Hoshin Kanri – South Instead of North

[tweetmeme source=”leanisgood” service=”ow.ly” only_single=false]The other day I was out running with my dog and I experienced a troubling situation when the leash got wrapped under her belly.  I blame the dog’s ignorance and not the leash operator’s neglect!  But anyway, it was wrapped in such a way that as I tried to pull her left out of oncoming traffic, it actually pulled her head to the right, closer to the traffic.  Eventually we got the leash unwrapped and finished our run but I couldn’t stop thinking about how this situation mirrored improvement metrics from some of my past workplaces.

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Hoshin Kanri and Metrics: Make it Personal

[tweetmeme source=”leanisgood” service=”ow.ly”]When discussing Policy Deployment, one of the challenges is linking the vision / Mission to daily activities across the organization. One must capture the essence of the organization as well as understand what I do impacts the overall business. It also must matter to the associates. How can this be done? You need to get creative and have the associates / team members help with the process.

New Year’s Resolution – Do Less

Image by Jacob & Kiki Hantla under Creative Commons Attribution

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When you reflect on this year you probably see busyness replacing effectiveness, mixed priorities instead of a constant mission and doing more instead of doing important or vital.

The challenge is for next year that instead of a new year’s resolution to lose weight or learn a new language you first decide what you are going to stop doing. What are your principles, values, beliefs? What are you doing on a weekly or daily basis that does not fit these beliefs?

Policy Deployment #4 – Catch Ball

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How does your company roll out its annual business plans?  Do you get a huge spreadsheet with every cost possible, including toilet paper usage, broken down by accountants after weeks of calculations?  Is there a 95 page Powerpoint presentation that rivals any insomnia methods that exist today?  I really despise those techniques

Policy Deployment #3 – Creating the Plan

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Over the last couple of weeks I have posted on policy deployment (here and here.)  In the first post we talked about the importance of a big multi-year goal.  In the second we talked about the importance of real people, those who would have to execute being involved in determining the how and the support required to achieve the big goal.  That really is …The Plan. In this post I will show a couple of ways that you might break that big multi-year goal down

Policy Deployment #2 – Command Goes Down, Control Goes Up

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Last week I posted about setting big goals for policy deployment.   Now that we have decided to “go to the moon” we need to get serious about figuring out exactly how.  Many people think that lean is a bottom up approach to business.  Think of it as being both top down and bottom up. 

Policy Deployment #1 – Smart Goals Aren’t That Smart

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We are entering the time of year when most of us will be planning next year’s activities.   Hopefully most of us are doing policy deployment or something like it and not just having numerical goals dictated to us so that we can be held accountable later.  Hopefully the goals that we work towards will lead us to new levels of performance