Climbing the South Face (of the Hoshin X Matrix) As someone who can’t look down from a high point without my legs turning to jelly, the prospect of climbing anything is not attractive. The North face of the Eiger is particularly terrifying; however this post is about the south face of the Hoshin X – matrix. Hopefully you’ll find completing this less terrifying. The process should be challenging though as a precondition for tackling The North Face. The first (south) part of the Hoshin X matrix is clarity on your vision and medium term breakthrough objectives. The south face is the area populated with your 3 – 5 year breakthrough objectives. Note the term breakthrough! Elsewhere sometimes also referred to as Hoshin’s, WIG’s (wildly important goals) or BHAGS (big hairy audacious goals), this is not a process about doing what you’ve done in the past a little better. It’s about seeking fundamental improvements. Working on the vision requires a mix of creative and commercial skills. Any credible vision also relies on a thorough market or situational analysis as the vision needs to be achievable in the context of this analysis. BMGI, one of our strategy execution partners highlight the importance of the strategic thinking process which needs to have been completed prior to the strategy planning phase. Strategy planning sits between the strategy creation and strategy execution phases and provides and receives critical input from and into these 2 phases. This also ensures the essential bridge to the strategy execution phase where the actual business transformation and management of the implementation takes place.

David Silverstein CEO of BMGI in a guest post discussing the importance of developing a sound business strategy writes that they “place equal emphasis on the creation and the execution of strategy, recognising that the role of strategic planning is to translate strategy into action.” He then clarifies that while “strategic thinking is something that happens continuously and building strategy is something that happens from time to time, strategic planning is done with regularity, most often on an annual basis. It is a time for schedules, the assignment of specific accountability and a fair amount of problem solving to deal with real-world practicalities.”

Silverstein says further that BMGI have found that during strategic planning, the Hoshin Planning process (sometimes referred to as the X- matrix) offers the most effective method of establishing a

well-ordered, metric-driven plan that bridges the gap between executives and operational staff. The Hoshin tool then provides a method of capturing and cementing strategic goals and of developing the means to bring these into reality. Here are some Hoshin best practice tips developed at BMGI The first best practice advice is to limit your breakthrough objectives to between 3 and 5. If you’re

resource constrained, you’ll probably want to be at the lower end of the continuum. The debate around what is breakthrough and what should be included and omitted will be very useful.

Secondly, are the objectives directly derived from the vision and purpose of the organization? If not, what are they doing there? BMGI talk about sacred cows and their tendency to magically appear in the list of breakthrough objectives even though they are not directly derived from the vision.

Ensure that each objective is measurable or expressed as a measurement. breakthrough objectives are going to be about transformation rather than operations. Use this

as a check.

Outlining a variety of potential future scenarios can also assist to identify the relevant breakthroughs and potential consequences should they be implemented. This could be done in conjunction with the use of collaborative tools such as affinity diagrams visually recording the outcomes from brainstorming and problem solving exercises.

The Hoshin catchball process where the leadership team meet with people at the lower level and toss ideas back and forth, provides a great inclusive process for the development of the breakthrough objectives ensuring that the next levels in the cascade process can be aligned to the breakthrough objectives.

We at i-nexus have completed our own vision and strategy and have populated our own Hoshin plan. Not only is it an exciting process, it also enables us to have bragging rights that we eat our own dog food. Taking this experience and other insight from our client implementations and have incorporated this into the market leading Hoshin tools and features in the

i-nexus strategy implementation suite, including the x-matrix. We have also recently created a great series of infographics which set out the key Hoshin principles and related tools. The next task is the completion of the West face of the X matrix. This is the section dealing with annual breakthrough objectives which will be addressed in a follow up article.

The i-nexus strategy execution suite includes market leading Hoshin features and implementation tools and we take pride in implementing our software quickly and professionally to support our client’s strategy execution success. See i-nexus.com/watch-hoshin-demo and request a callback if our solution could support your success.

I welcome your feedback and comments

Paul Docherty, i-nexus Founder & Executive Director

Let's Connect on LinkedIn

e-mail: paul.docherty@i-nexus.com i-nexus