Most managers have heard of Gantt charts and associate them with project management where they are widely used to help coordinate the separate threads of work so that the project finishes on time.
How many know about the man who invented them and why?
Henry Laurence Gantt (1861-1919) was an engineer and he invented the chart for a very different purpose – so that the workers and the managers could see at a glance the progress of the work and to see what was impairing the flow. Decades before the invention of the computer, Henry Gantt created a simple and incredibly powerful visual tool for enabling workers and managers to improve processes together.
I know how simple and powerful the original Gantt chart is because I use it all the time for capturing the behaviour of a process in a visual form that stimulates constructive conversations which result in win-win-win improvements. All you need is some squared paper, a pencil, a clock, a Mark I Eyeball or two, and a bit of practice.