Hoshin kanri

Developed in Japanese manufacturing · 1960s

Translating a few company-level aims down through every level, and negotiating them back up before anyone commits.

Its place in the frameworkGoal Core›Tactical goals

What it does

Sometimes called policy deployment. What distinguishes it from cascading targets is the second movement: each level proposes what it can actually do, and the disagreement between that and what was asked for is resolved explicitly rather than absorbed silently.

Reach for it when: When strategy is agreed at the top and quietly renegotiated by everyone below it as the year goes on.
Where it stops: It is slow, and it assumes a stable enough year that a plan negotiated in January still describes reality in June.

Yoji Akao (ed.), Hoshin Kanri: Policy Deployment for Successful TQM, Productivity Press, 1991.

Why it sits at Tactical goals

The layer where strategy becomes somebody’s work. Tactical goals translate a strategic intention into named commitments with owners, resources and a way of telling whether they worked.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Cascade and catchballDrucker’s management by objectives (1954), and the catchball practice within Hoshin Kanri.
InitiativesThe initiative layer of the Balanced Scorecard, where strategy maps are connected to funded work.
OwnershipRACI and its variants, which exist largely to prevent exactly that failure.
ResourcingStandard capital- and resource-allocation practice; the connection point between goals and finance.

All of Tactical goals

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Tactical goals lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Business CoreWhere most tactical goals land — systems, people, finance, partners.
Time CoreProject management and the year wheel decide sequence and load.
Data CoreThe measures that show whether a tactic worked, rather than merely happened.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Tactical goals too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

Plan–do–check–actA loop that treats every change as a small experiment with a result you are obliged to look at.
Management by objectivesManagers and their people agree objectives together, and performance is judged against those rather than against activity.

Elsewhere in Goal Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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