A business strategy establishes the framework to make decisions. In other words, how to conduct business, deliver value to your customers, and achieve target revenues and profits. Strategic planning answers the question, where are we going, and how do we get there?
Strategy Deployment, or strategic policy deployment
How do you deploy your strategy through the organization? That is to say, how do your employees know the company goals? Do you have a system or process? In CI, we use Hoshin planning.
Hoshin planning or hoshin kanri means strategic policy deployment. That is, identify the strategy to follow, develop objectives, communicate, and execute the plan. Hoshin is one of the various methodologies for strategic planning that emerge from Peter Drucker’s Management by Objectives (MBO). Some of the characteristics are that it plans at different timeframes, from short-term to long-term. Moreover, it uses SMART goals. Those components are similar to other systems. However, this one uses PDCA and establishes periodic reviews to assess performance against the plan.
Seven steps to deploy your business strategy
In general, Hoshin planning has seven steps.
- Assess the current state and establish the Vision
- Develop breakthrough objectives
- Develop annual objectives
- Deploy annual objectives
- Implement annual objectives
- Monthly and quarterly review
- Annual review
Your business strategy and people’s development
Strategy deployment addresses critical business needs by aligning goals and strategy. Even more, it aligns the company’s resources at all levels. For that reason, it makes it possible to respond quickly to changes in the business environment. Also, the use of the PDCA cycle brings a structure to deal with those changes. Moreover, it provides a framework to identify and solve the problem.
Besides, with Hoshin, leaders can develop the team’s skills and capabilities. They do it by engaging them to answer the question of how do we get there? Leaders will guide their teams based on their knowledge and experience. Aligned goals ensure that everyone is working toward the same ends. The newly developed problem-solvers will row in the same direction as you do to accomplish those goals.
Continuous improvement as a strategy
In the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital to be flexible. That is to say, to make decisions and create strategies to adjust to ever-changing realities. A system for strategy deployment will guide you to analyze the situation. Further, it will be a guide to design and implement a new business strategy.
Moreover, continuous improvement can be your strategy to create a flexible workforce and guide daily improvements. Better Process Solutions can help give us a call!