If you’re a leader and are frustrated that flow is difficult for your people to experience, then make your purpose, vision, and cultural aspirations crystal clear; align goals up, down, and across the organization; respect your people by treating them as your most valuable asset; minimize waste and unnecessary organizational friction; foster a maniacal focus on the customer; install effective visual management systems; and make sure incentive systems are congruent with all of the above.

The fact is that emotions do play a role in business and to ignore them is a sure-fire way to ensure a “car wreck” between individuals and teams. Communication, empathy, situational awareness, and self-awareness are just a few of the skills that must continually be nurtured to create high-functioning teams. An understanding of various forms of cognitive bias is also important.

You can’t help improve that which you cannot see. You can’t hold an individual or team accountable for that which is not measured. Visually showing the blinking red or amber lights in addition to the green ones in your department lets others in the organization see that your part of the company is not perfect. Adopting and weaving visual management systems into the flow of work is an important tool to show that it is not only acceptable, but expected, that we all work together to improve upon organizational challenges.