What is Obeya and what is Leading with Obeya?
Obeya is a visual management instrument developed at Toyota, for building the Toyota Prius. Leading with Obeya is concrete way of working and was not developed to develop a Prius, but to lead teams and organizations, using Obeya.
Why use Leading with Obeya?
If you recognize the following problems within your team/organization:
- Lack of overview of what’s going on.
- Hard to set real priorities and bring focus.
- Daily firefighting instead of long-term strategy.
- Working in silo’s instead of together.
- Many meetings that are unproductive and energy draining.
Then there is (a big) room for improvement 😊
How does is solve these problems?
Leading with Obeya helps with the following team/leadership challenges:
- Reduce complexity by making visible, learning about, and improving the organizational system.
- Facilitate our thinking and doing through visualization, rhythm & routines.
- Develop the leadership system that helps teams see, learn and act together.
- Increase your execution power to execute strategy and achieve goals.
What are the experienced benefits?
- More effective meetings and focus
- Better coordination
- Fewer silos
- More steering in the long term
- More job satisfaction
Who uses Leading with Obeya?
The Leading with Obeya method can be applied by any team that shares a common goal – in any type of organization or sector. There is plenty of proof, on a worldwide scale, that Obeya is truly successful everywhere!
It doesn’t matter whether your company or team is large or small, but it is crucial that you take the starting conditions into account!
Starting conditions
- The team must understand what they are in for (in other words, the Obeya must be thoroughly explained)
- The team’s ‘boss’ is 100% committed and the team itself is ready to go!
- There is a suitable facilitator to help the team hold effective Obeya sessions. Ideally, this person already has experience with or completed training in the method.
What is part of the Leading with Obeya templates?
There are two templates:
- LWO Strategic planning and execution with Obeya template
- Strategic Direction: Where are we headed and what do we need to get there?
- Performance: How well are we doing in terms of stuff that’s important to us?
- Tough problems: What tough problems must we work on?
- Plan to value: What’s our plan to deliver value to our organization & customers?
-
LWO Act and Respond template
- Act & Respond: How do we address issues that arise when doing the work?
Pro tips for starting with Leading with Obeya
- Watch explainer video (8min) on YouTube.
- It’s about alignment (the conversation), not the visuals.
- Give trust: making mistakes is allowed, learning is required.
- Pull: start where it is most likely to succeed.
