Thirty years of leading innovation discussions continue to convince us that Square Wheels^® are the world’s best engagement tool, images that focus discussions around workplace issues and opportunities.

The Power of VIsual Tools

Square Wheels^® images are simple and bombproof engagement tools that help facilitators and managers focus people on the many aspects of how things work in most organizations and what improvement ideas might exist. It readily engages people to share their perspectives and generate active involvement around the metaphor and with each other. I’ve used it in workshops in 49 countries and it has been sold as a facilitation tool since we first started presenting it using transparencies back in 1993.

The images consistently deliver remarkable outcomes for team engagement and disruptive idea generation. Research shows that visual aids can increase information retention by up to 65%, making visuals invaluable for organizational development initiatives, and nothing I have seen in 30 years comes remotely close to the effectiveness of these images. (I have had people tell me that they remember my SWs presentation 25 years later, since the metaphor is simple and memorable, plus their active involvement in discussions.)

These powerful visual metaphors rapidly engage 90%+ of participants in action-oriented discussions around issues and opportunities and generate dozens of ideas about current processes, issues of communications and leadership and potential improvements

The images ALWAYS work — they quickly engage everyone in team-based actions for generating ideas about how things really function and what improvement opportunities might be available, giving participants a shared voice in how they perceive workplace issues and frameworks for improvement.

By leveraging these engaging visual tools, organizations can create a common language for change and drive measurable improvements in team dynamics and operational efficiency.

How are the key themes presented? How do they work?

Here is how we generally introduce the ideas, and you can find many other articles on facilitation in the website:

We use this image and these thoughts to start a discussion about issues and opportunities

One approach is to embed Square Wheels into a facilitation skills training program and to put the images into remote communications tools to help managers better involve and engage their people. Consultants also find the tools very useful for kicking off problem-solving conversations and in helping to change the language of performance improvement.

Playing with these images and ideas in 49 countries over the past 30+ years has generated a bit of understanding about why these learning tools work so well. Audiences of all kinds get very involved and engaged in discussing issues and ideas about their workplace, the world at large, and even about their personal development, and there are a number of solid psychological underpinnings as to why.

My goal here is not to get into the neurophysiology and behavioral psychology of how all this works within the brain, but to try to offer some simple thoughts on different aspects of learning and behavior.

As some people know, we first used the line-art versions of these illustrations. Here is the original Square Wheels One illustration, used back in 1993 and my more recent versions.

After experimenting with coloring in the line art, which had some positive impacts on look and feel but no real impacts on the effectiveness of the metaphor, I started playing with LEGO versions. With LEGO, I could get most of the clarity of the messages but also do stop-motion video and quickly generate different scenarios around the theme of facilitating and engagement.

Click here to see a 40-second animation about the theme of Square Wheels and continuous continuous improvement

Active Animations: One workshop that I was never able to deliver was to give each tabletop a set of LEGO and SWs and round wheels and ask them to “construct a stop-motion video about a common situation in your workplace” and have them create and then illustrate some storyline, using a tripod and iPhone’s stop=motion capabilities.

The different videos could be collected and shared with senior management in an enlightening way. This would be EASY to do and fun for the participants. The desired outcome is to arrive at some solutions to the common problems…It could be somewhat similar to what was done above, and it could be narrated. Simple tools with powerful learning lessons!

Fundamentally, the Square Wheels images work in a way similar to a Rorschach Test (or Inkblot Test), where individuals are shown images and asked to respond to them. These images are called “projective psychological tools” because people will project their beliefs onto the images, which have no reality in their construction. A typical inkblot might look something like this:

Different people see different things. Their personal history comes into play. (from Wikipedia)

With the Square Wheels tools, we focus more on organizational issues and opportunities, working on themes of teamwork and continuous improvement and other workplace themes.

The approach is very simple: we encourage a group of people to consider the image individually and generate their thoughts on, “How might this represent how things really work?”

After some silent contemplation, we then engage the tabletops to share their different perspectives and ideas, so we generate both an active involvement by the individual as well as a collective group consensus as to what the image represents. If there are more than 6 people in the group, we will place them in small groups and there are approaches for actively involving and engaging even VERY large groups of 100s of people in highly interactive participative ways.

The anchor points are simple:

• Square Wheels represent things that work, but that do not work smoothly
• Round Wheels represent ideas for improvement that often already exist and that could be implemented

Simply put, we will generate Cognitive Dissonance between the way that things are right now (as perceived by individuals or small groups) as well as potential solutions to close that gap. People are motivated to close the gap and we have developed some team / tabletop support for working to address that issue. Some of the overall impacts are as follows:

1. We get people actively involved in generating ideas for improvement that can be anchored to organizational development or quality / process improvement.
2. We get individual as well as collective tabletop ideas about issues and opportunities.
3. We generate discussions about what might be done differently, giving participants an active involvement that generates engagement and ownership.
4. We generate a collective broadly-based set of perspectives on issues impacting performance.
5. We generate individual ideas, anchored to best practices, for what they might do differently to make improvements.
6. We get a collective discussion and generate peer support around certain ideas that have “weight,” that are substantially impactful and the deserve to be addressed and implemented.
7. People LIKE being involved and engaged in generating team-based ideas for improvement, much more so than they like being simply told what to do. Change is often resisted when forced on people, while active involvement generates motivation and engagement.

You can read another of my posts about Leon Festinger’s research
on Cognitive Dissonance  and Square Wheels here.

You can readily link the issues of Square Wheels back to the organizational or work group mission and vision, helping to readily impact the peer support for alignment and generating discussions as to where expectations and measurement / feedback systems do not align. You can read a short article on assessing and improving feedback systems by clicking here.

We can open up discussions of best practices by sharing ideas for Round Wheels. Begin by requesting that 3 Round Wheel ideas be generated for each selected Square Wheel to be addressed. This causes more creative thinking for solutions to common problems. Then, you can specifically ask the group what an Exemplary Performer might choose to do to bust through the roadblocks and make leap-through impacts.

Are these illustrations too silly or too simple?

Global experiences with audiences ranging from front-line workers to teams of senior executives in global organizations to sessions like the 100 top managers in the Hong Kong government suggest a simple answer:  NO.

While the images themselves ARE simple, this is one of the reasons that they are so engaging and why they generate so many ideas. The wagon is NOT a complex organization while all of the different aspects of human behavior are. People will look at the illustration and initially have only a few thoughts, but once the ideas begin to be shared with others at their tabletops, the ideas will flow and the perspectives will shift significantly. And once all the tabletops are involved, it can get truly amazing–the creativity and insights.

As things are discussed, the general main cartoon issues are always transitioned back to the actual workplace, as people begin to see the issues they face in the context of the image. Problems take on a Square Wheels label, and once something is labeled a Square Wheel, it will always exist as something that NEEDS to be addressed and solved; after all, the Round Wheels already exist. Just plain and simple cognitive dissonance in action!

The simple Square Wheels concept and image is a powerful tool for brainstorming and creative problem solving, also, since it detaches the issues of ownership and politics from the issues of performance. Calling something a Square Wheel is not viewed as a personal attack on the person or originating department; it is merely something to address and improve.

It also links beautifully to ownership engagement for problem resolution. A reality is that:

“Nobody ever washes a rental car.”

and that active involvement generated by the process links neatly to the issues of active workplace engagement.

Let this blog represent a starting point for addressing why Square Wheels images work so well in situations to generate active learning, active involvement, teamwork and pragmatic ideas for organizational improvement. Performance improvement is a difficult thing to accomplish, in so many situations, and these very simple tools and a simple approach to involving and engaging people works seamlessly and elegantly.

What are YOUR thoughts on why this works or some thinking
about the issues that using it might generate?

And how can I help you build a tool for global impact within your organizations?

You can see an old 90-second video of me talking about SWs here

—

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group
Materials copyright © Performance Management Company, 1993 – 2025

 * Please note that I have a doctorate in behavioral neuropsychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and have completed NLP Master Practitioner certification, along with being a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) from the International Association of Facilitators and a Certified Professional Trainer (CPT) from the International Association for People and Performance. So, I do have both an educational background for understanding the neurophysiology of learning as well as the professional experienced in changing organizational behavior. Since I “retired” to Cuenca, Ecuador in 2000, I continue to write and present and am looking for collaboration partners to play with ideas and roll out some additional products.

#LeadershipTools #ChangeManagement #TeamBuildingActivities #WorkplaceInnovation #EngagementTools #ThinkOutsideTheBox #HRInnovation #TeamworkMatters #ActiveInvolvement #CultureOfImprovement #FacilitationTools #engagement #communications #leadership #learning #teambuilding #teamwork #innovation #motivation #culture #mission #vision #silo #isolation #performance #change #organizationaldevelopment #HR #Training #collaboration #facilitation #leadershipstyles