The Management Compass

Balanced scorecard (BSC) has started as method, became kind of brand, and still serves as source of fame and wealth of those that well-promoted this managerial tool. Apart from methodical persuasiveness, randomness might have worked in favor of BSC instead of prioritizing Hoshin. However, managers that have ever had the chance to deepen their knowledge of and skills in applying Hoshin would never hit upon the idea of trying any other method the attractiveness of which is focality, focality, focality. Exactly, this is what makes the difference in the manager's life: Thrust, break-through thinking, and focusing on the essential. Benno D. Hoffmann

If you don't need to know about Hoshin Planning, don't read this book; if you do, you will find it mercifully short. I was able to read it cover-to-cover in one transcontinental flight. Born as a component of TQM, Hoshin Planning has taken on a life of its own and is in use in companies that do not have a TQM program in place or where that program has been abandoned. Wiremold, for example, used it in support of its lean manufacturing implementation in the 1990's, and HP has been using it as part of its normal business planning process. Hoshin Planning is about strategy deployment and Bechtell's point is that it improves upon the earlier Management By Objectives (MBO) by not only setting quantitative goals but also providing the "catchball process" of discussions up and down the hierarchy and between peer groups on the means by which these goals can be achieved. The result is a more realistic plan, to which organization members are committed. Bechtell also describes how the catchball process is facilitated by the traditional statistical "7 tools of QC" and what has been called in Japan "the new 7 tools of QC" for planning and management, ranging from affinity maps to radar charts. While some of these tools lose their relevance outside of TQM, others don't. The price the reader pays for the conciseness of this book is that it is short on concrete examples. It also fails to spell out the assumptions that must be true for the method to work. For the work force to participate in Hoshin Planning, it must have from the outset the skills needed to execute the strategy. Otherwise, its members are in no position to make useful inputs to the catchball process. Lean manufacturing implementation, for example, involves the acquisition of new engineering and managerial skills by the work force. At the outset, by definition, it does not possess these skills. Lean manufacturing implementation therefore requires a bootstrapping process in which initial projects inoculate the work force with skills that can then be applied in the planning of further waves of projects. Bechtell does not address this issue, but, to my knowledge, neither do other writers on Hoshin Planning.

Dry? Yes, but short and to the point. Author describes a process (series Of) which when followed allows the entire company to respond to the big initiaties needed to change the direction of the company. Relies on teams from the smallest operating groups who will invent the systems they will use. Wonderful process and well worthy of the effort.