Method

Hoshin Kanri — policy deployment

In French: Hoshin Kanri (déploiement de la stratégie)

Hoshin Kanri translates a few strategic orientations into objectives and actions at every level of the organisation, through a top-down and bottom-up negotiation rather than a cascade of orders.

Few objectives, and that is the point

The method forces a choice: three to five orientations for the company, not fifteen. An organisation pursuing fifteen priorities has none, and each level then arbitrates according to its own criteria.

That narrowing is the hardest part, because it obliges a management team to write down what it will not do this year. It is also what gives a team leader a means of refusing a request: it serves none of the orientations retained.

Each orientation then goes down one level while being transformed: what is an objective at the upper level becomes a means at the lower level, which in turn sets itself objectives. One finds the structure of a chain of ends and means, from the management committee down to the team.

Negotiation, not cascade

The mechanism that distinguishes Hoshin Kanri from a simple breakdown of objectives has a name: catchball. Each level proposes what it can hold and what it would need to go further; the upper level answers, adjusts, arbitrates the means. The exchange is repeated until both commit.

The point is not buy-in for its own sake. An objective set without that exchange rests on the estimate of a level that does not execute, and its unrealism appears only at the end of the year. The discussion brings the obstacles up at the moment when it is still possible to act on them.

It has a cost: several weeks of back and forth, every year. That is the main reason why the method is abandoned, and generally in favour of a top-down cascade that costs less and does not hold.

The review, which makes or breaks the method

Hoshin Kanri assumes periodic reviews where the gap between planned and actual is looked at, and where decisions are taken. Without them, deployment is reduced to a start-of-year exercise nobody mentions again.

Those reviews bear on the gaps, not on the successes: an action on green calls for no decision. That is what makes them short, and it is also what requires a culture where announcing a delay is not a fault.

The annual cycle closes with an assessment that feeds the next orientations — it is the Deming wheel applied to strategy, over twelve months rather than a week.

The common mistakes

Deploying without removing. Adding the new orientations to everything that already existed produces a load nobody holds. A serious deployment says what stops to make room.

Translating through a cascade of numerical objectives with no discussion. One then gets the form without the substance: complete tables, commitments nobody negotiated, and a year-end assessment that surprises only those who wrote it.

On the shop floor — Industrial group, 400-person site

Senior management had retained eleven annual priorities. The reduction to four, imposed by the first Hoshin cycle, brought out that two departments had been working for a year on subjects that fell under none of the four — and that nobody had decided to launch.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference from a classic objectives approach?

Two differences. The number — a few orientations, not a catalogue — and the direction of flow: the negotiation goes up as much as it goes down, whereas a classic objectives approach cascades downwards without the lower levels being able to renegotiate the means.

Is a particular format needed?

A four-quadrant matrix linking orientations, objectives, actions and owners — the X-matrix — is the most widespread tool, but it is not the method. An organisation can run a rigorous Hoshin with a simple table, and fill in an impeccable matrix without steering anything.

Over what time span?

An annual cycle, backed by a three- or five-year vision. The annual cycle is what makes the orientations actionable; the vision is what prevents setting off in a different direction every year.

Does it concern small organisations?

Yes, with fewer levels and therefore less back and forth. The main benefit — choosing few orientations and saying what will not be done — is worth as much at twenty people as at two thousand, and costs far less to set up.