Hoshin Kanri

Methodology is an excuse to think.

Pastel, Porter's Five Forces, key success factors, the business model canvas, SWOT, the balanced scorecard, Hoshin Kanri.

The toolbox is vast, and it is easy to believe that mastering it is a prerequisite for doing strategy.

It is not.

Bridgestone had gone looking at the companies that had won the Deming Prize, Japan's highest honor for quality, and asked a simple question.

How do the best-run companies decide where they're going, and how do they get everyone moving there? The practices they documented got a name, Hoshin Kanri, roughly direction management.

The idea is simple to say and hard to do.

Leadership sets a direction.

That's really hard for people to do.

I was in a Hoshin review session, okay, reviewing the bowling charts and all that, and the CEO of the company, who's like six levels removed from the issue, tells the group, "Here's what you guys need to do.

You need to do this, this, this, and that." Nobody's gonna push back against the CEO.

By the way, the CEO was dead wrong.