The most awaited award event, Oscar-2017 just ended a week back, witnessing a major goof up of the history. A major mistake took place leaving the viewers dazed, confused and shocked, failing to understand if it was a planned humor or a serious mistake. People could not believe their eyes and ears when the announcement for the ‘Best Picture’ happened twice.

Giving a brief about the event for all those who missed it, there was a major goof up during the last few minutes of the event while announcing the award for the category – ‘Best Picture.’ Initially the award for the Best Picture was announced for “La La Land” only to realize later that the actual winner was “Moonlight.” It was when the crew of “La La Land” were accepting award the rectification was made by one of the film’s producer, Jordan Horowitz interrupted to announce that the winner was “Moonlight” and not “La La Land.” Now this was a clear, practical instance of lack of, rather failure of proper visual management. If expert analysis were to be done the conclusion is – had there been proper visual management in terms of the presentation of card with respect to the font, size, color, spacing, positioning, we might not have witnessed such a mistake. However big or small the organizations are, getting visuals right plays an important role. If it led to confusion and serious embarrassment at the Oscars it can also do serious damage to organizations. But what is visual management? In layman term visual management refers to using proper signals like symbols, signboards, stickers, etc. instead of written instructions or texts, to communicate better.

Here are few pointers which if taken care can prevent errors like the one at Oscar:

• Conducting the ‘Why- Why’ Analysis: Why-Why analysis refers to a method of questioning which enables to identify the root-cause of the problem. It does not only help to identify the root cause of the problem but also help to resolve the problem along with helping to find a method to prevent repetition.

• Having correct visuals: The solution to the problem is most obvious – proper visuals. Proper visuals can prevent problems and can avoid confusion and embarrassment resulting from it. It was sheer lack of proper visual control in Oscars which had led to the infamous Oscar mistake. Also, having correct visuals is very important. Incorrect visuals could lead to confusion, wastage of time, misunderstanding, etc.

• Muda of Motion – Mother of all inefficiencies: One school of thought considers Muda of Motion as the mother of all inefficiencies and can be avoided by proper Visual Management. Muda refers to wastage of any kind. Presence of muda leads to wastage of time (by increasing the search time) and wastage, redundancy of other resources (increased cost due to unavailability of resources, decline in productivity, etc.)  Thus the key to these solutions is having proper visual control.

Some of the visible, notable benefits of visual management are: effective communication, avoids confusion, and avoids wastage of time and resources also leading to enhancement of productivity. It makes the tasks easy when compared to absence of the same.

To have and maintain visual control in the place is mandatory, however it depends from organization to organization. But, the fact remains that the absence of visual management can dilapidate the organization slowly.

Written By Faber Ramya Pillai