Key Points

• There are numerous opportunities with Hoshin Kanri for rolling out a strategy.
• Hoshin Kanri has been around for decades and has proven to be a fantastic business methodology.
• If implemented correctly, employees at all levels will be on board with the new strategy rollout.

At any moment in time in business when you are looking for a business philosophy that can help you figure out how to enact a strategy, Hoshin Kanri has to be at or near the top of any list. When you think about this process, try to imagine back to when you were a child and you played connect-the-dots and you had to figure out how to make random dots look like they were in a particular order.

This is very much what Hoshin Kanri can do for a business, although it gets a little more complex than just a childhood game. The hope, though, with Hoshin Kanri, is to look at a bunch of dots on paper and learn how to connect them in a way that lines up with an organization’s broad strategic objectives and or initiatives to come up with a bigger picture and, of course, earn more revenue.

What Is Hoshin Kanri?

The most pressing information you need to know about Hoshin Kanri is its definition. On a simplified level, it’s a policy deployment tool that offers seven steps to help a company-wide strategy work. A Japanese-based strategic planning method, it translates to “policy deployment” or “direction management” and stems from post-World War II in Japan, when the nation had to rebuild.

At its core, Hoshin Kanri is heavily focused on how to break through company objectives in a way that works with daily management. The hope is that any strategy incorporated with this methodology is going to promote big initiatives like focus, being accountable, and alignment across the company through all different levels of management.

On the plus side, you have a multitude of tools available to incorporate Hoshin Kanri into your company, like an X-matrix to visualize goals, strategies, and metrics. You can also incorporate A3 documents to track progress and make regular reviews of what is taking place in order to see the most effective results.

Ultimately, Hoshin Kanri is something a company will enact to improve the execution of a core business strategy, break down silos, and drive results.

Hoshin Kanri and Strategy Execution Are a Strong Match

Any instance in which you are trying to build out a strategy and then execute it comes with a lot of nerves about how to implement. The good news is that Hoshin Kanri provides a clear direction for your next steps and the steps after that. At the very top of the reasons to use this process is that it offers plenty of structure, and it gives a top-level vision of how the strategy on paper is going to help translate to actionable tasks.

Best of all, it works well in dynamic business environments, which is why it’s been around since the 1960s and has been praised by companies like Toyota and Bridgestone. Even in complex organizations like Toyota’s, it can help integrate with the right quality standards that the company wants to deliver, and it’s one of the reasons why brands like Toyota are now considered some of the most reliable vehicles on the road today.

In addition, Hoshin Kanri offers the opportunity to set a variety of goals using the catchball method, empowering employees at all levels. When an employee is thinking about how to enact some part of the strategy, Hoshin Kanri all but guarantees they are taking ownership of this process, which gives them empowerment and breaks down any resistance that might have existed otherwise.

How Hoshin Kanri Improves Strategy Execution

Aligning Goals Across Company Levels

When you start to think about how to really see when and where Hoshin Kanri can improve strategy execution, it starts with aligning different goals across company levels. There are almost always going to be cascading objectives in a company, which start with a vision and end up as a task on someone’s list. The goal is to have a dialogue about these goals with the different stakeholders who are involved and help them understand the clear priority of your strategy.

Better yet, ensure they understand that you will allow this strategy to be continuously refined, enabling it to be adapted in the most effective way for everyone across the organization. This should make those who are working on the lower levels of an org feel like their feedback is being incorporated in a way that makes them feel empowered.

Enhanced Communication and Collaboration

The use of the Hoshin Kanri X-matrix, a strategic planning tool that helps showcase how an organization’s goals align with actionable objectives, is going to help effectively communicate the goals of your strategy as well. The use of an A3 report, essentially a one-page document outlining the strategic plan, will help deliver the desired results by clearly communicating the strategy and its actionability.

The hope here is that improving communication and collaboration is going to help break down any resistance to a new strategy, and the same goes for breaking down silos. Ultimately, the hope is that ensuring cross-functional teams communicate will address the need to eliminate silos and create a supportive environment where everyone involved in strategy implementation feels valued.

Monitoring and Adjusting Progress

As with any strategy implementation, it must be carefully monitored to ensure everyone is proceeding smoothly. If a hitch is discovered, it must be possible to make simple adjustments on the move to shift the strategy and break down the barrier causing the hitch.

The bottom line is that looking at data-driven tweaks is going to help any company respond to both internal and external forces, as well as help to identify the root cause of any issues that might be causing a strategy to break, like equipment breaking down on a manufacturing line or a retail brand producing and needing to store unnecessary inventory levels.

Building Accountability and Ownership

Overall, one of the biggest ways in which Hoshin Kanri improves strategy execution is by making sure that those who need to be held accountable are actually held accountable. As soon as someone learns that they will be held accountable for not completing a certain responsibility, it reinforces the idea that people need to take swift action to help move forward with strategy implementation.

Something to consider for organizations is to establish regular check-ins that help reinforce what commitments are necessary. Anything that can be done to remind people of their ownership of certain levels of responsibility and goals is going to help with achieving said goals. The same thing goes for thanking these employees for their contributions, as this will help motivate them to continue doing more than just the bare minimum.

Understanding Strategy Execution Challenges

It’s a sad but true reality that implementing a new strategy in any organization often comes with some challenges. Among these challenges are common bottlenecks, such as communication gaps, resource shortfalls, and internal conflicts between teams that struggle to collaborate effectively, which only extend timelines.

These problems generally exist because there are siloed departments that can compete and or shift priorities, which negatively affects morale. The very same consideration can be said when poor execution and inter-personal arguments are taking place, which can frustrate employees, especially those who are not clear on what their roles are.

Leaders who see employees missing targets are going to be frustrated, and ultimately, if the organization isn’t properly implementing a new strategy, it could be losing market share at the same time and delivering subpar customer experiences. This is a pretty dramatic scenario, as a strategy shouldn’t just start being implemented at a time when a company is already on the downside of organizational challenges, but it can and does happen.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge that needs to be addressed is understanding the root causes of why a new strategy needs to be enacted in the first place. The goal is to understand where these challenges exist and why, such as whether it is too many meetings or a poor understanding of what inventory control needs to look like. There are systemic changes that have to take place with any strategy rollout, and feedback about why they are happening is the only way to make lasting change work.

Sustaining Hoshin Kanri for Long-Term Strategy Success

Continuous Monitoring

At the core of maintaining and sustaining Hoshin Kanri for long-term strategy success, you have to make sure there are annual reviews taking place. Even better, institute quarterly check-ins to track alignment, all while using the right software to make sure that metrics are being tracked in real time.

The focus is to ensure that any draft from the objectives of a strategy isn’t going so far off course that bringing everyone back in line is a much heavier lift. Assuming these challenges are caught early, it’s much easier to course correct.

Employee Engagement

Keep up regular catch-up sessions with employees and make sure their input isn’t just heard, but acted on when necessary. The same goes for celebrating breakthroughs, as employee sessions that highlight big wins need to take place regularly, to motivate employees to keep going with these changes, and they are having a positive effect on the business.

Process Standardization

Another major consideration is to document all of the best practices that are taking place, to ensure that there is consistency across the board. This approach allows for highlighting and promoting new strategies that deliver significant results during annual updates, especially with senior leadership. It also provides an opportunity to standardize these processes across the board, aiming to achieve even greater successes in the future.

Scalability and Adaptation

Any instance in which a strategy that is showing success can be rolled out to different parts of an organization, where it makes sense, should absolutely take place. The benefits of the strategy should be both promoted and amplified, as the more success an organization has, the better it is for everyone, including the employees who might be frustrated or concerned about any new strategy rolling out. This is especially true when these strategies might have employees questioning where their roles fit in with any new approaches.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

As you focus on how to roll out Hoshin Kanri and a new strategy in the future, it helps to have a really solid understanding of this methodology. This is why it’s strongly recommended to read our step-by-step guide on Hoshin Kanri for beginners. It’s a fascinating look at why this business methodology exists and why the seven steps of Hoshin Kanri are so important.

Moving away from Hoshin Kanri, the good news is that there are plenty of other reading recommendations, such as the success of Six Sigma in education. For the frequent fliers out there, how about how Kaizen applies on the tarmac and is leading to faster turnaround times at the airport?

Conclusions

Overall, there is no question that Hoshin Kanri is going to help your company execute and deliver on a new strategy through structured deployment. No matter why this new strategy exists, this is a business methodology and philosophy that has been delivered time and time again to other companies. Organizations that use it smartly and make effective changes, all while delivering long-term growth and innovation, as well as keeping the door open for continuous refinement.