BUSINESS & IT

Do You Know That Each Leader Is Responsible for the Development of Team Members?

This applies to Obeya!

At all levels, there is agreement on the goals, the way forward, and the support needed to get where you want to go.

Introduction & Review

In my last article, I wrote about the importance of systems thinking and visualization in Obeya. These were the key takeaways:

• Change the habits and behaviors in your team to systems thinking
• Be creative together
• Use visualization in an understandable way to display the results

Missed what the Obeya is about? Read here.

Be a great manager for your team

At Obeya, learning and teaching are important elements. As a manager, you are responsible for the continuing education of your employees.

Make sure everyone develops the necessary competencies, and that everyone in the team follows the same, jointly developed and tested way of working.

Note: If everyone thinks for themselves about how to prioritize projects, this quickly leads to coordination problems.

Do not under any circumstances outsource personnel development to external personnel consultants. Instead, provide your managers with coaches. They will help them master specific tasks and acquire important skills.

Result: The managers will gain the knowledge and become coaches for others.

Rhythm and routine

If you’re one of those managers whose schedule is overflowing, you may know that others feel the same way. That’s why you should bring rhythm and routine to your meetings.

By setting a clear agenda and maintaining regularity, you’ll prevent employees from rushing between meetings and losing their attention.

Routine ensures reliability, not least because your team always knows when and where they can reach you.

The “go and see” principle

Reports are an important task for managers. Often, however, they can be interpreted differently, one needs additional information or is annoyed by complex presentations.

In Obeya, you inform yourself by “going and seeing”. You get your information directly from the base — sure that everything essential is on the wall of the Obeya.

Continuous improvement: the Toyota Kata improvement pattern

Continuous improvement is also an important principle in Obeya. Expose problems and prioritize them.

Then solve them using, for example, the Toyota Kata improvement pattern:

• you determine the challenge
• you identify the actual and target state
• you make the necessary changes
• you then move experimentally toward the goal
• you fail, learn and improve in small steps.

A common, consistent strategy

The strategy adopted at Leadership Obeya should continue throughout the organization.

In the ideal case, there are more Obeyas, for example, in middle management and operational teams.

The principle of cascading and connecting means the strategy runs through all levels of the hierarchy and becomes more detailed from top to bottom.

Conclusion

Here are the takeaways from this article:

• Each manager is responsible for the development of team members
• Get information on the basis
• Strive for continuous improvement
• Follow the same strategy throughout the company.

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source: Tim Wiegel: “Führen mit Obeya”, Vahlen, ISBN 978–3–8006–6464–1