Hoshin Kanri is a Lean Organization’s method to set mid to long term management plans. We prioritize our resources and activities by involving members through a method called catchball. Though it seems an easy process to understand most organizations design their systems based on the structure of the organization. It is a reason that Six Sigma may be better suited for the typical hierarchy structured command and control organization. It is also, why the catchball approach is very difficult for most organizations.
Catchball was explained before, but a few details that I felt worth mentioning. Managers in a hierarchy structured organization believe that not having a detail process will hinder getting their plans enacted. They also are hesitant sending their well-thought out idea and creating a free for all atmosphere around it. It often may be the fear of losing control. What they will find is that as you play catchball, the further you go down in the organization, the more tactical the feedback is. People want leaders to lead. In the same vein, most people want to do a good job. How to implement your idea, vision is often contained within the tacit knowledge of your organization. Catchball makes that knowledge explicit. Prioritizing activities and resources are best left to the parts of the organization that is closest to the job to be done.
An organization is structured into functional areas and each area is given a mission to efficiently reach the organization’s purposes. In Hoshin, we prioritize these activities to achieve company vision and targets. The Hoshin at each department level clarifies strategies and targets to reach these targets (macro and micro PDCA). This way problem identification at the place of work is needed to study these problems, develop improvement measures needed to reach targets. The team leader or manager takes on responsibilities to clarify the measures needed to achieve the Hoshin targets based on the workplace mission. Workplace mission is demonstrated in the question “For whom and what type of value added products and services should be provided?”
Another way of viewing this process is that you are incorporating multiple PDCAs into a grander PDCA. This ensures that checks and follow-ups are made during implementation of Hoshin so that the whole organization is moving in one direction with team members driving the initiative versus management. The entire organization is one large PDCA cycle with a defined target. Each division and other layers create specific targets with the appropriate activities to achieve these.
As a result leading indicators rather than lag accountability measures can be created. Leading indicators are not easy to create. Many times they are only known by the people doing the work. Another way to think about this is that leading indicators are at the level of individual or the team’s process, the activity that they do.
Bonus Material: Adam Zak, co-author of Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation
Podcast: The Lean Thinker on Value Enhancement (Lean)
eBook: Lean thinking on Value Enhancement eBook
The The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals is one of my favorite books and workshops, I have attended. the best workshops I have ever attended and overall some of the best training I have ever received. It is staggering some of the numbers that they quote such as:
What is happening in your organization?
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- How many people on your work team know the organization’s most important goals? 58%
- How many people on your team know how they’re doing on those goals? 35%
- How many people know exactly what they are supposed to do to help achieve the organization’s most important goals? 54%
- Does your team consistently plan together to achieve their most important goals? 47%
This is a video preview of Store 334, a video featured in FranklinCovey’s Leadership and Execution workshops. Grocery Store 334 had its share of troubles. When manager Jim Dixon got everyone clear on the store goal, he thought his work was done. But only when everyone was accountable for the goal and empowered to make decisions did things start to change.
- Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important – Human beings are wired to do only one thing at a time with excellence. The more we narrow our focus, the greater the chance of achieving our goals with excellence. Discuss what must be done or nothing else will matter. Using a tool called the Importance Screen, learn how so identity and narrow all of the possible goals down to 2 or 3 critical things that must be done with excellence. Learn how to create a ” line of sight” from your goals to the company goals.
- Discipline 2: Create a Compelling Scoreboard – People play differently when they’re keeping score. Work through a process of identifying specific measures for those goals that have been identified in Discipline 1. Understand the difference between “leading” and “lagging” indicators. Using a tool called the Measurement Builder, create a team “scoreboard” that informs and motivates everyone contributing to the achievement of the goal(s}.
- Discipline 3: Translate Lofty Goals into Specific Actions – To achieve goals you’ve never achieved before, you need to start doing things you’ve never done before. Using an entrepreneurial model, challenge the group to identify new behaviors that will result in new (better) outcomes. Learn the methods for finding the best behaviors by identifying where they might already exist in your or other’s organizations, or by brainstorming and then creating the best behaviors that don’t currently exist anywhere. These new behaviors are then translated in to very specific activities on a weekly basis which, when completed, will help to achieve the larger team goals.
- Discipline 4: Hold Each Other Accountable – All of the Time – Knowing others are counting on you raises your level of commitment. Understand where you and your team are on the “scale of commitment” regarding the goal, and what you can do to increase the level of commitment to the goal. Address the actual practice to be used (WIG Session) in keeping the team engaged and focused on the top goals. Focus on four critical elements of this process; 1. Meeting is about the WIG’s, 2. “Triage” Reporting. 3. Finding 3rd Alternatives, 4. Clearing the Path for each other.