Visualise your work and increase your happiness

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Visualise your work and increase your happiness

Younito Man
jim benson

Jim Benson

The inventor of Personal Kanban

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to speak to Jim Benson in Melbourne. We met in a hotel restaurant and talked about why visualisation of invisible knowledge work is so powerful and why it can increase the happiness of you and your co-workers:

We start with giving you an introduction into Personal Kanban and help you to create your own Personal Kanban board. We explore why limiting the work in progress is so powerful and what might happen when you take on to much work at the same time.

Jim shares his favourite stories about “visualisation of work” from places like a hospital in Kenya to a family who uses Personal Kanban to organise the treatment plan of their elderly father.

We talk about why managing workload is so hard and what we can do about it to stay focused.

We finish with a deep dive into the psychology of happiness and why visualisation in companies can help you to stay focused and become a happy team mate.

Marcel van Hove

Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.

The waiting snake – High utilisation in the land of knowledge work

Younito Man
Marcel van Hove

Marcel van Hove

Co-founder of Visual Friends

The book “Flow”

During the last 3 month I am reading through the book Flow by Donald G. Reinertsen. I had it on my iPad for ages but was too busy to read it. This book belongs definitly to my Top10 of the most enlightening books ever read! I think Donald Reinersten did a great job in bringing Matchs and Product Development together, but he fails in explaining the content to a wider audience like me.

The waiting snakes

I am reading chapters over and over again to get the full understanding. I thought it would be great to turn a chapter into a little video. This following video is based on the capture about “Queues” that I renamed into “Waiting Snakes”. I added my personal experience as an agile coach and visual facilitator – I hope you have fun watching it!

Enjoy the video!

Marcel van Hove

Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.

Visual Summary of the LAST Conference Melbourne

Younito Man
Marcel van Hove

Marcel van Hove

Co-Founder Visual Friends & Agile Coach

I was looking forward to the LAST conference for quite a while. Last week the LAST conference took finally place at the Swimburn university in Melbourne.

After I gave my talk about visual thinking (PDF), I invested the rest of the day drawing one visual summary of the LAST conference. I would like to thank all conference visitors for their help and their visual notes without that big sheet of paper would be still white and boring!

Furthermore, I would like to thank Ed Wong and Craig Brown for their great organization of the LAST conference.

Younito has an idea

Progress at lunch time

I started early setting up my easel and getting paper and markers ready. I pencilled a layout in that I had in my mind and got started on the headline (in the middle).  
Younito is thinking

Progress at lunch time

In the afternoon I drew in all the insides that I got on post-its and brought them onto paper. 

The final work around 4pm

 

The article was written by Natalia Tsygankova. Natalia has always loved words and talking to people. She has put that passion to good use and has been sharing people’s stories in the community radio, TV and print media for the last 10 years. Natalia is also a big fan of true storytelling events and regularly volunteers at the most famous one – The Moth, interviewing the winner. You can hear her own story of moving to Australia from Russia in 1999 here. Natalia believes that everyone has a story – So what’s yours? Contact her today to share your story.