Advice for getting started

• Do not seek an ‘instant A’ - seek Kaizen
• The executives set the future state
• Let the future state and measures inform goals
• Good goals can finish with “so that …”
• Do not hide goals as a strategy or bets
• Talk about progress more than outcomes
• Minimise overlap at each level (Mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive or MECE)

At each level define cascading measures of progress. Use these to validate the relationship between Goals, Strategies and Bets Assess your current portfolio of work against the Goals and Strategies. What should you start, stop, continue? Does it pass the photocopier test? If a customer found a print out of your Hoshin Kanri would it make sense to them?

Note

Kaizen: in Japanese means ‘improvement’ or ‘change for better’ (from 改 kai - change, revision; and 善 zen - virtue, goodness); a.k.a. continuous improvement.

• Start where you are
• Run retros against Goals to help manage the transition between current and future plans
• MECE (Mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive) reduce overlaps and dependencies
• In an ideal scenario you would have one Hoshin Kanri for the entire organisation, this can be challenging. Alternatively you can start at the team, product or service level