Visual Workplace: Transforming Operations through Visuality with Gwendolyn Galsworth

Discover the Power of Visual Workplace Management with Industry Leader Gwendolyn Galsworth

Imagine a workplace where visual devices act as a universal language, driving operational excellence while enhancing communication and engagement across every level of the organization. Gwendolyn Galsworth expertise brings into focus the critical cultural transformation required for visuality to become a true language of success. She emphasizes that these tools are most effective when developed by the very people who use them—whether on the factory floor or in the boardroom.

Gwendolyn Galsworth, PhD, is considered by many the world’s leading expert in visual workplace/visual management as a concept, paradigm, and transformational practice. She is very hands-on, working with companies in every part of the globe. Author of seven books on the topic, Dr. Galsworth will release two more in 2025. She is a Shingo Faculty Fellow, Shingo Academy Member, and frequent keynote speaker. 

Step into a work environment shaped by visual harmony, where the insights of everyone from material handlers to CEOs are represented through innovative visual tools. Discover the delicate art of balancing these varied perspectives to cultivate a cohesive, engaging atmosphere. Together, we’ll explore the need for evolving industry regulations that foster continuous improvement, as well as how a visually managed workplace can create unity and identity while sparking creativity and vitality.

Reflecting on the lessons of the pandemic, Gwendolyn reveals how visuality can be a powerful language, not just in the workplace, but in everyday life. Join us in envisioning a future where technology and human experience seamlessly merge, creating workplaces that are efficient, creative, and joyful.

Chapters

• 0:13 The Power of Visuality in Operations
• 17:51 The Essence of Visual Workplace
• 26:38 The Power of Visual Communication
• 38:45 The Impact of Visuality in Workplaces

Transcript

Nancy Nouaimeh: 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Excellence Foresight Podcast. I'm your host, Nancy Nouaimeh. I'm a Shingo affiliate since many years and today I'm very pleased to be hosting Gwendolyn Galsworth. We met together in Germany back in 2019 when I attended the first Shingo European Conference. Gwendolyn welcome. Gwendolyn is a PhD. She's considered by many the worlds' leading expert in visual workplace visual management as a concept, paradigm and transformational practice. She's very hands-on, working with companies in every part of the globe. She's author of seven books on the topic and Dr Galsworth will release two more in 2025. She's a Shingo Faculty Fellow, Shingo Academy member and frequent keynote speaker. You can visit her website for 100 plus free articles, free videos and free podcasts. You can visit the website on www. visualworkplace. com. Gwendolyn, thank you so much for being with us here today.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 1:15

Thank you. It's a pleasure indeed, nancy. I really value our collaboration. Thank you.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 1:21

And I'm so pleased that this is the first guest. We are in the same country now, so both of us are in Ireland enjoying the sunny day here in Ireland today. So let's dive in into the topic of today visuality. Please, let's start with the big picture of visuality. Gwendolyn, can you explain visuality in the simplest terms for our guest today?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 1:42

It will be simple terms, but it will be, for some people, new terms, because through my years, even decades, working with the paradigm and developing it, the realization I had that simplified. Everything for me is that visuality is a language. It is a language that's made up of visual devices. It isn't just a tool, it isn't an intervention, it isn't simply a solution. When we look at it, big picture, we understand that these devices can and should talk to us, and talk to us as whole vocabulary of operational excellence. And I'll say something else to set the foundation. Visuality is about information, information that is interpreted into a solution, interpreted into a solution. But, big picture, as I said a moment ago, the devices talk to each other, the devices become the language of operations and the devices connect the enterprise. And that's the big picture.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 3:00

Thank you, and I really like the fact that you mentioned solutions. You've mentioned talking to us, so it's really a way where we can engage right the workforce. Now we know that visual management has been around for a while, but visuality takes it further. So how does it go beyond just putting up a few signs and charts? What is the important thing that it brings?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 3:20

Well, the important thing is there's about a dozen important things, but I would say the under the horizon part of what I just said about it being a language is who creates this language, and that's the cultural component of visuality, that visual devices, even though they're inspired by devices that you see elsewhere, cannot be imported solution by solution. It's an idea, it's a concept. A solution represents a way of presenting information that makes it readily available, makes it complete to its purpose, makes it accurate and precise, but the thinking behind that design is done by the people who use them. That means operators, that means supervisors, that means CEOs, that means maintenance, that means marketing finance. So, depending on your function, finance, so depending on your function, your words are going to be changed, the solutions, but they will be looking at quality and safety and connectivity and speed or flow flow, accelerated flow, called speed. They will be looking at the operational parameters that make up your KPIs and they are, if you use this language, also your KBIs, your KPI's key performance, key production indicators and or I believe it is key performance indicators and KBI's key behavioral indicators. The behavioral aspect of our operations and of our success, of our effectiveness, really came about as a surfaced element.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 5:16

About 10 years ago we were greatly helped by the Shingo Prize. Great, my pin, my Shingo prize pin this is my favorite. We get a different one every year. This one I've had pre-COVID, I like it very much, has the flame of the Shingo. Yes, thank you, I have an extra one, so next time I see you. The whole idea was always embedded in the Toyota production system, but it was surfaced in great part by the work that Dr Stephen Covey did with the Shingo Prize about 10 years ago. He helped the Shingo Prize name principles of that model as compared to just outcomes or tools, and that was really revolutionary. And during that time the idea of KBIs came in, that we can actually track and measure, quantify and improve people behaviors, which is just extraordinary.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 6:19

Of course, this is your work, nancy, and it is the work of all of us who work in business and industry. We have to look at the how, not just the what or even the why, but how things come into place, and we have to be careful that this allows people to make their contribution, to become engaged, become spirited, to in a sense, find a second life at work, and a meaningful one. And visuality is all of those things. Visuality is a creative process. People learn how to think visually. They learn about motion, which I'm sure we won't have time to talk about today in any depth. That satisfies me, but emotion, which is the way we dig into missing information, and that people are the scientists of visuality and of visual thinking. So, yes, that's right. Culture.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 7:16

Your work with the Shingo model teaches us how important it is to focus on people and have a human-centric culture, and all that you've spoken about goes into that direction how to engage people, give them the information, make them part of the process, tap on their creativity. So all of this is really very important, I think, for organizations willing to move forward. Well said, thank you. And the key behavior indicator, I think, is new to our audience. So my second question would be about what's the most unexpected place you've seen visuality successfully applied in.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 7:49

I have two of them, not visuality as an intentional outcome, but a purposeful outcome. I remember I was going for a walk. I was doing a presentation in Colorado, which is really farm country. There's a lot of rural aspects and also wilderness aspects of Colorado. I was walking along the road and just walking along the road, green here, cows and green there and as I walked along I saw painted in the roadway stripes and they were stripes going horizontally across the road and there was no one around, so it wasn't a walking band. It was just there on the road bars, two different colors white and black, white and black, white and black about six deep. And I thought, wow, what could this be? White and black, white and black, white and black, about six deep. And I thought, wow, what could this be? There's no one around, barely a car. I'm the only human in sight and I'm walking along, walking along and I pass the cows and I look in at the cows and just as I'm doing that, a car comes by and I go out into the road because I'm a curious person and I wave him down. There was no emergency.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 9:08

It was in the middle of the night. He slows down, guy slows down, and I said please help me out. I'm a stranger here, I'm just a visitor. Tell me what those lines are that you just crossed over. He said they're for the cows. They keep the cows from wandering off. And I said what are you talking about? It's two dimensional. There's no barrier. It's not like the bars that you see in the grid that keeps cows from crossing out of the field onto the road, because the cow puts their foot the hoof, I should say on the bar and slips. And of course it doesn't take long for the cow to say I'm not going near that. And he said it works the same way. Don't know why, if we put it visually on the road, the cows don't go near it. And I said and so I said thank you.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 10:02

And then I began to research. And the research is that the cows will not go, they will not work where they cannot see the bottom of an empty space. That's the trigger mechanism. And it really is hard won research, because you're not asking the cows what's going on, you're testing, testing. That's the hypothesis right now that because of the black in the contrast with the white, you have a space, you have a void, and the cows have it built in, kind of programmed in. They don't go where, they can't see the bottom, very interesting. And you know what that feeds into directly something.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 10:37

And I'll give you the example of the second one, which is even more amazing, that one's from australia. What it feeds into is the mechanism of our brain. You know, even though in some cases it's microscopic, every living creature that moves on the earth, not sure about where it is on trees, that's another discussion but has a brain and the brain function and functions in a particular way. And most have eyes. Some don't. Very deep into the sea, they don't have eyes. Some don't very deep into the sea, they don't have eyes, they don't need them. And these are two separate organisms in the human. The eyes are one, set is one organism and the brain is another. So it's a collaboration between it's, not as though it's one.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 11:25

Mechanism Also the way I thought until I started to look into neuroscience a little bit further. Mechanism also the way I thought until I started to look into neuroscience a little bit further. 50% of the human's involuntary brain function is dedicated to visual visuality, to seeing, to finding that which is visual, to finding visual data in the seeable environment and interpreting it. 50% of our involuntary brain. And what's so interesting about that is, as you know, we've been told since we've been little that humans only use 10% of their brain. That's the voluntary part of their brain. That's the voluntary part of their brain, but 50% of what's left. So you got 90% there. I can still hear you. 50% of that 90% is left. 50% of that 90% is dedicated to visuality.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 12:24

And so when we go into an environment, a factory, even an office, an agency, a military depot, and visuality is not the embedded language of production, the operational language of production, the human is always stressed out, always stressed out. You will get this experience when you go into a factory or office the first time and you stand at the threshold as a consultant. This is a very good exercise to do with your clients, and what your brain is doing is this and they are consulting questions. What am I seeing? I can't interpret anything, I can't anchor anywhere, I can't differentiate, I can't see and therefore I'm in danger. And this state will continue until it simply drops back. But the question never goes away. The brain is always working on making that connection, doing its purpose, which is to help the eyes, take the information from the eyes and say to the mechanism, to the body, to the instrument. To us you're okay, you're safe, and if that doesn't happen, the noise is always in the brain.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 13:45

So, visuality honestly, these are perhaps subtle when you first think of it, but a non-visual workplace is by definition a stressful workplace. Get permutations of that. Consequences of that are bad quality, of just making mistakes, accidents, confusion. But you also get frustration, demoralization, you know this, discouragement. You also get from that anxiety, irritation that easily moves into anger, and then suppressed anger, and then guilt, and then blame and then all of this emotional noise. It's critically important that we see.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 14:35

I'm giving you a longer answer, but it was such a great question because we opened up what is the human related to visuality. It's very important and it's so minutely understood. When we think of just what's the visual device, what do we? Yeah, I'll tell you what the visual device is, but let me tell you what it is. When it isn't there, then you know. Then you know. You don't need to just know what's right, you need to know what happens when it's wrong, when it absent. And that's the second. I'll just give you this. I'm excited about this. Of course I love, I love this aspect of thinking, the question the brain has is what am I seeing? Answer is nothing. But for the consultant, for the consultant, for the operator who's a visual thinker, for the says why do I want visuality?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 15:34

The questions go like this there are two sets. One is what am I seeing? What does it mean? Then you can say I'm seeing nothing. What does it mean? Golly, we're not connected. Golly, we're making mistakes. Golly, we have excess whip. Golly, our customers are connected. Golly, we're making mistakes. Golly, we have excess whip. Golly, our customers are unhappy. What am I seeing? What does it mean? The second question is the second set is what am I not seeing? What does it mean? And that is the question where you can just move right to the horizon. It's very important.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 16:07

Should I tell you the second example, the second example, should I you? The second example, the second example, should I? Yeah, please, I know you have many more questions, but the second example, that was in an unexpected place. I didn't see with my own eyes, but I was giving a presentation in Australia and there are a lot of people in the room. I don't get to know them unless they come up. And there are a lot of people in the room, I don't get to know them unless they come up. And this lady comes up and she says I'm a nurse in old people's home, in home for the elderly. That's nice, did you like the presentation? Oh, yes, but I want to tell you I saw you four or five years ago and I tried out what you said about borders, stinking little borders. This is me speaking now. Little lines on the ground. You know on the floor who cares, she said.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 16:54

But I was thinking I work with a lot of Alzheimer's patients and it's patients who have dementia. That's why they're in our home, because they need a protected, supportive environment. And I work the night shift and one of the troubles that we have is that we want to keep the door open so we can see what's happening, but we want to keep the door shut so people don't get up out of their bed and wander around and maybe find an open door and go out into the night. This has happened to us before. So I tried out your idea about borders as a pattern and I put a border across the threshold on the ground. I did it with just some tape on the carpet to see if it would keep the person who was in the room, in the room it didn't. But then you know what I did widened it and it did. That's yeah, widened it and it did. I widened it.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 17:51

The person this is and I'm sorry I'm going to make the connection with the cow. The person responded as the cows did, but it needed to be wide enough to open this idea of void I don't know what's at the bottom of it and she was elated and she came up to thank me for the idea, but I didn't. She was a thinker and she said you know, I think this has got legs. I'm going to make this work. She widened it. It was fantastic and I hope anyone who's listening will understand that visual devices, visual solutions, come from understanding the process that I'm discussing now. The harvest is unlimited. This can really solve so many things in a factory and create great joy and connectivity. You know, make us really happy that we thought of it.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 18:48

I think you have great stories here, and I think I mean every. In every environment, we can adjust the tools and devices to our needs, and this is where I think the thinking and the understanding what the need is would be very, very important and very helpful. I thank you very much for all of this. I mean great information and great stories, but my question now would be if you would design an ultimate visual workplace, what would it look like? What tools you would think need to be there and they are essential for people to be able to construct that visual workplace.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 19:24

Now, nancy, I admire you greatly. That's an impossible question to answer in the time that we have, but I am going to give you the answer that I would tell you if we had 10 hours. But I want you to know that what you're asking me to describe is what that would look like. So I'm going to do it conceptually. Isn't actually a great question? Because it's once again conceptual. You're a conceptual thinker, so refreshing.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 19:56

The ultimate visual workplace would contain a workplace, whether it is an agency, a military depot, a continuous process flow utilities, hardcore manufacturing, metal, my favorite places to work hot metal, bent steel mills, hot rolling mills I love that stuff. People who work with fire. They are the coolest people in the world. There's no junk left in them. The fire just burns it all out of them. They're just lovely, full human beings. It's the fire that does it. It's so beautiful.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 20:39

What that workplace would look like is it would sound like many voices. If the devices had a voice, it would sound like a chorus. It would be the voices, the workplace that speaks for the operator, for the operator in the cell, for the material handler, for the stock person, for the front office. It would hold their voice and it would hold the voice of the supervisor, their voice, and it would hold the voice of the supervisor, blending perfectly in that management role, and the CEO's voice would be down there on the floor as well, in the form of visual devices that gave him the information he needed to know that he was doing the job he was supposed to and how he could help. So what you have is a kind of orchestra. You have many, many, many visual devices and you look for that balance when I'm asked. I'm going to be going to the Netherlands next week and spend a couple of three days assessing and talking, assessing a factory it's actually five different sites and the managers are going to be there and they want, they want my take on things, and what I'm going to be looking for is not a dozen visual devices, not three dozen. A visual workplace is created by visual thinkers and it is populated by thousands of visual devices.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 22:07

You have to really change your ISO regulations and if you're in pharma, you have to create ways of letting people have revisions, experimental revisions, so that they are engaged in improving their visual devices so they get the outcome they want. And so your regs have to your regulations. I'm working with another company just beginning, man in Denmark and it's a pharma Lots and lots of money and resources and their process for triggering and absorbing improvement is completely blocked by the regulations. The regulations are not there to stop good quality, to stop safety. So you have to negotiate with the people who put the regulations in place and say we need to have a differentiation between what regulations are mission-critical, negative and what regulations will allow improvement to go on as a process. So it's that idea of many voices and that's a lot of work to change a whole industry.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 23:16

But if you can think of it as a language again, we go back to where we began that visuality is a language, nancy. Then you get it right, then it becomes a flow and it becomes a joy to create more. You need to have the process, the protocol of visual thinking, which I map out in all my books. It's quite simple and we'll do it another time. But if you get that, you do it by iteration. That's what it looks like. It looks like consciousness made physical, because the visual workplace is a physical workplace, so you're always going to see devices, but the layer that you get from that is connectivity. The workplace is unified. My work is about two things it's about unity and identity. It's about individual identity, the individual, visual thinker, the authentic, be it grumpy, be it happy, but that authentic person coming to work, bringing himself and unifying that, allowing that diversity, you see, allowing that difference to blend into one. It's so beautiful. This is my work, you know, I really love my work and it's been such a gift for me as it is for you.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 24:40

You know, I see the same vitality in you.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 24:46

Yeah, I think, in fact, working with people and trying to help them and bring these new elements to the workplace are very important. I think companies, when they don't focus on continuous improvement, when they don't focus on engaging their people and getting that visuality into the workplace, they're missing a lot. And you gave us a lot of examples, gwen, about the negative impact of that and the positive impact for that on the employee experience, even on stakeholders' experience. So I would like us maybe to spend a little bit of time. You mentioned the firefighters. If I would ask you this question, think about the visual management superhero. What would your name be as a superhero and what would your superpowers be?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 25:24

Just like a brief summary of our discussion, I saw that question and I thought are we even going to get that far? I'm surprised we get that far, but I have to say something first, because you have such a good following and because I'm basically here to share my knowledge. This is not what we are talking about, is not visual management, visual management what we are talking about is not visual management. Visual management and I can take you through a one-hour presentation on that and demonstrate and prove it to you is 10% of what a visual workplace is 10%. And when people call it visual management, with all due respect, I cringe because we're already thinking about visuality as something that is managing something else or managing me. But it's much more intimate than that and much more granular. So the big picture is visual workplace, workplace visuality, visual thinking, and a part of that is visual management, which is there to give us feedback. It's the feedback element of visuality, my the superpowers.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 26:38

You know, if I were that hero, and perfectly you know, I just feel as though I've been given so many gifts that all I want to do is give it back. I mean, my life is so interesting and it's such. I'm a curious person and I'm discovering things all the time, even in talking to you. There were one or two bells that went off that I thought I need to follow that up and find out the real, the next layer of answer. I would like to reach more people, and it's why I'm doing this. I want people to know what visuality is and to know that it is their own. It is their own language. Now management has to allow the paradigm to enter and support it and give people a learning curve, a time to demonstrate, so that they see how powerful it is and how it solves problems they don't even know. Are there that they are misnaming? So I?

Nancy Nouaimeh: 27:48

it's a darling question, but I don't know how to answer it. I have no idea. A cape Wings, I don't know, better ears, shranger teeth? I don't know, I don't know. You explained to our audience here is that you know it starts with the visual workplace, but visual management is just the feedback and sometimes working with a Shingo model. We know that tools are good, but we should focus on the systems and the culture. Yes, focus on the devices and visual management. We're missing a lot. So thank you for clarifying this, gwen. I think it's very important for everyone to understand the difference. Now, the tools are important and innovation, creativity in bringing new tools, like the lady in the elderly home, what she did with widening the lines. So do you have any examples of innovative tools that people, maybe companies, now are using in terms of creating that visual workplace, something new? You've encountered innovative ideas that you think are important for our audience to know about?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 28:46

You know I'm going to take a slightly different tack so I can give you an answer, because my habit when I see a great visual device is take a picture of it and try to figure out a way to fit it into one of my books, newsletter or something. But I'd like to say, for example, just talk about two things. These are my two next books. One is going to be on visual displays, production control boards and any kind of display, and the other one is going to be about visual problem solving, visual displays. What I would ask the listener to consider is whether or not their devices really represent not just the voice but the conversation that goes on between visual device and the author or the user. Because what this is is a visual device holds information and I need it. I pull it to me. This is our dual question, which you know very well what do I need to know? What do I need to share, what do I need to know? I make a visual device to capture that information, but it doesn't give me complete information, or it doesn't give it to me on time, or I've discovered another question under the first question and what I people to understand is keep the conversation going with your device and if it fails, you then improve it and do another iteration. You will notice your motion, you will notice that it stops and you need more. So make your device more powerful. And what happens is that the workplace becomes rich with silence because people are listening to their devices and they're interested in whether or not this device fully satisfies my purpose. And if it doesn't, the device says make me better, I'm yours, make me do it better, figure it out. And that's where people are really engaged in the invention and they become. They love their workplace because their workplace is about them, even if they leave it behind because they're promoted or they move to another cell, they say oh boy, another cell, I'm going to do it again here because it feels so good. It feels so good. So the superhero is the visual thinker who keeps going, and the superhero enabler is management, who sees that and values it and wants more of it and listens and does not say let's standardize everything.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 31:37

Here's my rule about standards even though you didn't ask, you don't want to standardize too soon and you certainly don't want to begin by saying standard work for visuality. It's okay to have a checklist of standard work for supervisors and managers, and it's very important to do standard work. When you are trying to accelerate the process, when you do lean, that's lean work. When you are trying to accelerate the process, when you do lean, that's lean. Lean is about time. Visuality is about information. Absolutely, those are two different things, two wings of a bird. The bird needs both of them to fly. So the superpower is the person thinking and that relationship between the device, and I think if we go any further, we'll lose the thread. So I'm going to stop there and let you pick it up, because I don't want to get too far afield.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 32:37

You're sharing great information here and, like you've mentioned earlier, the CEO, who needs also like information, to receive information from the operations to be able to take decisions. I think it's all about information communication. I like the words you used about talking. I mean talking devices. You know the language of visuality. All of these things are very important for us to understand and we see these when we visit clients and we see that they focus on this. You feel it Like you said, you really feel it, you really see it.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 33:08

So, if I really excuse me, nancy, I really love that idea, and what I want to encourage managers to say, because you're in a position of power, is to say how can I get more of that? Not let's standardize it, let's take a snapshot. And if we are this good throughout I want to say this about standards I feel I must Is we say we don't want less than three different types of visual devices that accomplish the same purpose, even on a micro level, because we want to break this idea of a single solution being satisfactory or that it is static, that we must stop, because this is as far as we can go. When we have three, that three may be a consolidation of 12 that have. And then you negotiate. People learn tolerance, they learn to listen. I like my device, you like yours, let me see yours first. We call that you go first, you go first, let me see yours first. Okay, now I get a chance to show you mine. You've had three weeks. This is mine. Both of them are good. Why decide which is best? There's no best between good and good and good. There's no best between good and good and good. So you want to have that as a value, as a principle of improvement. That three is what we say is the minimum if you want to standardize. And I want to say this this was where I started before and I just want to bring it around because people will be able to relate to it Visual displays that are whiteboards, with things written on it are only a beginning.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 34:47

You congratulate yourself for that beginning. You got the piece of paper out of your pocket. You put it up on a whiteboard Good, excellent. Now listen to the whiteboard and listen to the questions that you form standing in front of that whiteboard that the whiteboard can't give answers to, and then make that board speak. And you have to have interactivity, you have to have moving parts. You don't have to begin there. But the conversation doesn't end just because you have a whiteboard, doesn't end just because you have a whiteboard and companies that standardize on whiteboards. I just want to gnaw on my arm because they're taking a good thing and they're driving it into the ground. It's, you know we used to. Can't think of an analogy now. That goes back to the stone age, but you know, yeah, so we.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 35:39

The first wheel was a little rough cut stone that rolled and helped us move things, but that didn't keep us from inventing the airplane over the over the millennia. So we have to keep going. So, on the whiteboard, you do the same thing. That whiteboard, this is what we do in visual displays. We want the whiteboard to speak to us in different dimensions of meaning.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 36:07

One of the things that we use when we teach visual displays is a board in Japanese that I took this picture in the 1980s and you know it just looks like, just like what happened to this. What is that? It's the wrong language, but if you look at it, you start seeing these dimensions of meaning the production schedule and what's happening every single day. Triangle is upside down, the triangle is yellow, it's red, it's blue, it's right side up the square, the same thing. And the team stands in front of that board and they go what about this? And they point to a single little piece what about this?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 36:46

Because they're listening and that's the way it is in visuality that we are relieved of a tremendous burden of not only information that we don't have, but all of the mistakes that come from it, and we can flow. We can flow because we have a partner in the physical workplace, and that's what we mean by the workplace speaks and you do the same thing in problem solving. You know, let's have a session on problem solving and there's a way of creating that interactivity and problem solving that allows people to have their different views but to come up with solutions and systems that are deeply important to the organization. So, yeah, all of this is so exciting. I want to thank you very much for this opportunity to hold forth and your questions have been so great and I hope that I've done a good job.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 37:41

Yeah, it's been great. I think, just as you started talking about the whiteboard as a beginning, I would like us maybe to start about I mean to talk a little bit about the future and with AI-powered solutions and tools, where do you see visuality down the line? I mean a couple of years from now, 10 years, 15 years?

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 37:59

Great question, and I have pondered this and I don't have an answer. I have the same answer that the pundits have about is AI going to replace us? And I don't see it. I see a partnership. I see a little bit of struggle in getting to know you, figuring out, and I see abuses, of course, but we have tremendous resources inside of us and inside of us together, working together to correct those abuses. We see that happening on the planet in real time. You know, real fear, real fear. You could cut it with a knife.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 38:45

During COVID I was in the United States and I mean it was as though some fog had just descended upon my whole life and all the lives around me. But we figured it out and we're the stronger together for it. We still have some outliers, but I think it's that way with AI. I just don't know, just don't know. I think we can go to the science fiction movies we can go to like Serenity, one of my favorite sci-fi, or the first one with Chris Pine of Star Trek, fantastic amalgamation, blending of the technical.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 39:29

All of those things make me happy. They don't exactly worry me. Where do I see it going? I see it in. We'll figure it out and we'll be afraid for a little while and we'll blame each other for a little while and then we'll figure it out. We're just fabulous. You know we're going to make it and visuality will prevail. Visuality hasn't even moved the dial yet. I mean people don't. I want the person who never heard of visuality before tuning into this and saying why don't I see something? Why don't you show me some visual?

Nancy Nouaimeh: 40:05

devices. That's why we're having this episode, because I believe in it. I believe there's a lot, I know, I know. God bless you.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 40:13

It's very important. It's very important and you work in particular in the Middle East, and I want to say that that let's collaborate and let's just I'm happy to share everything with you and your group and you do visuality and bring visuality to the factories. There is such unnecessary suffering and losses without that language. If you remember that 50% of your brain whoever's talking to me right, listening to us right now is, as we speak, firing at a billion points. It's a billion points per second. And I keep going back to the research I read on that and I said you mean thousand, you mean thousand, billion, billion points per second, searching for visual information to answer the question am I safe? And once I know I'm safe, then information related to purpose.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 41:13

Your brain is doing it now and if you feel yourself irritated in listening to me and Nancy, it's because you're not getting enough to understand. You're seeking to understand. You're seeking to understand. Your brain is made to understand so it can build on that and build your happy life. So the whole thing works together. Yes, and do you see it? So many companies do not know about visuality or conflate it with lean, and they do little and-ons or color code. But it's the language. What would we be, you and I, Nancy, without language right now, to connect us and to spur our thinking and to make us feel very interested? That's the way it is in factories. Factories are our life, for 8, 10 hours, 12 hours a day, 24. If you're a senior manager, you should be worrying every minute.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 42:09

Yeah, our life takes, I mean, a big portion of our life. Right, work takes a big portion of our life. If I go back to our personal lives, where do you see people can apply visuality? Because a lot of things we do in business business we can teach them at home to our kids too, and practice them so far as part of our life where there's duality in the day-to-day it's so interesting.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 42:30

when I was living in portland, the next door neighbor had an autistic worked in autism. Every, every parent knows this now, but people who don't, who aren't parents of an autistic child, may not. And it's an area of great admiration, which is, if what you want to do with a child who has communication soft edges doesn't really connect is to integrate them, find ways of integrating them, and visuality helps so much. Her was bonnie, bonnie was the mother and bonnie laid out the silverware in such a way that the child could easily help to set the table. And that was something that the child looked forward to every night, because she could see her eyes, didn't need language, she didn't need to communicate in kind of superficial ways, she just knew about the forks and the spoons and where things went, and it created peace in the house and possibility and gave a moment of celebration.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 43:37

Every single day of the child making that contribution. That's just one thing. Every single day of the child making that contribution that's just one thing. It's a little bit difficult in a home because there's so much variety and it's so personalized that you don't want to get into someone's face and make them do 5S in their room. They'll hate you for it. They'll need therapy by the time they're 14. And you'll be paying for it. It's a dangerous area.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 44:08

Absolutely, and I like that example and I think there's a lot, I mean, where we can use visuality in the workplace first, but also sometimes in our homes and our lives. With this, gwendolyn, our director, really thank you so much for sharing with our audience here today your stories about visuality and about how to make it a reality, I think, and how to communicate and get this information to be part of the activities in the workplace and change, transform, I think, the workplace. I like the fact that you mentioned partnership with AI, which is very important, I think. Important, I think, and starting with the big picture, putting visuality into action, focusing on the human centering these are new, I think, concepts for everyone that's gonna listen to our podcast.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 44:48

You are a superhero for how visual. I like that. You're a creative thinker and and everything that comes around that, and I'm sure you're doing great job with the, with your clients, on this. I've seen a lot of nice photos from your work in your books, in your trainings, and I think there's a lot that we can teach around the world and take the visuality concept everywhere. With this, I would like to thank you again and give you the space for a few more words before we wrap up our session today.

Gwendolyn Galsworth: 45:18

I want to thank you I think it's what I want to thank you for is taking the time and having the interest to spread the word through these podcasts, through your own work, of course, but this is really kind of a global platform and it allows you I guess the word is curate a series of sharings, that sharing what you think is important, and I think, with that mark on it, I'm very honored with your invitation. Thank you so much.

Nancy Nouaimeh: 45:49

I think there's a lot that we can do all to make a difference. Thanks to all our listeners here and tune in for the next episode of the Excellence Work. Thank you so much. This was Visuality in the Workplace and thank you again.