The Reality of Remote Work: You Can’t Improve What You Don’t See

How to make the work visible

Peter Drucker’s statement, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure” must be changed to “You can’t improve what you don’t see”.

When told we need to boost team productivity, I often refer to the GIF below to illustrate the situation:

1. Excessive work is merely pushed forward.
2. No one is content, not even the managers pushing the workload.
3. The person on the left is so demotivated by the chaos that they’ve “given up on working properly”

However, the challenge in knowledge work is that this situation is not as evident as in the physical world. While it’s easy to spot what’s wrong in the physical world, in knowledge work, problems are often hidden, especially in remote work.

Kanban boards, used by teams, aim to expose the situation, much like the GIF. Based on the board below, answer the following questions:

1. What type of work is the team prioritizing?
2. What type of work does the team have difficulty completing?

Image from the book Making Work Visible by Dominica Degrandis.

In essence, the Kanban board should be like “that picture worth more than a thousand words.”

When participating in Daily meetings with teams already using a Kanban board, I pay close attention to any information that could suggest changes to the board’s design. Sometimes, columns, colors, or crucial information on the card are missing, while other times, information should be hidden to facilitate initial reading.

Over time, I identify patterns in the process that should be reflected on the board. Lanes, for instance, can be likened to different lanes on a highway: Cards that tend to flow more quickly should use the top lane, and others should use the bottom lane.

To determine if your board is good enough, you should observe the number of questions you have to ask to understand everything that is happening. The fewer questions you need to ask, the better your visual management of work. Therefore, you should see the questions that are repeated every day as an opportunity to improve your board design.

Contrary to what many people think, Kanban is not just a board; it’s a method for continuous improvement of the work system. If you don’t know where to start, click here to download the Kanban method guide, available in more than fifteen different languages.

I share a great story that I experienced about visual work management in the following article:

Why an Open-Air Market Stall Can Be More Productive Than Your Team

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There, I will be sharing the chapters of the book I’m writing. It’s a fiction inspired by my own story, when in 2013, during my divorce, I decided to walk 800 km over 35 days along the Camino de Santiago. Click here to get it for free.