Professional and Coaching Services

Transform complexity into clarity, resistance into sustainable flow.

We help teams see, understand, and improve their work through visual management.
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Results You Can Trust

Transforming Work Across Global Organizations from Tech Giants to Public Institutions 

Our proven approach delivers breakthrough performance in organizations including

Built for Your Independence.
Backed by Experts.

Accelerate success with expert guidance.

Work with us, learn with us, then take that competency in-house. 

With Modus Institute’s decades of experience in organizational design, psychology of work, and Lean systems, our expert-led services help teams maximize every feature, optimize every workflow, and achieve breakthrough performance faster.
  • Battle-Tested Transformation: Custom solutions built from hundreds of successful implementations
  • Immediate Impact: Walk away with workflows, practices, and behaviors that deliver from day one
  • Trusted Expertise: Led by the creators of Personal Kanban and 21st century knowledge work tools, with decades of transformation experience
  • Platform Integrations: Expert-crafted systems and visuals optimizing Kanban Zone or your existing tool set
  • Scalable Support: From onboarding to enterprise delivery, evolve at your pace

Your Team. Your Work.
Your Right Environment.

Work with us to build your way of working. Don't copy from a book or a class or a fad, build it yourself to suit your unique needs.
In addition to our beloved workshops, we work directly with you, helping your team see their work, understand where there are breakdowns, and fix them on the spot. Immediate, deployable, better. 
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Targeted Services for Immediate Impact

Explore our most requested services tailored to work with your team's specific needs.

All Modus services can be delivered either on site or remote / online.

Kanban Fundamentals

Design intuitive boards that balance team capacity, eliminate information overload, and seamlessly transform scattered activities into clear, actionable priorities. Kanban enables smarter, faster decisions at every level of your organization. Kanban from the people who perfected it.

Value Stream Mapping

The foundation of any effective team. Map your work’s true patterns: how value flows, where constraints impact delivery, and where opportunities exist. Use this to design smarter boards that optimize current performance, respond to real needs for improvement, and unlock future potential. Find and fix your real issues, become high-performing immediately.

Right Environment Design

Co-create a visual, collaborative, and above all, humane work environment that amplifies visual clarity and strengthens team alignment. Effortlessly turn individual efforts into synchronized, meaningful achievement that drives lasting impact and continuous growth. Make the most of your team.

The Team that Defined Visual Work

Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria, the Shingo Award-winning creators of Personal Kanban and Lean Coffee, are globally recognized pioneers in human-centered organizational design and visual management. Through Modus Institute, they transform how organizations work—from startups and small businesses to Fortune 500 companies and global institutions like Spotify, Meta, and the World Bank. Their unique approach integrates neuropsychology, systems thinking, and Lean principles to create environments where teams naturally excel.

As Obeya sensei and Lean Enterprise Institute faculty, Jim and Toni have guided organizations across six continents to build sustainable, high-performing teams. Their methodology goes beyond process improvement, focusing on the cognitive and social dynamics that make teams genuinely want to collaborate. By merging behavioral science with visual management, they help organizations unlock both immediate wins and lasting cultural transformation—turning workplace friction into flow.
Jim is the co-creator of Personal Kanban and a pioneering voice in the Kanban movement, known for his expertise in complexity navigation and systems design. Merging visual management with decision-making science, he helps organizations transform chaos into clarity and resistance into flow. His approach builds collaborative environments where teams develop shared understanding through visualization, enabling organizations from startups to global enterprises to adapt naturally and achieve sustainable results.

Jim Benson

Tonianne is the co-creator of Personal Kanban and a pioneer in the psychology of work. Merging visual management with behavioral economics and cognitive science, she helps organizations understand how their teams think, collaborate, and thrive. Her approach transforms workplace dynamics by creating psychologically safe environments where visualization enhances understanding and trust, enabling teams to work in ways that honor both their cognitive capacity and their need for meaningful outcomes.

Tonianne DeMaria

EXPERIENCE BACKED BY RECOGNITION

Shingo Award

Jim and Toni's book Personal Kanban received the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for its groundbreaking approach to visual management and work design.

Who We Help

Let's build your future together, quickly and thoughtfully.

Strategic Leaders

End the need for micromanagement.

You are the new manager, ready to align teams, drive strategy, and deliver results. Our services help  connect the dots between planning and execution with visual systems that scale, so you can stop chasing status updates, suffering through interminable meetings, and start leading with confidence.

Don't just empower, build a better system.

Team Leads

Reduce chaos.
Build focus and completion.

You’re in the trenches, balancing everyone else's priorities and keeping your team moving forward. We help you replace chaos with clarity by designing workflows that streamline collaboration, surface risks early, and keep your team proactive, without the need for constant reminders.

Plan and execute with the team, always have buy-in.

Change Agents

Make transformation stick with real behavior change.

You drive change, whether inside your organization or as a consultant. We equip you with the structure, visuals, and practices to not only implement transformation but to embed it into daily behaviors, so the improvements you and the team make today continues to deliver results tomorrow.

Change is always resisted, but people want pain to go away.

Teams and Departments

Coordinate, build your real culture, and deliver reliably.

You are a team, responsible for each other, your shared goals, and juggling multiple priorities while meeting expectations. We will help visualize commitments, manage dependencies, and deliver with confidence. Move from being a collection of busy individuals to a unified force with purpose and predictability.

Be the team you know you can be.
Testimonials

What Our Clients Say:

Our time with Modus was the most successful consulting engagement I have ever seen.
SM, COO
Thank you guys for taking a very personal, intimate planning session and helping us translate it into an ongoing way of working that retains its humanity.
DB, Team lead