I see a lot of Gemba boards in my work. It is a fun thing in consulting to see so many different companies and variations in how information is gathered, stored, and shared. Sometimes I see boards with hand written production numbers and hand drawn trend charts. Other times I see printed Excel charts and tables or other digitized information. So, is one approach better than another?
This is something I have thought about for years. You have likely heard me tell this story. My team was deploying daily stand ups with Gemba boards at our Mumbai office, which was roughly 1000 people (team size was somewhere between 5 and 25 people). As you can imagine, there were a lot of boards in this office. These boards were hand written and maintained. We had all the teams capture (by hand) any defect found during their shift and document their daily output to create a weekly trend. I should mention that this was a technology company. When our head of technology visited the site and saw what we had them doing, he told us that this was a ridiculous activity. How absurd it was in this day and age (well that day and age) to have people physically capturing information on paper. In his eyes, we may as well have been using stone tablets! My response was that there is value in keeping some things physical. The act of writing keeps people more engaged. When they physically capture the data they make an emotional connection with it… I think I remember a scoff of some type.
Now over the years, I have questioned my own perspective and tried different approaches to updating Gemba boards. My experience and a bit of research turns out that this original perspective might be right.
Check out this article: “Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning” February 21st, 2024
Yadurshana Sivahankar states:
“Drawing information and enacting information is helpful because you have to think about information and you have to produce something that’s meaningful,” she says. And by transforming the information, you pave and deepen these interconnections across the brain’s vast neural networks, making it “much easier to access that information.”
We are physical beings. Our mind is not separate from our body and the physical world around us. A picture of the Grand Tetons does not produce the same physical response as standing in front of the Grand Tetons! It really should not be a surprise that when we sanitize and automate all the information around us into digits and ink it becomes less real and we do not engage with it as well. This is significant. Engagement is a core component of the daily stand up with a Gemba board.
Now if I have sold you on paper and pen or reed stylus and clay tablet (if you want to go super old school), then let’s also consider the opposing view. The fact is that my team at Chalmers St. and I debate this topic often.
I take a lot of notes. I remember what I document. Everything else goes into the ether. Starting from my time at Motorola and well into my time at Navteq I took gobs of notes in all sizes and shapes of notebooks. And I have never thrown them away; they are all collecting dust in my basement, as if I will ever look for a piece of information in them again! As I said, the information is not so much for future reference as it is a trick to keep my mind engaged. To reference anything in these notebooks, I had to remember the date that it was written and then try and read the scribble that I call handwriting, usually through some ink smears (I am one of those Left Handed folks). So, in 2010 I started typing all of my notes. It took a bit to get used to. Yes, there was something mentally different moving from writing to typing, but after about six months I have never thought to go back. The act of typing continued to help me retain the thoughts from meetings, but more importantly, all of my notes are always with me and very searchable. I have searched and successfully found notes that were multiple years old. I can quickly pull up and reference decisions and statements made from previous conversations. No longer is my note taking just a memory trick, it is a searchable reference. Digitizing information is powerful for organizing, referencing, and summarizing information.
The connection with Gemba boards is the same. Digitizing Gemba board data allows you to look for long term trends and do deeper analysis. Also, avoiding the human touch reduces the data entry errors that lead to misinformation.
Bottomline, I am advocating for a thoughtful choice given the particular situation and need. Typing is a physical activity. It may not cause as many receptors in your brain to fire, but you will get enough that you can stay focused taking notes. As an added bonus, digitized notes are far more powerful than hand written notes. Try to keep some of the physical activity while producing a digital output to keep up the engagement because printing paper copies of charts and graphs is not great for engaging the mind. I like Gemba boards and Hour by Hour boards that require the physical act of writing. If you need the digital information for trends and analysis then take a picture of the board and capture the data as an additional step. I hear you, this is extra work that you don’t have time for. Okay, find another alternative for physical activity. Create a space on the report where people can write observations and capture thoughts on their performance. If the display is digital give some space for physical interaction; without it people will not internalize the information and it might as well be wallpaper.
As we advance to complete digitization we gain higher quality data available in real time that can be easily summarized and displayed for human consumption. This is great, but the last part of my statement matters a whole lot… “for human consumption.” If we completely remove the physical aspects of human interaction from the data consumption we will fail to really internalize the information. This is the whole point. When creating a process for people to track and use data, be sure that you include a physical interaction aspect that will help people connect with the information and use it more effectively.