Visual Control Systems Connected to the Real World!

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the Visual Control Systems we use to run our businesses were as simple as that in the picture above!

Obviously businesses are a little more complex than driving a truck on a straight road in the US, but we do come across the most elaborate schematics that are supposed to be used to drive businesses.

Although a certain prowess in use of graphics is demonstrated, some key questions leap out:

·       Purpose: How do these more elaborate dashboards relate to the key Purpose or Leaders’ intent of the Organisation or Unit to which they refer?

·       Line of sight: How does the Executive have any line of sight to the Front-line to be sure they’re executing the Leaders’ intent?

·       Value of my contribution: How can people at the Front-line be sure that what they are doing supports or drives forward the Leaders’ intent?

·       (Right) Data Driven: How can Executives and Managers out to the Front-line be sure that what they see is a true representation of the underlying data, and that the right data is being used?

·       Predicted Future Direction: How does the Visual Control System help in predicting Business Performance going forward.

Canterbury District Health System has built a Visual Control System that they believe addresses each of these points both succinctly and clearly:

https://vimeo.com/336816057/d872a7718b

And, just to be clear, in the video, you’ll see charts like this one below, where the dashed lines going forward from the latest month’s data in February 2019, predict the volume of demand ahead for the next 12 months.

Perhaps a bit more useful than any-which-way-you can dashboards, although below you can see what happens if you ignore even the most simple of Visual Controls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS7WYn0qxzM&t=38s

Thanks for reading …