In the future of the organizational world, there have been many techniques and tools that managers have tried to implement in organizations with the sole purpose of achieving organizational objectives.
Immersed among these main elements that have allowed the configuration of organizational thinking, strategic planning, as a field, inscribed in the administrative discipline, has outstanding contributions fundamentally during the last five decades. Therefore, any methodology used to achieve it will serve as the basis for the organization to be successful, as long as the true spirit in this regard is maintained.
In this way, the Hoshin - Kanri methodology, disseminated through Japanese companies from the 1960s, represents one of the main tools to manage the strategic planning of an organization, which allows you to create an organization capable of maintaining a high performance and produce results, by establishing short, medium and long-term management plans, as well as prioritization of activities and resources; involving all members of the organization, so that everyone can contribute their vision of how to do things (know-how) with the respective monitoring and control.
This methodology focuses on a Policy Administration, which is immersed in a participatory process, establishing, implementing and subsequently self-controlling the fundamental objectives of the organization originating from senior management. When an organization adopts the Hoshin-Kanri methodology, what it is looking for is to systematically integrate the activities of human talent, that is, to align the group, in order to build quick responses to changes and thus achieve the proposed goals more easily.
The difficulty of implementing not only this methodology, but any tool that implies a change, is based precisely on the resistance to it, when meeting forces that face each other in different directions, emerging in this context the challenge of guiding and focusing them on the same goal.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, once it has been assumed, it represents a transforming force in guiding the conduct of strategic planning, while it is common to find organizations where their human talent does not have the slightest idea of their mission, vision, values, objectives, indicators, among others.
In this way, the Hoshin - Kanri methodology can be implemented in stages, as follows:
Phase I, the what: Establish objectives and delimitation of responsibilities, either from senior management or through the general participation of the organization's Human Talent.
Phase II, the how, or the execution: each person in charge designates his work group, each group determines his strategies and action plans to follow and finally these strategies and plans are structured, hierarchized and prioritized.
Phase III, the strategies and plans are analyzed by the lower hierarchical level, operational brainstorming actions are analyzed and the most suitable ones are selected, repeating for each level until reaching the last one and the operational plans have been indicated. At this stage, it is important to review and verify in order to verify that the selected operational plans fully correspond to the originally defined strategic planning, while the presence of deviations is probable, in view of which the respective corrective actions must be imposed.
According to Zeus Management (2015), the main objectives of the Hoshin - Kanri methodology are:
- Integrate all the personnel of an organization towards the key objectives using indirect means instead of direct pressure, creating a feeling of need and conviction. Integrate all tasks, whether routine or improvement, based on the key objectives of the company coordinating all efforts and resources Effectively realigning objectives and activities based on changes in the environment.
The methodology is essentially very simple, which will become complex to a greater or lesser extent in accordance with the interests of senior management, as well as the ability to react to change on the part of both human talent and the organization itself, which it requires a systemic approach combining multiple elements, such as technologies, leadership itself, the organizational model and the capacity for change.
ELEMENTS OF HOSHIN KANRI
The Hoshin Kanri methodology is based on fundamental bases, which are, according to Zeus Management (2015), the following:
- Approach based on the Deming PHVA Cycle. (Plan, do, verify and act) Oriented to systems that must be improved to achieve the strategic objectives. Participation of all levels and departments for the development and deployment of annual and average objectives. To achieve this Fundamentally based on facts Formulation of objectives, plans and goals cascading throughout the organization based on continuous improvement models Focusing on a few critical objectives Incorporating financial indicators by relating them directly to the results of process indicators. Value and reflect the contribution of people to the fulfillment of individual and collective objectives. The elaboration of objectives must be based on knowledge of the business and complemented with quality control and benchmarking tools.Establish a system of indicators that allows assessing both the level of achievement of objectives and means and their effectiveness. Implement a system review method that allows the implementation of corrective actions, continuous evaluation. It will be the responsibility of the highest level Executive of the company to review, once a year, the process and its results in a total way with the intention of generating a SWOT matrix, a tool that will serve for subsequent strategic planning. Hoshin Kanri is based on an information system based on a set of documents and tools. The objective is to implement the effectiveness of the plan and improve its results.Implement a system review method that allows the implementation of corrective actions, continuous evaluation. It will be the responsibility of the highest level Executive of the company to review, once a year, the entire process and its results with the intention of generating a SWOT matrix, a tool that will serve for subsequent strategic planning. The Hoshin Kanri is based on an information system based on a set of documents and tools. The objective is to implement the plan's effectiveness and improve its results.Implement a system review method that allows the implementation of corrective actions, continuous evaluation. It will be the responsibility of the highest level Executive of the company to review, once a year, the entire process and its results with the intention of generating a SWOT matrix, a tool that will serve for subsequent strategic planning. The Hoshin Kanri is based on an information system based on a set of documents and tools. The objective is to implement the effectiveness of the plan and improve its results.tool that will serve for subsequent strategic planning. The Hoshin Kanri is based on an information system based on a set of documents and tools. The objective is to implement the effectiveness of the plan and improve its results.tool that will serve for subsequent strategic planning. The Hoshin Kanri is based on an information system based on a set of documents and tools. The objective is to implement the plan's effectiveness and improve its results.
From the component elements of the indicated methodology, the greatest advantage emerges, which is the only direction that the organization assumes with its members, depending on the scope of the organizational objectives, with innovation and creativity, which generates a different emerging context to those organizations where routine is the norm.
Implementing Hoshin - Kanri in the organization allows creating strategic planning (if it has not already been created), spreading it (if it has already been created) and relentlessly following it to achieve success, this not being understood as simply achieving goals, but how to stay competitive in a dynamic environment where the disorder and chaos generated by globalization tends to unbalance even those companies with greater strengths.
The methodology achieves that all parts of the organization work together towards a common goal, achieving the alignment of all the elements of the organization: human talent, senior management, internal and external clients, among others. Also, it allows the assignment and delimitation of responsibilities, so the failure to detect weaknesses and be able to attack them immediately, implementing the corrective and preventive actions that may take place, will be unlikely.
Ultimately, when evaluating management models, the manager must evaluate the pros and cons and of course, if it is feasible to apply it in his organization, this model will allow organizations to be oriented towards objectives, increasing communication, participation and interaction of all operational levels. For this, the key objectives must be developed, so that the leadership focuses on them and manages to align all the resources of the organization.
Author: Lcdo. Michael Aular - Micdan Consulting Twiter: @Micdanconsultin
