Introduction: What is visual management?

This chapter introduces visual management as one aspect of the Flexibility, Understanding, Stability and Yearning (FUSY) counter-response to the challenges presented by a persistently Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA)/Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear and Incomprehensible (BANI) world. Visual management is described as a way of creating a holistic system of knowledge management and exchange that can be applied within an organisation of any size. Visual management encourages a stability of representation that brings genuine understanding and the appropriate yearning to pursue further details and depth when necessary. The overall benefit of visual management is the clarity and connections that can be made between an organisation's operations, strategy and vision. Recognising language as a cultural tool is necessary, as visual management uses an organisational language that integrates a continuous feedback loop between vision, planning and reporting, as well as between the qualitative and quantitative elements of an organisation.