Understanding Hoshin Kanri

Understanding
Hoshin Kanri

The top five articles on the topic from the Lean Post
showcase the power of this strategy deployment practice.


Table of Contents
The Cascade of Hoshin

Page 3

by Jim Womack
A recent gemba walk at a Toyota plant reveals how the company operationalizes
its hoshin plan — in this case, to win the auto industry’s transition to Mobility 2.0,
what Toyota President Akio Toyoda calls a “once-in-a-century disruption.”

How Hoshin Kanri Aligns Your Key Organizational Systems

Page 7

by Mark Reich
To build the culture and develop the complementary systems that connect
your company’s strategic and operational plans, consider how they must work
together, like the human body’s skeletal (hoshin) and muscular (continuous
improvement) systems.

Building the Mindset and Skillset to Improve
from the Board Room to the Classroom

Page 9

by Dr. Pat Greco
A school district superintendent describes how lean thinking and
practice transformed a failing district into a nationally recognized model
of continuous improvement.

How the Hoshin Kanri Process Coupled with Coaching
Drives Lean Transformation, Part 1

Page 12

by Laura Mottola
A veteran coach shares a few intangible truths you’ll need to know to execute an
organizational transformation using hoshin kanri.

How the Hoshin Kanri Process Coupled with Coaching
Drives Lean Transformation, Part 2
by Laura Mottola
Discover how a coach can help leaders execute a successful organizational
transformation using the hoshin kanri process.

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Understanding Hoshin Kanri

The Cascade of Hoshin

planning at Toyota, which has developed the management
mechanisms necessary to translate high-level hoshin plans
into sustainable results on the front lines. Let me describe
what I’ve seen.

A recent gemba walk at a Toyota plant reveals how the company
operationalizes its hoshin plan — in this case, to win the auto
industry’s transition to Mobility 2.0, what Toyota President
Akio Toyoda calls a “once-in-a-century disruption.”

“Toyota has developed the
management mechanisms
necessary to translate
high-level hoshin plans to
sustainable results on the
front lines.”

By James Womack
For many years, I have watched organizations attempt to
implement hoshin planning (strategy deployment, if you
prefer). First, they pick a few big issues important to the
long-term success of the organization — a leap in quality,
a dramatic drop in costs, a reduction in lead time to better
meet customer demand, a fundamental rethink of the type
of value the organization creates for customers. And then,
they try to deploy initiatives to address these issues down
through the levels of the organization. But even when they
limit the initiatives to a small, manageable number, they
rarely succeed.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda and the senior leadership
team have decided that the simultaneous emergence of
autonomy, alternative energy, shared assets, and hyperconnectivity is collectively creating a “once-in-a-century
disruption” in the auto industry as it transitions to a mobility
industry, commonly termed Mobility 2.0. (Whether this
is true or not is a separate question, although every other
legacy car company has reached the same conclusion. My
point here is about the successful deployment of hoshin, not
the validity of the hoshin vision.) And recently, Toyota has
had to add an extra dimension to the challenge: uncertainty
about global trading rules, which might require substantial
relocation of existing production, with loss of revenue and
increased costs.

What starts with the loud voice of the CEO at the
top becomes a faint whisper by the time it reaches the
organization’s front lines, where value of whatever
description is created and where improvement becomes
real. At this level, managers are mostly absorbed with daily
chaos, with no workable method for addressing hoshin
objectives even when they are clearly stated and prioritized
for that level.

Because many things are changing at once and the right
path to follow for each dimension of the Mobility 2.0

How Toyota Cascades Hoshin
Recently, I had the opportunity to closely observe hoshin
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challenge (plus the changing rules of trade) is impossible
to know, Toyota is responding by extending its principles
of concurrent engineering with set-based design from
individual vehicles to whole mobility systems. For example,
it is experimenting with:
•

Level 4 autonomy, where vehicles drive themselves, and
Guardian, a system that leaves driving to the driver but
prevents the driver from making dangerous mistakes.

•

Electric vehicles with pioneering solid-state batteries
and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

•

Partnerships with ride-hailing firms and logistics firms
like Uber and Amazon and experiments with Toyota
fleets of shared, autonomous vehicles (to be showcased
at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics).

•

Toyota Connected for connectivity between vehicles,
passengers, and their environment and partnerships
with other connectivity providers.

a companion operational hoshin of “create the financial
resources to support the respond-to-disruption hoshin.”
This cascading of the strategic hoshin to an operational
hoshin at the value-creating front lines provides the critical
means to a vital strategic end — that’s hoshin done right.

“So the primary strategic
hoshin of “address the oncein-a-century-disruption of the
automotive industry” needs
a companion operational
hoshin of “create the financial
resources to support the
respond-to-disruption hoshin.”
The specific means were recently visible to me on the shop
floor at Toyota Kyushu’s Miyata assembly plant on the
southern Japanese island of Kyushu. (This plant assembles
Lexus vehicles.) The hoshin objective that came down to
the plant for this year is a target to substantially reduce costs
while accommodating a richer model mix while reducing
takt time to meet increased demand (with substantially
no capex) while sustaining assembly quality at the current
level, which is reported by J.D. Power and Associates to be
the highest in the world.

And, perhaps most interesting, they’ve initiated a major
push to apply Toyota Production System (TPS) principles

to the development of the enormous software packages
needed for each of these innovations.
Many of these experiments may fail. And, even if a number
of the concepts prove worthy of widespread adoption,
Toyota must expend massive sums now for lengthy
experiments to determine which work best while defending
its current employees, always a core Toyota principle.
So the primary strategic hoshin of “address the once-ina-century-disruption of the automotive industry” needs

To be clear: This objective means increasing the production
rate with no capital spending while sustaining world-best

What is Hoshin Kanri?
Also known as Strategy or Policy Deployment,
Hoshin Kanri is a management process that
aligns — both vertically and horizontally — an
organization’s functions and activities with its
strategic objectives. A specific plan — typically
annual — is developed with precise goals, actions,
timelines, responsibilities, and measures.
from the Lean Lexicon 5th Edition

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quality and reducing the number of workers required on

the line (more on that in a moment). Thus, it will save
money that will be used for experiments with Mobility
2.0. And these experiments will permit Toyota to survive
and defend jobs in the long run. Wow. This is big. And it’s
complicated. How exactly to do this?

Andon

Understanding the Background
for the ‘How’
The Miyata plant has a very mature lean production system
that has created basic stability: the production line runs
more than 98% of the time, with about 1,000 Andon pulls
per day in final assembly. Almost all of these are addressed
by team leaders within takt time to steadily produce good
vehicles with very little rework. This stability means, in
turn, that managers are not bogged down in fire-fighting
and have time available to think about improvements in the
context of hoshin targets.

A visual management tool that highlights
the status of operations in an area at a single
glance and that signals whenever
an abnormality occurs.

Takt Time

The plant is facing a labor shortage that is certain to
become more severe every year as the Japanese population
falls steadily due to the very low birth rate and the country’s

unwillingness to depend on guest workers. So eliminating
jobs on the line while defending the current workforce
is both necessary and easily addressed by not hiring
replacements for retirees.
Finally, the stable workforce — including the frontline
production associates — has been trained for many years in
troubleshooting (to keep production going with short-term
countermeasures), problem-solving (to eliminate repeat
problems), kaizen (to raise the production standard), and
Jishuken (to learn by doing). The latter is a special type
of hands-on, learn-by-doing kaizen workshop designed to
develop the skills — especially Toyota Production System
and problem-solving skills — of associates within an entire
production activity, e.g., a value stream, production line,
or department, over an extended period (perhaps three
months). The goal of any jishuken is to learn by doing and
improving an area of operations. In the context of hoshin,
managers lead their associates in rethinking and solving
problems in every aspect of their work as they strive to
achieve their hoshin goal.

The available production time divided by
customer demand.
For example, if a widget factory operates
480 minutes per day and customers demand
240 widgets per day, takt time is two minutes.
Similarly, if customers want two new
products per month, takt time is two weeks.
The purpose of takt time is to precisely match
production with demand. It provides the

heartbeat of a lean production system.

from the Lean Lexicon 5th Edition

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Now let me introduce the Jishuken team I recently met,
working on one portion of the Miyata final assembly line
— one of many similar teams on every portion of the line
and in other areas across the plant. The group leader and
the four direct-report team leaders for this portion of the
line had worked for three months to redesign every job
and improve many pieces of equipment using Karakuri
principles. (See Matt Savas’ Lean Post, Developing People
Not Robots Through Karakuri.) Their objective was to
achieve their clearly stated hoshin goal.

Karakuri
The use of simple mechanical devices, such
as pulleys and counterweights, to improve
processes and conveyance systems while
prohibiting the use of hydraulics, robotics, and
electricity. The lean usage of the term derives
from Karakuri puppets, traditional Japanese
mechanized puppets.

Jishuken

(I would love to provide the particulars — the substantial
reduction in takt time, the minimal capital spend, the
positive consequences for quality, all of which were very
impressive. And I also would love to provide photos of the
many ingenious Karakuri devices built by the team. But I
was at Miyata as a guest to learn, not as a journalist to share
the details of their detailed business plans with the world.)

A type of hands-on, learn-by-doing kaizen
workshop directed by management and
designed to develop the skills — especially
Toyota Production System and problemsolving skills — of associates within an entire
production activity, e.g., a value stream,
production line, or department, over an
extended period (perhaps three months).
The goal of any jishuken is to learn by doing
while improving an area of operations. The
term “jishuken” translated to English means
“self-learning.”

An explanation of what they had done made a nice
presentation in a team room. But the Jishuken team’s work
really came alive when I visited their portion of the line
to see in detail what they had done. I have never observed
detailed kaizen at this level of intensity (on a production
process that was already one of the best in the world).
More impressive to me, it was conducted by the front two

levels of line management — team leaders and the group
leader rather than staff experts — in collaboration with the
twenty or so production associates, with an amazing level
of engagement. They could hardly stop talking about what
they had achieved and showing the ingenious, low-cost
tools, fixtures, and materials presentation devices they had
built and installed.

Is this cost-reduction effort, enabling an extraordinary range
of experiments, enough for a massive legacy company to
survive a once-in-a-century disruption? Or is the perceived
disruption a misunderstanding of the situation, a mirage?
Who knows. What I do know is that the methods I saw at
Miyata for deploying hoshin down to the front lines offer
an important lesson for all of us in the Lean Community as
we try to cascade our own hoshin plans down to the point
of value creation where they become truly useful. n

These types of efforts have been underway at Toyota facilities
across the world for several years as the company continues
to build its war chest for the challenge of disruption. (See
CEO Akio Toyoda’s comments accompanying the release of
this year’s financial results on May 9. They are a remarkably
sober and focused discussion of Toyota’s circumstances
and hoshin plans despite its record sales, earnings, and
cash balance.)

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How Hoshin Kanri
Aligns Your Key
Organizational Systems

But, what a satisfying week for all. Why do I say this?

To build the culture and develop the complementary systems that
connect your company’s strategic and operational plans, consider
how they must work together, like the human body’s skeletal
(hoshin) and muscular (continuous improvement) systems.
by Mark Reich
Recently I spent a week at a prominent organization in the
Midwest embroiled in an intense discussion about strategy
with 45 of their supply chain group’s executives.

1.

Everyone involved (up to the CEO) acknowledged
the problem and was willing to speak openly about
solving it.

2.

We all spent one morning deeply analyzing the current
process for strategic planning and thinking about ways
to improve the process.

3.

The group agreed that they need to start by aligning
supply chain processes first (starting with self-reflection)
before fully engaging other groups like HR or
Product Development.

How did they come to this conclusion?
I’ve been working with this company for a while now.
It’s taken a couple of years of focused effort to develop a
culture of lean thinking on the shop floor where people
can bring issues to light, openly discuss problems, and work
with their team members to tackle them. And, as expected,
as we’ve piloted and implemented standardized work and
problem-solving, the problems have begun to come to
the surface.

The topic was hoshin, commonly known as “strategy (or
policy) deployment,” a process that aligns — both vertically
and horizontally — an organization’s functions and activities
with its strategic objectives. Our focus was on how these
executives could work together to strengthen alignment
across the organization. Everyone agreed that they
currently do not align corporate goals within their function
or across functions (like HR or Product Development).

For example, operators struggled to assemble the outer
case of the product due to fitting issues caused by the
original design. The company realized that the work of all

(management, engineering, HR) must focus on how to make
the process better for the operator. You make life better
for operators by actively engaging them in improving their

How did this misalignment happen? Like so many,
executives in this organization are measured against
their department or function’s own unique goals, not the
organization’s. These misplaced performance measures
result in conflicting priorities, which stifle the organization’s
ability to create value for the customer.
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work and, in so doing, giving them a chance to improve the
work of the organization.

Gemba Walk
A management practice for grasping the current
situation through direct observation and inquiry
before taking action.

How do you build a continuous
improvement culture?
First, you need some level of top management
engagement and drive. In this case, the CEO recognized
the organizational alignment issues and felt the urgent

competitive business need to improve operations through
continuous improvement.

Gemba means “actual place” in Japanese. Lean
Thinkers use it to mean the place where value is
created. Japanese companies often supplement
gemba with the related term “genchi gembutsu”
— essentially “go and see” — to stress the
importance of empiricism.

Next, work with your team members to think about what
goals, objectives, and problem-solving opportunities the
organization needs to align around. Aligning to what
problems? You find out what problems to solve by going
to the gemba. The work on the shop floor brings to light
the problems that are getting in the way of the real valueadded work.

Because value flows horizontally across
companies to customers, a productive way to
take a gemba walk is to follow a single product
family or product design or customer-facing
process from start to finish across departments,
functions, and organizations, according James
Womack, author of Gemba Walks, and founder
of the Lean Enterprise Institute.

Think of hoshin kanri’s (strategy deployment) relationship
to the organization like the musculoskeletal system’s
is to the human body. The body needs a strong skeletal
structure, just as an organization needs a hoshin or plan

to hold it together. But a body can’t move effectively if
its muscles (continuous improvement) are not kept active
and developed.

He recommends gathering everyone who
touches the process being studied to walk
together while discussing purpose (what
problem does this process solve for the
customer), process (how does it actually work),
and people (are they engaged in creating,
sustaining, and improving the process). Thus,
a gemba walk becomes a way to understand
work, lead, and learn.

When you don’t use or move muscles, they atrophy, and
the body becomes weak, not adaptive, and uncompetitive.
Also, individual muscles can’t move independently; to be
effective — to make purposeful movement — they must
connect to something, the skeleton, which provides a
common purpose that, in turn, helps them work in concert
with other muscles. In this way, continuous improvement
(muscles) and hoshin (skeleton) complement each
other when practiced correctly, strengthening the
organization (body).
What happened with the organization I visited in the
Midwest? They saw a huge benefit to “exposing” their
misalignment. So, as a next step, we’ll organize similar
events and discussions in other functions to create a shared
awareness horizontally across the organization. n

from the Lean Lexicon 5th Edition

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Building the Mindset
and Skillset to Improve
from the Board Room
to the Classroom

Board was committed to shifting outcomes, improving
culture, building stronger operating systems, and regaining
community trust. My improvement background was a
match for the Board. Shared passion kicked off the SDMF
journey.

“… for the first few years, we
stopped buying stuff, stopped
chasing isolated efforts.
Instead, we focused our people
on what mattered most to
success.”

A school district superintendent describes how lean thinking and
practice transformed a failing district into a nationally recognized
model of continuous improvement.

By Pat Greco
In 2018, the Carnegie Foundation recognized the School
District of Menomonee Falls (SDMF), located on the
northwest side of Milwaukee, as a Spotlight Organization
— a model in continuous improvement. Ten years earlier,
Milwaukee Magazine ranked it as underperforming and
high spending. I had joined as superintendent in 2011 and,
within my first few days on the job, our high school received
a second notice as a “school in need of improvement.” As a
result, state funding was reduced by $600 per student.

Improvers know building the mindset and skillset of
improvement is not an “initiative.” Instead, this work places
the daily work of our human systems as the highest priority
and is a critical investment in achieving and sustaining
results. So, for the first few years, we stopped buying stuff,
stopped chasing isolated efforts. Instead, we focused our
people on what mattered most to success.

Community faith was shaken. Some students performed
well, yet we struggled to engage all students to high levels
of success. Suspension rates were seven times higher
than the state average. Student participation in advanced
coursework was low and failed to represent our student
demographics. Yet, our spending levels were among the
highest in the state. We had good teachers and leaders
working in a system full of hidden barriers. The School

Dollars saved were reinvested to unleash the capability of
our people at every level. The Principles of Organizational

Excellence and Evidence-Based Leadership framework
(Studer Education) served as our systemic “backbone”
to align our goals, work behaviors, and core processes.
It was critical to be crystal clear on what our community
and we valued and develop our people aligned to those
values. We focused on engaging each member, creating an
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army of improvers. Refined processes defined our “always
actions,” increasing the likelihood of follow-through.
Refined performance management goals tied together
tools for self-reflection and criteria for feedback helping
people succeed. Hardwiring grew as we removed barriers
and reduced complexity. Clarity with support was key.
When performance varies, we seek to learn from bright
spots and refine core processes. Resources (accelerators)
are better leveraged based on feedback, performance data,
and process refinement, ultimately reducing costs and
preventing exhaustion in people.

department. A simple protocol of four questions, when
executed well, is exceptionally powerful:
1.

What is working well?

2.

What barriers are getting in your way; do you have the
resources needed to do your job well?

3.

What ideas do you have for improvement?

4.

Who has been particularly helpful to you that I can
thank on your behalf?

Leaders rounded with their team members but were not
evaluative. Rounding is about listening deeply to serve
people better, connect beyond their jobs, celebrate what is
working well, and remove barriers.

Finding Strategies to Improve
Educational Outcomes
Deming and the Lean Community influenced my thinking,
followed by decades of cross-industry learning from health
care and industry improvement. My learning was far from
efficient. I’ve spent decades cobbling together lessons
learned across fields to make sense of the translations to
education. School systems are filled with dedicated, skilled,
student-centered professionals who are critical to student
learning, but that’s not enough. School districts, typically

the largest employers in most communities, are wickedly
challenging systems. It was critical to avoid the trap of
overly complicating the improvement journey. Education
is littered with organizationally heavy, complicated
initiatives that exhaust people, waste resources, and create
limited outcomes. The investment in the improvement and
organizational excellence coaching was critical to shifting
culture and improving outcomes for students and staff.

Our improvement coaches, Dr. Janet Pilcher and Dr. Robin
Largue from Studer Education, worked with our entire
leadership team five to six times a year to frame, deploy,
and hardwire our 45-day learning cycles. In addition, we
worked to build an improvement cadence, implement
cascaded balanced scorecards, and develop our leaders
so they could develop their people. As a result, all of our
leaders engaged.

We scaffolded the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) process to
students and staff. Students and teachers explicitly defined
shared missions, standards of work, and how to support
and learn together. Learning goals and curricular standards
were rewritten in student-friendly language. Students are
now actively engaged in the learning and improvement
cycles. Beginning in kindergarten, students understand
the targets, set individual learning goals, and monitor their
growth. Students provide feedback on what is working for
their learning, share barriers, and work with their teachers
every 10 to 15 days to determine the supports they need.

We worked at every level of our system to listen deeply
to our people to “see our system at work.” We deployed
“leader rounding” twice a year with every member in every
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Staff members were skilled, from the classroom to the
boardroom. The Board has adopted policies to sustain
continuous improvement as the way to do business.
Staff at every level now live the mindset and skillset of
improvement. They are empowered to initiate change
based on the complexity of the challenge. Within their
direct work, all staff are encouraged to problem-solve,
improve processes, and communicate their improvements.
“Just do it.” If the solution is clear but the project to
solve it complex, we deploy a project team with a project
charter, milestones, communication systems, and tools. If
the solution is unknown yet straightforward, we deploy
the PDSA process. If the problem is complex, impacts
many people, and the solution unknown, the improvement
team follows the define-measure-analyze-improve-control
(DMAIC) process.

Plan, Do, Check, Act
Also known as plan-do-study-act (PDSA).
An improvement cycle based on the scientific

method of proposing a change in a process,
implementing the change, measuring the
results, and taking appropriate action (see
illustration). It also is known as the Deming
Cycle or Deming Wheel after W. Edwards
Deming, who introduced the concept in Japan
in the 1950s.
The PDCA cycle has four stages:

Public schools are critical to improving life chances for
90% of our nation’s students. Our daily efforts create a
pipeline or roadblock to college, career, and life readiness.
Our big aims?
•

All students transition successfully to their college and
careers aspirations.

•

All students and families feel they belong in our
schools; all students and staff members continue to
learn and grow.

•

All students, families, and staff identify SDMF as the
place where they choose to learn and work.

•

Plan: Determine goals for a process and
needed changes to achieve them.

•

Do:Implement the changes.

•

Check: Evaluate the results in terms
of performance.

•

Act: Standardize and stabilize the change or
begin the cycle again, depending on the results.

from the Lean Lexicon 5th Edition

buried hassles and obstacles to solve problems and improve
outcomes. n
About the Author: Pat Greco, PhD, Director of Thought
Leadership, Studer Education. Pat, a recognized leader,
consultant, presenter, executive coach, and mentor, has served 38
years in public education, most recently as a superintendent in the
School District of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

Our journey? We are a fundamentally different organization.
Results matter, but our human systems require leaders

to engage and listen deeply to uncover and eliminate the
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How the Hoshin Kanri
Process Coupled with
Coaching Drives Lean
Transformation, Part 1

kanri (strategy deployment) process, combined with
effective coaching, offers companies a way to confront and
overcome this challenge; it can be the catalyst for achieving
sustainable organizational transformation.

Understand the Context
Before we delve into the synergies generated by combining
strategy deployment and executive coaching, context
is required. The honor of becoming a coach to senior
leaders (or anyone else, as a matter of fact) is earned with
humility and hard work, regardless of where you sit inside
or outside the organization. First comes the recognition
that we know very little, if nothing at all, and the desire to
learn what we do not know drives us to study intensely and
experiment relentlessly to test our hypotheses. Trials will
inevitably come with errors, and we must be willing to bear
those scars, not hide them. The courage to venture into

uncharted territory is our ticket to earned respect and the
invitation to coach others through their journey.

A veteran coach shares a few intangible truths you’ll need to know
to execute an organizational transformation using hoshin kanri.
By Laura Mottola
Organizational transformation is first and foremost a
process of personal growth by leaders, which requires
reflection, self-awareness, and humility. Before expecting
such a dramatic change at the team or organizational level,
leaders must deeply reflect on the company’s current state
and desired future. This reflection inevitably invokes a
struggle within every leader, which catalyzes their desire
for change, activating the pull needed to take the necessary
steps toward that new vision.

Now comes the matter of leading an organization through
a lean transformation and understanding senior leadership’s
role in steering and participating in a hoshin process.

To enlist the active participation of peers and team
members, leaders must, above all, gain their trust before
helping them to see uncomfortable truths — to stoke the
very same struggle within each team member so that they,
too, feel the urgent need to change.

Overcome the Fear of Change
I am no psychologist — a recovering engineer, at best
— but I have learned, the hard way, indeed, that without
intrinsic motivation, there is no catalyst for change, no

way to overcome our inherent resistance to change. This
resistance doesn’t arise from a fear of change itself; it stems
from our fear of the unknown of what lies ahead. Even the

None of this is easy. Getting to the point where the need
for change is accepted and prompts a coordinated response
(aka “change management”) has been and continues to
be a stumbling block in countless situations. The hoshin
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worst situation ccan become comfortable compared to an
alternative that may be worse.

transformation. As significantly, they understood that
it is their responsibility to guide and support their team
members in their personal growth.

The process of hoshin kanri demystifies such uncertainty
by providing a structured way to walk the path while it is
being co-created. The approach brings everyone together
to design (plan), experiment (do), adjust (check), and act the
way forward using the plan, do, check, act (PDCA) process.

Not all leaders have experience or education about how to
coach team members. Most likely, they are accustomed to

telling their direct reports what to do, sometimes instructing
how. The hoshin kanri process provides an opportunity to
jointly develop a strategy-to-execution roadmap, aligning
and adjusting along the way, even when it means “we’ll
figure this out together.”

It can be an exciting and frightening experience at once,
and I cannot downplay the fact that hoshin kanri — or
any process to effect transformational change — is an
emotionally charged process of co-creation, fraught with
obstacles and challenges. Hence, executive coaching is vital
to support leaders who are engaged in facilitating hoshin
kanri. These leaders need guidance as they move through
this challenging process to help them effectively coach
their team members and, in many cases, teach them how
to coach others.

Inevitably, most people I have coached struggled with the
mechanics of the practice routine (the Kata) and the time
and effort it takes to master this new skill. Their desire to
attain significant sustainable change is constantly strained
by the need to show tangible short-term results. The reflex
to use tactics that served them well in the past is hard to
control, let alone overcome.
Trust that the hoshin process will yield transformational
change if we successfully engage the leaders and, in
turn, most of their team members through coaching and
collaborative work. The energy level generated is palpable,
and progress accelerates as people begin to feel their
voice heard, the purpose is clearly articulated, and shared

understanding is achieved.

“The process of hoshin kanri
demystifies such uncertainty
by providing a structured way
to walk the path while it is
being co-created.”

Finally, staying the course during the difficult initial phases
of the hoshin kanri process is paramount, making executive
coaching even more critical during this time to reinforce
the positive signs and inspire confidence in the exercise’s
intent and validity. Ongoing executive and team member
coaching ensures the organization sustains initial gains and
establishes a cadence of continuous improvement. n

The coaching provides leaders with a mirror to reflect
upon their effectiveness as enablers of the hoshin kanri
transformation process. Effective executive coaching
heightens leaders’ awareness and understanding of what
is happening in the moment. It reminds them of their
own struggle and how their coach helped them overcome
the challenges — and thus, how they can help their team
members overcome theirs.

Develop People
Coaching within the hoshin process supports the leader
in conducting a hoshin and coaching others in the
process. In my journey as a lean practitioner, I have had
the privilege of supporting executives who are leading a

cultural transformation in their respective organizations
using lean thinking as a platform for change. Fortunately,
they all recognized that developing people is the key to
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Lean Enterprise Institute

Understanding Hoshin Kanri

How the Hoshin Kanri
Process Coupled with
Coaching Drives Lean
Transformation, Part 2

and seek a different way to look at the company and shape
its future in a changing environment, hoshin kanri offers a
collaborative way to think deeply about the situation, build
on common ground, and forge a path forward.

Make it Personal through Practice
Lean transformation of an enterprise requires that all
people, at all levels, learn to solve problems collaboratively.
Executive teams engaged in a hoshin kanri process lead
the organization by example, demonstrating the process
required to build capability. We know that in learning a
new skill, there is no substitute for practice. When the team
members see their leaders “walking the talk,” they become
more willing to follow the process. Through this consistent
practice, both leaders and team members build intrinsic

motivation. Coaching reinforces this need to practice the
process, which, in turn, makes the process personal and
ensures it inspires a move to action from within.

Discover how a coach can help leaders execute a successful
organizational transformation using the hoshin kanri process.
By Laura Mottola
While hoshin kanri is a process that provides a
structured way to implement change in an organization,
coaching strengthens that process by helping leaders
and team members adopt the mindset and practices that
ensure success.
Seemingly easy to understand but challenging to achieve,
here are five areas where a coach will help leaders execute a
successful organizational transformation.

“Lean transformation of
an enterprise requires that
all people, at all levels,
learn to solve problems
collaboratively.”

Learn from, Don’t Denigrate, the Past
There are many ways to tackle a strategic planning process­
— each is valid for a specific business context. Indeed, the
approach that was used in the past had its time and purpose.
We must learn from that previous process and build on it,
not discredit it. The hoshin kanri process provides a way
to use the knowledge gained from earlier attempts as a
platform upon which to build the next iteration. When we

are dissatisfied with the current state (for whatever reason)

Build Trust through Facts
Building trust requires the courage to have honest, open
communications. Generating a certain level of discomfort
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Lean Enterprise Institute

Understanding Hoshin Kanri

is necessary to shift the conversation to the crux of the
matter, exposing sore points and eliciting uneasiness with
the status quo without assigning blame. Relying on the
cold–heartedness of facts to make problems visible allows
for an honest, dispassionate analysis of the situation, which,
in turn, enables teams to reach a consensus.

how much you need to learn and commit to doing the
hard work and experimentation.
•

Recognize the fear of change for what it is, the fear of
the unknown, and how to face it and help others do so,
as well.

•

Trust that enhancing your team members’ skills

and abilities is the key to achieving organizational
success, and learn how to facilitate their personal and
professional growth.

•

Realize the fundamental differences between the
process that led to the current state and how to leverage
that knowledge to achieve the desired future state.

•

Understand that learning by doing is essential to build
deep understanding through shared experience.

•

Appreciate how focusing on facts builds trust and learn
how to shift the conversation back to the facts, reflect,
and share back with the team.

•

Acknowledge the difficulties of staying the course,
learn how to embrace the process, and commit to
self-development. n

Balance Dissatisfaction with Inspiration
The leader facilitating the hoshin kanri process is continually
walking a thin line between creating dissatisfaction with the

current situation and offering a healthy dose of inspiration
with a vision of the future. Facilitators of every step in the
process must enable the team members to passionately
engage so it doesn’t become stale, lifeless. They must
remind the group to “go hard on the system, but soft
on people.”
A leader’s role is to support the team in balancing analysis,
discovery, ideation, and consensus-building. The coach’s
role is to support the executive to improve self-awareness
and reflection.

Deploy Strategy, Coach at All Levels
Hoshin kanri is a strategy deployment process that links the
company True North with execution plans at all levels of the
organization. Naturally, there is a need for coaching lower
levels through the functional deployment of the corporate
hoshin in succeeding iterations of collaborative discovery.
By extending coaching throughout the organization,
the experience and knowledge gained during the hoshin
process are passed on to others via learning by doing. A
process brings the hoshin to life and makes it relevant and
appealing to all people involved. Clarity of purpose and
what needs to happen is achieved in cycles of refinement.

Coaching
Helping others develop the problem-solving
capability required for implementing lean tools
and principles and building a company culture
of continuous performance improvement.
In lean management, the coach avoids telling

coachees what to do because it robs them of
the opportunity to think the problem through
for themselves; it deprives them of ownership
of the problem; and the coach realizes he or she
seldom knows as much about the situation as
the problem owner.

Coach for Personal Growth
If transformation comes through personal growth, then
the coaching that supports hoshin kanri should focus on
helping leaders become teachers and coaches who are
committed to both self-development and the development
of others. Among the most important coaching points are
the following:
•

The coach’s role is to use open questioning to
help the coachee become more aware of what
he or she knows and needs to know. The coach
prompts the person being coached to consider
if his or her ideas and impressions are based on
fact.

Understand the importance of humility and hard work,
and how to be comfortable realizing and admitting

from the Lean Lexicon 5th Edition

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Faculty Highlight
James (Jim) Womack, PhD
Founder and Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute
Widely considered the father of the lean movement, Jim has been talking and
publishing about creating value through continuous innovation around deep
customer understanding for many years. He is the coauthor of The Machine
That Changed the World (Macmillan/Rawson Associates, 1990), Lean Thinking
(Simon & Schuster, 1996), Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster, 2005), and Seeing
The Whole Value Stream (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2011). Other articles include:
“From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise” (Harvard Business Review, MarchApril, 1994), “Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection”
(Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1996), “Lean Consumption”
(Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2005).
Jim received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of
Chicago in 1970, a master’s degree in transportation systems from Harvard in
1975, and a doctorate in political science from MIT in 1982 (for a dissertation on
comparative industrial policy in the U.S., Germany, and Japan).

Laura Mottola
President and CEO of Flow Partners Inc.
A seasoned professional mining engineer and business leader with more than
20 years of global experience in mining, Laura is recognized globally as a leader
in Lean Mining®, Mining Automation, Technology, and Innovation in the natural
resources sector. She was named one of the 100 most inspirational women in
mining by Women in Mining UK. Dedicated to Lean Thinking, Methodology, Lean
Mining®, Innovation, development integration of concepts from other industries,

and multidisciplinary approach strategies, she is a co-founder of the Lean
Institute Canada and the founder of the Lean Mining® Institute.
Laura holds a Master of Engineering in Mining Automation from McGill
University.

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Lean Enterprise Institute

Understanding Hoshin Kanri

Faculty Highlight
Mark Reich
Senior Coach, Lean Enterprise Institute
With 23 years of experience at Toyota, Mark brings a practitioner point-of-view
and a roll-up-your-sleeves approach to his coaching, working with executives
at their gemba. Before joining LEI, he was general manager of the Toyota
Production System Support Center. While there, he directly implemented
the Toyota Production System or managed its implementation in various
industries, including automotive, food, furniture, healthcare, and nonprofits,
among others. Mark started his career at Toyota, including seven as assistant
general manager of the corporate strategy division. He managed and
implemented Toyota’s North American strategic (hoshin) process,
designed jointly with Toyota’s Japan headquarters.
Mark has a bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and
specialized in Japanese studies at Nanzan University. He is fluent in
written and spoken Japanese.

17

Continue Your Learning
The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) offers a wide range of
learning resources, all with the practical knowledge you need
to sustain a lean transformation:

Learning Materials
Our plain-language books, workbooks, leadership guides,
and training materials reflect the essence of lean thinking—
doing. They draw on years of research and real-world
experiences from lean transformations in manufacturing and
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Education
Faculty members with extensive implementation experience
teach you actual applications with the case studies,
work sheets, formulas, and methodologies you need for
implementation. Select from courses that address technical
topics, culture change, coaching, senior management’s roles,
and much more.

Events
Every March, the Lean Summit explores the latest lean
concepts and case studies, presented by executives and
implementers. Other events focus on an issue or industry,
such as starting a lean transformation or implementing lean
in healthcare. Check lean.org for details and to get first
notice of these limited-attendance events.

lean.org
About The Lean Enterprise Institute
The Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc., was founded in
1997 by management expert James P. Womack, PhD,
as a nonprofit research, education, publishing, and
conferencing company. As part of its mission to advance
lean thinking around the world, LEI supports the Lean
Global Network (leanglobal.org), the Lean Education
Academic Network (teachinglean.org), and the Healthcare
Value Network (healthcarevalueleaders.org).

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