Ten Doorways into a Visual Workplace

From CEO to value-add associates, from supervisor to engineering manager to planners, purchasers, and marketers, every level of the organization contributes to a fully-functioning visual enterprise. Dr. Galsworth’s framework, The Ten Doorways into a Visual Workplace, helps us define and understand that. 

 

Each doorway represents a different visual function; and each is linked to a distinct group of employees. In the language of these doorways, each organizational group owns and opens a specific doorway and develops a specific visual outcome or category of visual function—using one of the nine core visual methods. In this way, the company creates a visual thinking enterprise—a workforce of visual thinkers.

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That does not mean that one group is prohibited from imbedding certain levels of visuality. Rather, it means that specific groups take the lead in imbedding certain visual functions in the organization—supervisors and managers take the lead in implementing visual displays/production control boards; value-add associates (line employees) take the lead in installing visual order (amplified 5S). And so on.

 

Using the Ten Doorways as a guide, the organization can ensure that everyone in the enterprise—all members of the workforce—gets involved in asking and visually answering the need-to-know/need-to-share questions at the heart of this powerful conversion approach. When these questions are answered from the viewpoint of the individual—as Dr. Galsworth puts it, the viewpoint of the “I”—the enterprise speaks without saying a word and the operational system becomes transparent. 

 

Once we recognize the importance of the I-driven approach to visuality, the next question becomes: which doorway to open first, second, and third.

 

For more, see Chapters 5 through 7 in Dr. Galsworth book, Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking.