t found its way onto the partly prepared paperwork, so they ask you all the same questions again. Fine when you know your vehicle intimately, not so good when dropping off your mother’s car.
  • Finally, you know that the car won’t be seen until at least 2pm.
  • Now proceed to work….. “Have a nice day”….. No thanks to the garage.

I know there is a better way.

I’ve experienced it in other garages.

Had the garage taken even a cursory look at the process they would have seen so much opportunity to improve the flow and end up with happier customers and (I’m sure) happier and more engaged staff.

My suggestions to improve:

  • Multiple booking in slots during the day. Even a morning and afternoon session would reduce the congestion and have considerable benefits.
  • Better signs – let people know what’s happening and where. All pretty straightforward visual management / 5s activity.
  • Please use the diagnostic information you get over the phone.

I do find it amazing that this was the customer facing end of a highly efficient manufacturing organisation that uses approaches like lean, yet it doesn’t seem to travel beyond the factory gates. I wonder why?

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Some systems and processes are set up in a way that they cause blockages which results in an inefficient service and customer dissatisfaction.
  2. Customer dissatisfaction can have a negative impact on staff which leads to a ‘vicious circle’ developing.
  3. There are straightforward techniques like Gemba Mat which help improve processes and flow. They are widely used in vehicle manufacturing and could be adapted and applied by car dealers…….. please have a go.

But there is hope at the end of this tale. I’ve just come across the book featured in the picture. ‘Creating Lean Dealers’ by David Brunt & John Kiff. It was a Shingo Prize winner for research award in 2010 so well worth a read. I’m going to recommend it when I pick up the car, today hopefully.

“Car manufacturing has been transformed by lean over the last 20 years, yet car dealerships have remained virtually untouched – until now. “

Flipchart foraging and why its worth trying the Draw Something app

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One of my pastimes is checking out the abandoned flipcharts I find in the variety of offices and meeting rooms I get to frequent. It’s quite a revealing pastime (possibly about me unfortunately). Occasionally you do stumble across sensitive material, obviously this goes straight in the confidential waste bin, or back into the hands of the originator. However, it’s the other material on flipcharts that fascinates me. I reckon you can get a useful insight into an organisation from the debris gets left behind on the flipcharts. The more frantic the scribbles, the more I like it.  Line & box diagrams, mind maps, dodgy graphs, stick people and bullet points all feature. Whatever form it takes it’s all a great informal record of organisational life. The real story of what’s going on from the hands of the people who know the place best.

This helpfully gives me an opportunity to talk about some recent experiences where a drawing has helped focus a discussion.

Twice recently I’ve sat in meetings, slightly bored and detached from the action (a familiar situation for many I suspect). What this allowed was the opportunity for a bit of observation and testing a theory of mine about the impact of flipchart drawings.

Meeting 1. Business Process Review.  Nine people sat around a table discussing a document management process. It felt like something from a Dilbert cartoon. The alpha males and females (3 people) were vying for superiority, while two others were doing the best they could to get heard. The rest were in various stages of disengagement.  Plenty of arm waving and use of technical language to demonstrate ‘one’s own cleverness’ was going on. What looked obvious to me was that there were at least two versions of the truth being spoken about, and a contractor (supposed to be delivering the solution) looking confused, frustrated and increasingly desperate.

Eventually some bright spark suggested the contractor draw the process on a flipchart. Bingo! Suddenly everyone was talking about the same thing and rapid progress was achieved. It took 40 minutes to get to this point and 10 minutes to agree some action.

Meeting 2. Comparing Supplier Costs. Thinking about it now, this was a completely daft situation.  A group of 7 people were trying to compare two sets of figures. Most people had the first set of figures. Only one person had a copy of the second, and had only shared them verbally. The discussion was passionate and detailed, with strongly held views about the figures, but completely pointless.

Eventually someone wrote down the figures on a flipchart. It immediately became obvious where the issues where. This was incredibly not in the place where people had been expressing strongly held views! The group then got around to concentrating on the most important issues and developing options. Again, this one took about 40 minutes (of wasted time) before someone wrote on the flipchart and focused the discussion.

A few things I learnt from observing these events:

  • Some people love to talk and express an opinion, no matter how irrelevant;
  • A lack of a clear objective or point of focus allows the misguided (or even the meeting saboteurs I previously mentioned) to flourish;
  • People quickly disengage in these situations; and
  • A few ‘scribbles’ on a flipchart puts it all back on track.

If this is what can be achieved with a few amateur scribbles, imagine what can be achieved through expertly drawn graphics? Have a look at an earlier post about graphic facilitation and the fantastic material organisations like Delta7 generate by working with the people in organisations.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Focusing a discussion or a meeting by putting something down on paper can (usually does) help everyone understand and ‘speak the same language’.
  2. Using drawings, graphics or other illustrations can really help, especially with complicated processes, ideas or difficult situations.
  3. Next time you are in a meeting going nowhere, have a go yourself, start drawing and see what happens.

If you are wondering, here is the connection with Draw Something.  If you are slightly nervous about putting something on paper, download the Draw Something app and start drawing. Practice makes perfect … possibly. I wonder if I can fit Elvis into a work context…….?

Linked posts: http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/the-staff-dont-understand-quick-draw-them-a-picture-or-something/

Ricoh Gemba Mat, the best of Ohno Circles, Gemba Walks and Employee Engagement.

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Gemba Mat is an improvement tool which combines the ideas behind Ohno Circles, the Gemba Walk and enhances them through employee engagement.  I think it is incredibly effective, not just as an improvement tool but also in how it engages and develops people. I saw Gemba Mat in use at Ricoh in Telford during an IdeasUK networking event.  Thanks to Chris Nicholls from Ricoh for allowing me to share this.

The method is beautifully simple, low-cost and something I think could be used in just about any setting, not just manufacturing environments. This is how it works:

  • The whole process takes 60 minutes;
  • The observers find a good spot, and place the Gemba Mat on the ground;
  • The  observers then stand on the mat and observe what is happening in the process or activity in front of them;
  • To help with the observations there are some prompts on the mat (7 factory wastes and 5 facilities),see the attached picture;
  • Problems observed are recorded on an observation sheet;
  • There is space for a maximum of 30 observations, and the observation period lasts 30 minutes;
  • In the remaining 30 minutes the observer is tasked with resolving (closing out) one of the problems (getting a quick win I think is an important part of maintaining momentum);
  • Remaining problems are considered as part of the Ricoh suggestion scheme;
  • There are repeat visits to the area to confirm problems have been resolved or countermeasures are in place;
  • The Gemba Mat exercise can also be carried out at different times of the day or from different observation points to see what problems can be seen.

This is an incredibly effective improvement and engagement tool. The results at Ricoh speak for themselves. They have won numerous international awards for quality and innovation, including awards from IdeasUK. At Telford the results they get for employee engagement in their staff survey are remarkably good.

A few things struck me while I was observing Gemba Mat at Ricoh.

  1. Ritualisation of the Improvement Process. The act of rolling out the Gemba Mat and placing it on the floor is highly significant, a bit like a ritual. It’s almost like saying to your brain, “forget everything else, you are now going into observation mode, to look for problems, and how to solve them”. We’ve all heard about athletes and performers going through rituals or warm ups before they perform. I’m sure there is something similar going on here, all of the thought patterns for problem spotting are brought to the front of your mind when you roll out the Gemba Mat.
  2. It’s a proper tool. The best tools are the ones that just work. They are easy to use; they help you get the job done, no fuss. Gemba Mat is just that, a perfect tool for the job.
  3. People like using it. In an offline conversation one of the employees told me that they had experienced some down time the previous week, “so we just picked up the Gemba Mat and went off to look at what another team did. They found it really useful”.  This was a spontaneous act which the whole team got involved in. There were no management ‘drivers’, no external ‘push’, they just did it. If that’s not an example of people being engaged in work, I don’t know what is.

Thanks again to Chris and IdeasUK for the opportunity to see Gemba Mat in action. Follow @ChrisNicholls12 and @ideasworldwide (IdeasUK) on Twitter if you want to find out more, particularly if there are IdeasUK networking events at Ricoh, which are well worth attending.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Gemba Mat is an incredibly effective improvement and engagement tool.
  2. Like all the best tools it’s easy to use and just works.
  3. Ritualising the improvement process through the act of rolling out the Gemba Mat and placing it on the floor has an important effect on how people use the tool.

Links to other posts:

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/gemba-walks-kaizen-the-elvis-way-walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/employee-engagement-kaizen-passion-in-the-west-midlands-ricoh-telford-to-be-exact/

Gemba Mat in action at Ricoh.

 

5s and visual management in hospital

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Sanitising your hands isn't a new invention.

Sanitising your hands isn't a new invention.

This is another experience to come out of my visit to hospital. I couldn’t help notice how much effort had gone into 5S and visual management on one of the wards. Good news I thought as I’d heard a lot about how it is being used to improve effectiveness in hospitals.

5S (sort, set, shine, standardise, sustain) is a method for organising the workplace which has evolved from Japanese manufacturing techniques. It is now being widely applied to all sorts of activities, including public services, as part of an overall continuous improvement, Kaizen type approach. Also linked to this are visual management  or control techniques which deliberately use visual signs or symbols to help improve a process.

Lots of people are into using these approaches as methods of improving process outcomes. A quick look at You Tube will get you an extract from Family Guy illustrating the need for 5s in hospitals, whilst some more serious videos give a good explanation of what 5s is all about, in straightforward terms. The gist is, if you can see where things are and what needs doing, you’ll get the job done more efficiently, rather than wasting time looking for things. All good news and just the sort of approach that I wanted to see as a patient. The application of these approaches in hospitals has had many benefits, and there is plenty of evidence to prove it.

One of the things that interested me though was the longevity of these initiatives. Once the enthusiasts have left to evangelise elsewhere what happens? Well I might have got an answer from my stay on the ward. One of the successes of the 5S approach was the use of background sheets for hand sanitiser dispensers. These were a different colour to the hand sanitiser gel and allowed you to see if the translucent dispenser was empty. They also had a nice big “clean your hands” slogan prominently displayed. A really good visual management initiative in the fight against hospital acquired infections.

This specific application however relies upon the background sheet and the dispenser being positioned with the dispenser on top of the background sheet. But this is not what I saw during my stay. The background sheet and dispenser sat adjacent to each other. Completely not what was intended. No obvious reason why, maybe they had got new dispensers and this is how the maintenance people had fixed them? Whatever the reason, it wasn’t doing what was intended, and nobody seemed to notice. A great visual management initiative that seemed to have run into the sand.

So, what’s the PONT?
1. Things like 5S and visual management are good improvement techniques but they need people to own them.
2. Once the evangelists have gone away things can lose momentum.
3. For practices like this to succeed, everyone has to understand and believe. I suspect whoever placed the dispenser next to the background sheet, not on top of it, neither believed or understood.

Sanitising you hands isn’t a recent invention.  If you are interested, there are thousands of pictures of hand sanitiser dispensers on Flickr. People do have diverse interests!

Kaizen! Toast v Beer, Who Wins?

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Welsh Toast

Wales shaped Toast, how good is this. Genius!

I love You Tube, it a great resource for sharing and learning but sadly not widely used by public services (in many organisations it’s blocked, like most social media). I’m also quite interested in beer, so this grabbed my attention, particularly when you throw in Kaizen.

Amongst the dozens of You Tube videos on Kaizen, these two really caught my attention, Kaizen Toast and Kaizen Beer! Both practically explain the principles of Kaizen but from slightly different angles. I thought it would be a bit of fun to compare them and see which one wins, so here goes.

As the enlightened know, we will need some quantitative data and some contextual narrative information for this. The numbers are accurate, but not always believable, the narrative is believable, but not always accurate. If we put them together we will get something accurate, believable and overall convincing.

Toast v Beer Kaizen – Metrics Table (17 June 2011)

Indicator TOAST! BEER! Why use this indicator?
Views 59,177 5,129 More might mean better?
Likes 19 9 User feedback, excellent
Dislikes 5 2 More customer feedback, even better
Comments # 13 4 Level of feeling & opinion generated
Comments +\-ve 40\60 ish 90\10 ish Hmm, hard to judge what they mean
Duration 5.12 min / 30 mins 9.30 min Too long = boring (potentially)
Awards Shingo No Someone else thinks it’s good

Well, Toast looks like the winner, but let’s consider the narrative behind the
numbers.

Toast Kaizen, is produced by the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership and is presented by their Shingo Prize  recipient Bruce Hamilton. The video gives an introduction to Toast Kaizen, applying Kaizen to a familiar setting, the kitchen, and a familiar process, making toast. If you want the full 30min version (available in 11 languages) you’ll need to buy it ($99). A quality You Tube video which Kaizen enthusiasts and learners will no doubt enjoy.

Beer Kaizen! , this is a very funny take on the world of Kaizen, focussing on a ‘work activity’ I can really understand, drinking beer with my friends. The 9.30 mins flew by and I think I actually learned a lot about Kaizen. My personal beer distribution system is now worthy of a Six Sigma Black Belt. Even an untrained operative (kids friends), or reluctant/resistant workers (my kids) can now successfully serve me up a beer. Actually the video is a homage to the Toast Kaizen video, but it does the trick very cleverly.

So what’s the PONT?

  1. Hopefully you’ve picked up a bit of learning about Kaizen by watching those videos. Lots of things on YouTube are great resource, it’s not all keyboard cat (excellent though it is!).
  2. Humour is used in both of these videos, a great way of getting learning transferred.
  3. Different things work for different audiences (beer for me), I think that both videos are winners, nice one guys.
Brains Beer Tapas

Brains Beer Tapas, more Welsh genius.