Leading with Obeya (the book)

Maximizing human leadership potential

When Tim Wiegel was introduced to the concept of Obeya in 2014, pieces of a puzzle fell into place. The Obeya (Japanese for “big room”) is a physical room where visual management is used to align operational teams and leadership in their efforts to translate strategy into meaningful daily work and results.

Obeya is the missing puzzle piece for alignment between leadership and operational teams. It helps develop the ability to hold meetings that create meaningful context based on reality and avoid distractions such as bias, ego and over-complexity.

When deployed to lead the organization, Obeya supports the development of a systematic approach to leadership that enables consistent, coherent and effective decision-making. Leading With Obeya helps teams to move from firefighting to sustainable improvement of the performance of their organizational system.

The book is the result of his research on leadership, psychology, Lean and Agile practices and describes a visual leadership approach in a physical room where leaders can practice and develop their craftsmanship.

The book applies Lean and Agile practices, as well as success factors for project, program and portfolio management. The book is written in an accessible, no-nonsense way and instead of sprinkling with terminologies, the author takes you to “the meaning” behind the trendy words.