by Gwendolyn Galsworth, Shingo Faculty Fellow
COVID-19 didn’t just change our economy. COVID-19 changed us.
A well-worn Hindu proverb tells us: Nothing changes if nothing changes. Reverse it and the message remains: If nothing changes, nothing changes.
COVID-19 was like that. Looking at it through the wide end of the lens, COVID-19 generated fierce macroeconomic changes on a global scale. McKinsey reports that one billion U.S. workdays were lost in the first three years of COVID-19, with a workforce reduction of at least 2.6 percent (7 million people). Brookings Institute estimates that 10.6 million U.S. jobs remained unfilled in 2022. Supply chain disruptions added to the turmoil, first through widespread shutdowns and then layoffs.
The narrow-end view—the person-end—is no less gripping. While many returned to their companies, millions did not. Reasons varied. Some feared COVID-19. Others opted to continue working as their own bosses, either entering the gig economy or starting their own businesses. Still others simply left the labor force entirely—the so-called “rat race”— to stay at home and make family life a priority and/or to have more time for self-reflection and independence.
While we may credit (or blame) the U.S. federal stimulus package for such attitudinal shifts, the fact is that sectors of Americans experienced less complexity during the pandemic which, in turn, allowed them to reset personal priorities post-COVID. They did not return to work.
Crisis in Authority
The pandemic brought to boil the authority crisis that had been cooking for decades. Three long years of disruption and turmoil eroded our trust in practically everything: in government, the media, the police, our justice system and, ultimately, in what could be called our way of life. The set of principles and common practices that we are willing to accept as universal and valid has changed in the workplace and in us.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Yes, COVID-19 eroded our trust in practically everything except, surprisingly, ourselves.
Somewhere along the way, many of us began to use ourselves as a singular and increasingly reliable reference point. We became more authentic, more internally connected, more ourselves. That, in turn, triggered an explosion in diversity of content and volume. A revolution of self. One might say that each of us has begun to think for ourselves, calculating solutions to age-old societal problems that reflect a virulent diversity. These solutions do not align, not even remotely. The pandemic brought us to the brink of doom—and we lived to tell about it. Now we are back.
People are deciding. People are acting. They are not waiting for you or me or anyone to give them a voice, to provide an opportunity to speak and speak out. They are taking their voices and using them loudly. They have become their own authority . . . including at work.
COVID-19 produced a re-ordering of the internal and external landscape of our work and personal lives. Boundaries blurred. Many companies realize they need a refit—a new fit for the many people who not only now appreciate that they have options but are increasingly ready to exercise them. Respect Every Individual, a core Shingo Guiding Principle, takes on new relevancy.
Visuality in Turbulent Times
My life’s work has been about helping people become visual thinkers so their companies can transform into visual enterprises, or workplaces that speak. I did this before the pandemic. I do it now.
Businesses that have pursued and embraced visuality are now reaping the sustainable benefits that visuality can harness.
Effectively deployed, visual workplace principles and practices build a work environment designed and owned by the people who work there. Through visual thinking, the workplace becomes self-explaining so we can become self-regulating.
In a visual workplace, shifting numbers in workforce population—including the swing of seasonal employees—do not harm performance or production levels because that enterprise has been visually re-designed to withstand such challenges. In the same way, visual operations are not disrupted or weakened by the sudden presence of multiple languages or ethnicities. To the contrary, they are deliberately devised to function within those parameters. In a work environment that is becoming progressively transformed into visual functionality, diversity and irregularities do not impair operational excellence, they span and fertilize it. We have operationalized the foundational Shingo Guiding Principle Create Constancy of Purpose.
How Visuality Does It
Those unfamiliar with the power of visuality in the workplace may question my pronouncements. They may not yet know that the power of visuality resides in a power that everyone at work already possesses: the power of the mind.
The mind is our great ally because 50 percent of involuntary brain function is dedicated to finding and interpreting visual data. As automatic as our heartbeat and breath, the reflexive function of the eye-brain connection means our eyes are continually partnering with us to draw information from the physical workplace and then to find meaning in it. It is this meaning that keeps us safe—but only if the information exists in a visible form. I call that form “visual devices.”
Visual devices are physical mechanisms “intentionally designed to influence, direct or limit behavior by making vital information available to anyone and everyone who needs it without speaking a word.” Visual devices help us understand and use the work environment correctly and for the purpose for which it was designed. Vital operational details are defined and universally shared through visual devices: borders, addresses, color-coding, kanban, visual standards, metrics, dashboards, visual displays/production control boards, mistake-proof gauges and templates, visual problem-solving, and on and on. These devices, which are invented by employees who have learned to think visually, become the connectors, the vocabulary, of the universal language I call workplace visuality (of which visual management is a small subset). The result? The workplace speaks.
A visual workplace is a workplace fit for humans. And it is the humans who work there who design it.
Visuality’s purpose is to build vital workplace information into the living landscape of work in the form of devices. At the barest minimum, visual devices answer the six questions that are core to every workplace. They make precise, timely answers available to newcomers, veterans, and seasonal workers alike without speaking a word. What? When? Where? Who? How many? How?
And yet visuality can and will do so much more.
When effectively implemented, visuality creates an engaged workforce where people work with autonomy and trust—trust in themselves and trust in you. A company cannot convert to a workplace that speaks without the direct involvement and ingenuity of those who work there. It also requires leadership and, more than ever, the learning mindset implicit in the Shingo Guiding Principle Lead with Humility.
I know what you know: You cannot cut and paste a work culture in place. You have to grow it through vision and human values and beliefs. Building a workplace that can respond to turbulent times and remain stable requires the hearts, minds, and creativity of all who work there.
Create a Workforce of Visual Thinkers
Yes, in a post-pandemic world, companies will see employees come and go. Get ready. The trend will continue. But it is one thing to replace veteran employees who leave the workplace, and it is quite another to let their knowledge and know-how disappear with them.
Secure and preserve their knowledge by embedding it into the living landscape of work through visual devices. Ensure that tried-and-true outcomes are reliably and repeatably produced by anyone and everyone because they have been translated visually and made resident in the workplace itself as part of operations. The result? The company retains its balance, precision, and stability when employees leave, even abruptly. Get comprehensively visual before the crisis so that you are ready. Harness the power of the Shingo Guiding Principle Focus on the Process.
Call upon your employees to join you in visually transforming the company into a workplace that speaks. Like this:
“COVID-19 didn’t win. COVID-19 helped us see that we can—and must—build a work environment that is pandemic-proof: a visual work environment. We know it will be stable, reliable, and predictable even if some of us decide not to come back to work—or can’t. We will still be okay. Join us, won’t you? Become a visual thinker.”
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Optional footer text. If none, Advanced > Layout > Display: None
