Getting More Out of Obeya – How Great Obeya Really Begins

Getting More Out of Obeya: How Great Obeya Really Begins

The best Obeya rooms are not built by filling walls with information. They are built by creating shared understanding before execution begins.

Many organisations invest significant time designing their Obeya walls.

Far fewer invest time preparing the thinking that should happen before the first wall is ever created.

In this article, Mark de Deugd and Bas Vermeulen introduce Obeya Genkan (玄関), a structured visual preparation phase that helps teams create alignment, ownership, and clarity before entering the Obeya itself.

After applying the approach across more than 100 complex projects, they found that many organisational challenges were not caused by poor execution.

They were caused by starting before people truly understood:

• the real goal
• the risks involved
• the dependencies
• and what success actually looked like

What you’ll learn

• Why many Obeya initiatives start too late
• How Obeya Genkan creates alignment before execution begins
• Why shared understanding is more valuable than immediate solutions
• How visual thinking surfaces risks, assumptions, and dependencies early
• Why better decisions emerge when teams shape the problem together

The article introduces a simple but powerful idea:

Create shared understanding before creating the Obeya

Rather than jumping straight into dashboards, KPIs, and planning boards, teams first work together to:

• clarify the goal behind the goal
• make objectives measurable
• identify risks and unknowns
• create ownership for next actions

Results across 100+ projects

Using Obeya Genkan, organisations achieved:

• 90% early visibility of risks and dependencies
• 100% agreement on scope and first actions
• 85% success in translating strategy into meaningful metrics
• approximately 40% less meeting overhead
• stronger ownership and faster decision-making

One lesson stood out across all cases:

The value was never the board itself. The value was what we achieved together because of it.

If your Obeya still feels more like reporting than decision-making, this article offers a practical way to start differently.

Download the full article and explore the complete approach

Mark de Deugd and Bas Vermeulen will be speaking at the Obeya Summit on June 25–26, 2026.

Join Mark and Bas at the Obeya Summit 2026 and learn how Obeya Genkan helps teams create alignment, clarify goals, surface risks, and build ownership before launching an Obeya, leading to better decisions and less waste.