The traumatic events of recent months, together with the radical changes that these have brought about in the life of companies, in people's work, in the role of leaders, highlight the urgency to identify and adopt new approaches to running a company, whether public or private, towards constantly evolving and increasingly challenging objectives.
In the preface to the Italian edition of book by Tim Wiegel, Mariacristina Galgano underlines how the text offers a powerful tool to the leaders of Italian companies. The tool is called obeya, perfected by Toyota in the development of a project of great complexity: the launch of the Prius, the first hybrid model in the automotive world.
Toyota managed to develop this new car making it available on the market in half the time usually considered necessary in the automotive sector for the launch of a new model. And this was possible thanks to Obeya.
The Obeya radically changed the way of approaching a challenging goal, relying on some simple ones visual management principles, some virtuous practices for managing information, conducting meetings, exercising the role of leader.
The inspiring principles of Obeya, which derive from the Lean philosophy, can be found in numerous approaches that are very popular today, such as Agile.
But, recalls Mariacristina Galgano, the innovative aspect of the book consists in translocating the very powerful principles of the Obeya to a wider scope, with respect to their original application, making them become a tool to guide people and to create new leaders.
From an innovative method for managing complex projects to a fundamental method for aligning the entire company towards challenging objectives, for growing new leaders, generating improvement and continuous learning in the very process of achieving the objectives.
Uno tool for «Servant Leader» who believe in the value of respect for people and teamwork, but who have also understood how important it is to apply some simple but indispensable principles with constancy and discipline.
Tim Wiegel is convinced that it will be possible to achieve the objectives set only with an involved, coherent and structured leadership that is committed to growing team members and transforming people into an army of Continuous Improvement.
Literally in Japanese Obeya means "large room". It serves as a meeting point where the leaders and the operational team interact, in an open, visible and respectful way, so that the realization of the organizational strategy becomes part of the daily activity. If used correctly, it helps to remove the typical obstacles of a "traditional" managerial approach, such as egocentric policies, unclear priorities, inadequate managerial practices, misalignment, lack of direction for autonomous teams.
Toyota put the Visual Management concept into practice for the Prius project by focusing on how to leverage the best way to develop a product. The Obeya tool then became an integral part of the Toyota system for all new vehicle development projects.
Toyota has been very successful in creating a systematic way of working, cultivating its culture of Continuous Improvement and encouraging respect for people. Growing slowly but steadily, they managed to conquer the automotive industry after WWII, overtaking major global players such as General Motors and Volkswagen.
Today the Obeya concept is used by organizations around the world, adopted in healthcare, industry, banking and public services. A method used both in large multinationals and in start-ups.
The key to Obeya's success is one visible and tangible representation of the leadership system, which would otherwise be unclear. The only way to make this work is to make sure that every aspect of the organization's system is represented by people who are willing to observe, learn and act together. For the author, the true value of Obeya is created through the behavior and decision making used by the team.
Obeya's visual representation is simply a support for cognitive abilities. What matters most is how you act on this visual information.
What's on the walls of an Obeya is a result of what the team is willing and able to show about their work, both to team members and the rest of the organization.
In the Obeya, the system as understood by the leadership is visually represented by everything on the wall.
In a sense, the images on the wall are the elements of the system that the team has been able to «discover».
For Wiegel, in order to manage the system of one's organization, each element should be represented by a person, who has a specific responsibility. So when you put the puzzle pieces together as a system, each of those pieces must be represented by one person in the room. You then clearly see how the responsibilities and decisions of one person in the room influence the others.
The ambiguity about performance responsibility in the system it is thus erased by identifying the elements of the system and the representative and responsible leader of each element.
Leaders must continuously work on their own development, but also support and encourage their team members to do the same.
Fujio Cho (President of Toyota) once said, "We build people first, then we build cars."
A "construction" that must be continuous and constant to be truly effective. By connecting mentors and improvers at all levels of the organization, a consistent bottom-up learning structure and top-down strategic governance emerges, with a feedback loop unprecedented in traditional management methods.
But learning is often not part of a culture that has been developed and taught to achieve goals.
Management By Objectives (MBo) suggests reaching the target, but in this case learning tends to slow down, because the act of learning is not immediately linked to a measurable short-term company result objective.
Il Management By Objectives it is considered to be the cause of many persistent problems in today's world. Problems due not only to people's pursuit of goals, but also to how these goals are set and managed.
Learning is the other way around the central theme of the obeya, which means that Management By Objectives is replaced by Continuous Improvement of people and processes. Management will no longer have to focus only on the result but, rather, look at the process that creates the result.
Among the important scholars of the twentieth century who have influenced the philosophy of management, Wiegel is particularly remembered Peter Drucker and W. Edwards Deming.
Drucker introduced MBO to the world of management. This system is widely adopted and is responsible for the way we do accounting and reporting in today's "Westernized" societies.
The idea behind the Mbo is that a manager is evaluated on the basis of the result of his work, measuring the achievement of the objectives that have been assigned.
Deming played an important role in promoting the Continuous Improvement cycle in Japanese automakers in the XNUMXs.
According to Deming, the focus should be on the process that leads to goal achievement, and any goal should always be tested against value to customers and stakeholders.
While Deming's message did not appear to have a significant impact in Western management practices, it did have great success in Japan.
Studying the Toyota Production System – the foundation of Lean – you will find strong references and evidence of practical application of Deming's vision of Continuous Improvement.
Therefore, if management by objectives is indicated as the cause of many persistent problems in today's world, the need, expressed several times by the author, to look at Agile, Lean, DevOps and Obeya method clearly emerges.
Several times Mariacristina Galgano insists on the need to learn the notions of the Obeya and how useful Tim Wiegel's book is for this purpose. In fact, giving even a cursory look at the popular information panorama - present in many publications and online on the web - one gets the impression there is a certain misunderstanding. Agile, for example, is traced back to the shape of agile work, understood as a mixed modality in presence and remotely or in alternative precarious forms (fixed-term, temporary, external contracts and so on). And Lean and Obeya are often identified as innovation projects attributable to the use or increase of digitization. Other times these methodologies are indicated as useful tools for improving customer satisfaction. Which, if you think about it, is not even entirely wrong but certainly very simplistic and does not agree with the broader project created by Takeshi Uchiyamada.
The problem highlighted by Wiegel is found in this type of approach, i.e the difficulty of understanding the system which is the business or corporate organization. What Taleb has termed «causal opacity»1
He explains that we cannot know exactly how complex systems work and how one thing relates to another. We cannot predict exactly what will happen if we influence a specific aspect. Because of the complexity bias, we tend to avoid tackling it directly.
Every time there is a problem – which for Taleb is actually a symptom – a real one is unleashed bug hunt and an attempt is made to mitigate it with a "patch" rather than an effective solution.
We don't see and understand what's really happening because we can't see through the complexity of the system.
Following the Lean way of working, root cause research helps to show more parts of the system and try to understand why the system produces quality problems. Once this root cause is removed, quality increases and waste of material (defective products) and valuable time is prevented.
The objective of Visual management is, essentially, to satisfy our visual and cognitive abilities, helping us to see the whole system and how it is performing, trying to avoid prejudices.
Wiegel truly believes directing with Obeya maximize human potential in order to help organizations on their way, hoping that these organizations set themselves the goal of making the world at least partially better. A wish that cannot be fully shared.
The book
Tim Wiegel, Obeya. A new leadership model to guide teams and companies towards success, Guerini Next, Milan, 2021.
Italian edition by Mariacristina Galgano who also edited the translation.
Original title: Leading with Obeya.
The author
Tim Wiegel: coach specialized in the Obeya method, he is responsible for promoting organizational changes, working on the alignment between teams and organizations.
The curator
Mariacristina Galgano: AD Gruppo Galgano, manager of the Human Resources Area and Galgano Training, director in charge of Galgano Information.
