So, when thinking of ways to help people work more productively and with less effort, making things visible seems a good place to start.
It is important not to confuse visible with visual. I am using the term visible to refer to something that is easily perceived or noticed; that effortlessly comes to our attention when needed. An audio tone can make something visible (i.e. bring it to our attention) or the spatial layout of our task environment. A friend shouting across the room to remind us of a task can make it temporarily visible to us. The layout of staff in a room or building can make certain unspoken rules or hierarchies visible (sometimes intentionally; sometimes not).
Visibility is also not simply a matter of having something available to our senses. Something can be 'present', i.e. available to our senses, and yet invisible to us - drowned out by surrounding 'noise'. The important email lost in the over-full inbox, the button on the overcrowded remote control we can never find how ever many times we look, or the important trends lost in the mass of numerical data (or the pair of socks in the draw).
The key to making things truly visible (and therefore helping us be more productive and less stressed) is to find ways to ensure the right information is available to us at the right time in the right format. The accompanying guideline is to find ways to hide information that hinders the current task ('the noise').
Think how much time we lose each day searching for the right email, the document we were working on yesterday (and the right version), the information our friend told us that we have now forgotten, the place where we can find the directions to the meeting, the chunk of text that would be perfect for the current paragraph we are writing and so on..so on...
When things aren't visible to us in the right way, not only do we lose time, we lose concentration, we lose energy and we spoil any chance of getting in 'the zone' (or experiencing the flow state). When things ARE visible we focus on the task and we find we can achieve tasks quickly and effortlessly and enjoyably.
Visibility can benefit us at many levels: the person, the group and the organisation. I suspect that where we improve visibility at each of these levels we also improve it in some larger, holistic fashion.
So, where do we begin in achieving the holy grail of visible? Visibility can be supported by software tools, organisation, the physical environment, ways of working/processes, the way we allow others to interact with us and even a group culture (e.g. 'we WANT to see bad news EARLY! Don't hide things from us!). What do we apply these 'tools' to? Well, at the personal level a good place would be our most common (and important) work tasks - both general 'hygenic' tasks (i.e. tasks like reading email that we do everyday just as a function of being in a working environment) and our specific work tasks that perform parts of our job function. At the group level we might focus on key communication interfaces, i.e. those places where the transference of information or work products (e.g. a document) is necessary to allow individuals to perform work as part of the group. At the organisation level we might focus on the visibility of direction (or purpose) - i.e. ensuring everyone can easily understand the overall goals of the organisation and how these are 'translated' into tasks/actions that can be performed by groups and individuals. At all levels feedback is also key - how easy is it for people/groups/organisations to get quick, clear and accurate feedback on actions so that appropriate responses can be formed.
Well, that's the overall idea. Details to follow....
