Amazing Use of colour Cards: Communication, Team Management, Process Improvement

Have you ever thought about it, when the colours have more political and commercial significance than the colours of the Nature and of inherent human values?

Colour cards can be made easily and used in many ways:

Communication:

A.  Learning a Language:

For instance, we can use colour cards to learn a language. For instance, to learn English language in a very simple way by using Color Cards that will represent the important parts of a sentence or speech and help us in understanding the relevance of each part in forming the sentence.

• First, we will make three colour cards for "Subject", "Verb" and "Object". Subject to represent the person or object that does the action or activity denoted by the "Verb" card and the "object" is the objective or result of the action.

E.g. Girl makes tea. Girl = Subject, makes = Verb, tea = Object.

Subject is person or thing that does the action denoted by Verb.

So, Subject can be Noun (name of person or any living thing, place or non-living thing.)

E.g. Girl = Noun and makes = Verb.

Object is the result of the action (Verb) of Subject

So, object often is Noun (name of person or any living thing, place or non-living thing.)

E.g. the result of Girl's action of making is "Tea" = Noun.

Note:

Pronoun is a word that represents noun.

Person	Noun	Pronoun
First (One:-Singular)	I	I
First (Many:-Plural)	We	We
Second (One:-Singular)	You	You
Second (Many:-Plural)	You	You
Third (one:-Singular)	Boy	He
Third (Many:-Plural)	Boys	They
Third (One:-Singular)	Girl	They
Third (Many:-Plural)	Girls	They

Activity:

1.     Display the following sentences and ask the learner to display appropriate colour card to identify the Subject (Noun/Pronoun), Verb and Object component of the sentence.

2.     Navin learns French.

3.     Baby drinks milk.

4.     Students do home work.

5.     We have dinner.

6.     You know him.

2.     Let the learner speak a sentence in his vernacular language and then ask the learner to translate it into English language using colour cards representing various parts of sentence structure.

B.  Intra and Inter Team Communication and Performance Improvement

Colour cards can depict English Phrases in the following manner:

Green Horn

                         

To be used by any team member who wants support and guidance of any team member. This should be encouraged can be used by the manager to understand any technical or specific knowledge or skill the executive or team member may be adept in. This encourages open communication and reduces the fear of being looked down upon for seeking help or assistance.

                                           

Green Signal: A member can use to approve of another member’s request.

Black and White: to be used by team members seeking clear and specific information from each other.

                                    

Red With Rage: A team member can show to another team member or even to reporting head who, appears angry and can prevent any argument or altercation.  

 

Once in a blue moon: A team member can show it to another team member for infrequency or lag in communication or in the execution of assignment, etc.

 

Purple Patch: For a member or the team (teams) for exceptionally high performance and achievement

Rosy

 

For a member who is an optimist and is approached by other members for motivation and support

Yellow card

                            

Yellow card: To any member or activity for any negative communication or untoward result

 

                            

Grey Area: To any member whose activity or communication or for any process that is not very clear

White hot

                            

White Hot: To any member or activity or process who or that is very popular and widely accepted

NOTE: The use of colour cards for team communication and process improvement can be used in the form of a software or a mobile application that will be available to all the team members and can post a card to each other for various team activities related to a project they have to work together on the HR along with the lead and management can check on the colour cards posted to various activities and members to gauge the progress or the project and the performance of the team members. They can also note the issues pointed out to any specific activity or member and resolve it too on time.

 

C.  Personality Depiction and Development

A person’s favourite colour depicts his or her personality.

Use: The team members to select a colour card and then they are informed of their personality traits depicted by their favourite colour. The members can get to know of each other’s personality traits and with the information can take steps to develop desired personality traits for self development.

For information on personality traits according to ones choice of colour: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/12653/favorite-color-reveals-personality-type/

D. Self Development: Development of Emotional Mindfulness:

We can use colour cards to enhance our power of concentration.This can be achieved through the balance between the sub-conscious and conscious mind: to be aware of self and the environment one is in. Using the Plutchik's flower of emotions we can use the colour cards to manage our emotions. For example, if a we want to reduce anxiety, rage and anger and achieve our mind's serenity, then we can prepare colour cards in the form of emotion cards and consciously check our emotion states throughout the day. Each time we feel anxious or feel irritated or angered, then we can tick off a square of corresponding emotion in the set of colour cards. At the end of day, we can check the number of times we experienced the negative emotion. We can devise methods of regulating our thoughts and feelings through various forms of meditation, chanting, physical an mental exercise, pursuing our hobbies e.g. music, reading, writing, travel, to name a few, to reduce the occurence of the negative emotion. Viz. if we have experienced anxiety or anger five to six times a day, then we can devise methods of avoid such experience the following day while we set a goal of reducing such experience to half. We can maintain a record of our efforts in Learning Log to effectively register our achievement, once we are able to consciously reduce the frequency of occurence of a negative emotion, such as anxiety, anger, etc.  We can also use the Selfie Mode of self development to consciously map the series of events we experienced through out the day and the type of emotions the events elicited; henceforth, how we can reglate our emotions to avoid the negative ones such as env, anxiety, rage, anger. Eventually, we will be able to control our thoughts and be more concious and mindful of the present and take care of the hazards of being absent minded.

Process Improvement:

Six Sigma has the colour belts defining various levels of quality and process improvement.

Kaizen

The performance improvement initiative, Kaizen can be effectively used with the help of colour cards: We have used colour cards based on English language Idioms for process improvement. Likewise, the colour cards can be used to depict the following principles of Kaizen:

·        5S (The 5 Steps of Process):

1.           Sort

2.           Straighten

3.           Shine

4.           Standardise

5.           Sustain

·        Just in Time

·        Kanban

·        SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die)

·        OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

NOTE: The use of colour cards for team communication and production process improvement can be used in the form of a software or a mobile application that will be available to all the members of various department or functional units involved in the production process and can post a card to each other for various activities related to a production project they have to work together on. The HR along with the department heads and management can check on the colour cards posted for various activities and members to gauge the progress of the project and the performance of the team members of various departments. They can also note the issues pointed out to any specific activity or process and resolve it too on time.