Articles

Turn your strategy to reality using Hoshin Kanri

Turn your strategy to reality using Hoshin Kanri or Policy Deployment

Strategy is a key element to any organization or individual’s success. Traditionally, Small & Medium Businesses have been deprived of a good strategic document. I have usually observed that founders’ vision becomes their strategy. As the organizations grow, their course is governed by several factors other than the strategy itself. Believe me, its very common!

With large corporations, the story is very different. A robust and well thought through strategy is crafted by the best brains with the help of extensive analytics, in-depth market research, detailed understanding customer behavior, economic conditions, financial barriers, global trends, etc. The problem is actually with execution of the strategy. Complexity arising out of geographical spread, cultural diversity, multiple leadership styles, incentive programs, corporate dynamics, communication barrier, etc., play against effective execution.

While these are prevalent in large corporations, several small & medium businesses haven’t been spared.

Is your organization one of them, find out yourself.

• What % of the company’s staff understands the strategy?
• Are your performance goals and incentive tied to the strategy? Is it also the case with your manager & your sub-ordinates?
• Are there disagreements on ownership of failures?
• Do the budgets tie-in with strategy?
• By the time your performance goals are agreed, half the year is gone?
• If its not there in the goal sheets, don’t expect it to happen?
• Last year is history. We may a fresh start every year?
• Are critical projects focused to the strategy? What % is delayed?
• How often have you seen meetings where implementation of strategy is discussed?

There is no right or wrong answer, but I’m sure you will get an idea. Real problems with the execution of strategy are

• Poor penetration of organization’s vision
• Weak top-down deployment of strategy
• Lack of integrated planning
• Poor feedback mechanism on what is working
• Dispersed ownership & accountability
• Unstructured communication & change management programs

Hoshin Kanri or simply Policy Deployment, Japanese term for Strategic Policy Deployment has been used by several successful corporations to fix the above issues. Toyota, Bridgestone, Bank of America, HP and Komatsu are a few topping the list.

Literally Hoshin is ‘Direction’ and Kanri is ‘Execution’.

Hoshin Planning process consists of

• Strategic Vision & Mission for next 3 – 5 years
• Strategic goals in line with Vision & Mission
• Scorecard wrt Customers, Stakeholders & Associate

Along with this comes a host of review and monitoring mechanism. It provides detailed approach to translate strategy to action.

In its simplest form, Hoshin Kanri (Policy Deployment) can be used to create a 3 page Business Plan for Small & Medium Businesses and start-ups.

If you are looking for Hoshin Kanri Policy Deployment consultant in Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and across India, contact us.