Visual Visionaries

One of the most important aspects of Visual Management is to constantly connect your employees to the mission of the organization.  At Gettysburg College, a large visual display titled, "A Heritage of Philanthorpy" greets students, alumni, and visitors in the College Union Building.  The display utilizes archival photographs (and the college's color scheme) to highlight key benefactors from the past.  It quickly and effectively puts "a face to a name" - highlighting the many men and women who have supported the mission of the college for generations.  Immediately, viewers feel a sense of connection, purpose, and pride.

P.U.S.H. It!

Are people in your library confused about the current state of projects, job searches, or strategic objectives?  Try creating and posting a Project Update Sheet or P.U.S.H. document.  It's a great way to communicate the status of ongoing projects, facilities needs, job searches, and completed projects within an organization.  We electronically update our P.U.S.H. document after every librarians' meeting, and post on our shared file server, and in our common staff areas.  For each initiative, we list a Title, Details, Status, and Results.  When projects conclude, they are moved to the Completed section at the bottom.  This helps with conveying a sense of accomplishment and pride across the library, while also building a quick list of achievements for the annual report.  Use our example, or put your own spin on it.  Either way, give it a try!

Our P.U.S.H. document starts as a Google Sheet on Google Drive.

The P.U.S.H. document shares whiteboard space with our 5S/Lean diagram
and Strategic Priorities document - as well as other staff ideas!

Where's Your War Room?

Headquarters, War Room, Command Central . . . call it what you will.  One of the guiding principles of Visual Management is that every organization should have a dedicated location for posting internal communications.  For a library, this visual HQ can include the latest strategic plan, annual report, fundraising efforts, budgetary figures, circulation and ILL statistics, programming/events, newsletters, professional development opportunities, policy changes, and special projects.  More than just a back office bulletin board, the war room should seek to democratize information, share perspectives, and demonstrate the excellence of the organization on all levels.

Publication Wall (See Ye!, See Ye!)

During a recent group effort to update our library's graphic identity, we took the advice of authors Nancy Dowd, Mary Evangeliste, and Jonathan Silberman and created a Publication Wall.  In their popular 2010 book, Bite-Sized Marketing: Realistic Solutions for the Overworked Librarian, the authors recommend establishing a Publication Wall to centralize and evaluate all current library publications - print and web.  We selected the most popular spot in any back-office, the staff break room!  All staff were invited to visually evaluate the publications.  As we moved forward with the new graphic identity, updates continued to be posted to the Publication Wall.  The process allowed us to centralize our efforts, share ideas, align staff toward a common goal, and visually share our successes - all beneficial attributes of visual management.

Annual Opportunity

It's that dreaded time of year again, time for the annual report!  While compiling an annual list of accomplishments and statistics can seem tedious, visually engaging annual reports present a variety of opportunities.  A creative annual report can stand out as a visual celebration of an organization's achievements, and be directed to both internal and external audiences.  With an innovative approach, it can be both an administrative report, and an effective marketing, recruitment, and fundraising tool.  The entire staff worked hard to achieve these results - why not use this document to showcase your staff, highlight your mission, and boost institutional pride!

The University of Virginia Library has produced a host of visually engaging annual reports over the past several years.  Electronic and print copies are available to view and request at https://www.library.virginia.edu/press/annual-reports/

"Visual Management for Libraries" article

As a follow-up to my 2013 article on the library as visual workplace, I recently expanded my thoughts into the related area of visual management.  To learn more about Visual Management (VM) and its application to modern libraries, please see my seven-page article titled, "Visual Management for Libraries", published in the online journal Library Leadership & Management (Vol. 28, no. 3), May 2014. 

http://journals.tdl.org/llm/index.php/llm/article/view/7067/6297  

Visual Management

One of the many strengths of the Visual Workplace is its flexibility and application to related disciplines.  In recent years, the related field of Visual Management (VM) has emerged.  While adopting many of the basic tenets of the visual workplace, VM extends the application of visual solutions into broader areas of internal and external communication, employee alignment, and organizational pride.  VM experts Steawart Liff and Pamela Posey define VM as a system that adds "visual depth and consistency to an organization's messages about its mission and goals."  It does this by "converting information about the company, its customers, and its performance into graphic displays which cannot be ignored."

For a good introductory article on VM, please see Stewart Liff's article, "Shaping Space for Success: The Power of Visual Management" (2012) http://www.thepublicmanager.org/docs_articles/current/Vol41,2012/Vol41,Issue01/Vol41N1_shapingspacefor.pdf