What is Obeya – articles and videos

Our belief is better leadership will lead to a better world for all of us. Sharing knowledge and building skills on Obeya for leadership and coaches is one of our key activities.

Here are some interesting articles and videos to learn more about Obeya, how it works and how you can use it to lead your organisation.

If you want a more practical experience, try to see if you can organise a reference visit at a company that runs a succesful Obeya. If you want to understand how it works and want to start building basic skills yourself, have a look at the training opportunities.

Looking beyond the tool

Please be conscious of the fact that Obeya is a tool that goes much farther than the visuals you’ll see on the wall. The thinking and acting of the leadership team is the key to making real steps towards leadin your organization more effectively than you do now. So don’t just copy the tool, make sure you also understand what is needed beyond the visuals and have the skills at your disposal to make it a success. An instrumental / tool approach for your Obeya is likely to be as succesful as pushing Scrum to any front-line team.

Understanding the context in which the Obeya as a ‘tool’ has been succesful at Toyota is a very useful step.

Obeya from the source @ Toyota (Takashi Tanaka)

Takashi Tanka worked with Obeya at Toyota. He has vast experience in Implementing the Toyota management System in various industries. Here’s one of his video’s that explain the basics of Obeya in a very powerful way. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao29d29W9SI

Understanding the improvement thinking pattern to apply in the Obeya (Mike Rother)

Mike Rother wrote ‘Toyota Kata’, sharing his learnings on why copying tools from Toyota doesn’t work. He proposes a thinking and acting pattern (kata) that supports the development of real continuous improvement skills and behaviour in your organisation. These patterns are at the fundament of working with Obeya and are included in our training. – https://youtu.be/_es3hYCMMmc

Getting started with Obeya

A few articles from our side that help get you started with your Obeya. – What is Obeya? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-what-obeya-tim-wiegel/ – Change management perspective on leadership in Obeya https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/obeya-trojan-horse-changing-leadership-behaviour-tim-wiegel/ – Some points that might help if you’re stuck or stagnating in your Obeya https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-management-obeya-isnt-working-tim-wiegel/ – Preparing for your first Obeya session https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-look-out-your-first-obeya-session-tim-wiegel/