It's not Lean, it's Agile at scale... the Hoshin Kanri way

These are some details from my last talk at Lean Kanban France 2014 in Paris. 

Nowadays, scaling Agile is in the pipe of Agile Change Agents and some interesting essays are emerging like SAFe, LESS, DaD, etc…

In other hand, discussions on Kanban are climbing in the organization matrix and try to address both Portfolio and Governance.

Beyond Budgeting explains that we need to have Leadership actions and Management processes linked to those Leadership actions.

Purpose of this session is to ask the audience: can be Hoshin Kanri seen as a glue binding all these together in an agile sense making manner? 

When you take a look at Hoshin Kanri, first you see strategy and then management. All the "continuous improvement" part isn't really caught. Unfortunately, it's the major part of the approach and our link to agility.

Hoshin Kanri comes with Total Quality Management. Japanese Total Quality Management (TQM) is founded on the principles that each individual in an organisation is recognized as being the expert in their own job, that humans seek recognition and want to be involved and are motivated by a desire to be recognized as a contributor to the success of the community to which they belong.

David Hutchins explains.

 There are several translations of Hoshin Kanri. This is my favorite!

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is the driver of these principles.

Our objective is to build a company as a flow, a company as a pull system.

Here is the junction between Lean Thinking, Kaizen and Agile. An organization as a pull system changes the traditional paradigm of the company organizational iceberg in a system thinking approach.

Like John Seddon explained at the 1st Lean Kanban Conference in Antwerp (2010): Middle Office is a Buffer, Back Office is a cost centre, everybody should be at the Front.

Exemples by  Mark Offenberger

ref. Mark Offenberger

Summarizing the strategy on one piece of paper.

What are my goals? How will I measure myself?

What did we do last year? What went right? What went wrong?

What is this year's strategy?

What's the plan?

What could go wrong? Any worries?

A3 Strategy principles:

The point is not the piece of paper. The point is……

• Make the strategy simple
• Focus on the important few
• Tell a compelling story
• PDCA
• Make the review process simple and obvious

What is important

Effective discussion on A3s to guarantee alignment between objectives across the organization

Develop communication at all level

Reinforce and consolidate knowledge of the challenges and objectives of others

Requires trust and respect

Alignment is all about

Consensus: find a common way to reach all our objectives

Ask the question upfront instead of waiting for the clash in the execution phase.

Lean Institute

 Purpose of Agile is a consolidated view of the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto.

Now if you use the simple « process » of Hoshin Kanri: True North, A3 Thinking, Catchball and Kaizen (i.e. Continuous Improvement) to support the implementation of Beyond Budgeting principles and you neither scandinavian nor japanese (culture plays a lot!), and you want to have enough diversity (i.e. variability) to support emerging innovation, then I guess we don’t need to reinvent something new. We just need to inspect-and-adapt the tools we got.

My objective for this talk is to have a discussion like in Agile Conferences. So, I'm very thankful to Matt Philip, Don Reinertsen, Karl Scotland, Yuval Yeret for their inputs and questioning. On my side, I came with the question: "does this make a sense?" and I guess that I can make a second run to challenge my vision.

Meanwhile for the conference is my catchball!

One of my favorite quotes. HR Director meeting a workers for his Retirement-interview. After a lot questioning, the HR Director asked the worker about an idea for improvement. The worker said: "you paid me 40 years for my hands and you could have my brain for free!".


Credits:

• Are we making progress for Leaders? - Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
• Are we making progress for Workers? - Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
• Understanding Hoshin Kanri - G.Watson
• Strategic Planning using Hoshin Kanri - L. Boisvert
• Hoshin Kanri, the strategic approach to continuous improvement - D.Hutchins
• Are you hearing voices? - K. Roberts
• Strategy Deployment in Hoshin Kanri - Mark Offenberger EMBA Operational Excellence Class John Welch Sacred Heart University
• Management Hoshin - Homo numer management
• Hoshin Kanri instructor's guide - Impacture
• Hoshin Kanri: Implementing the catchball process - C.Tennant & P. Roberts
• Hoshin Promotion - A. Profero
• The Toyota Way - J. Liker
• Kaizen, the keys of japanese performance success - M. Imaei
• Getting the Right Things Done - P. Dennis
• Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise - T.Jackson
• Implementing Beyond Budgeting - B- Bogsnes

Extracts from the Semco’s Survival Manual for “Stoosiens”

Last week-end a couple of Agile Thinkers have meet in Stoos (Switzerland) for a “Global Management Warming” session.

Objective:

 ““We are looking to energize organizations in ways that make them better for the organizations themselves, better for the people doing the work, better for those for whom the work is being done, and better for society as a whole. And we want to understand how we can speed it up!”

To support this activity, I will share some extracts from Ricardo Semler’s “Maverick”

“Semco’s Survival Manual”

Organization Chart	No formal chart	Only the led creates the leader
Hiring	The others of that unit have the opportunity to interview and evaluate ... before taking a decision	Even managers must have the “Go” from the team they want to lead.
Working hours	Flexible, each employee is responsible for track	Semco does its best to adapt to each person’s desires and needs.
Working environment	People must feel free to change and adapt it.	No rules.
Unions	Are important for workers protection. No persecution for union connected workers.	Always mutual respect and dialogue.
Strikes	Are normal as part of democracy.	Must always represent what people of the company think and feel.
Participation	Company’s philosophy built on participation and involvement.	“Don’t settle down. Give opinions, seek oportunities and advancement, always say what you think. Don’t be just one more person in the company”.
Evaluation by subordinates	Twice a year people of Semco become a questionnaire to evaluate what they think about their boss.
Factory committees	Those are guaranteed and need to defend people’s interests.	This is considered as healthy and necessary.
Authority	Hierarchy still exist.	No tolerance for: subordinates pressure, fear, insecurity, disrespect.
Job Security and Age	3 years seniority or age of 50 can”... only be missed after a long series of approvals...”	Semco has the will to increase people’s security.
Change	Are healthy and positive.	They are characteristics of the company.
Clothing and appearance	Are not a factor for hiring or promotion.	“Feel at ease – wear only your common sense.”
Private Life	Is sacred for the company. No interference.	HR department can help people on-demand.
Company loans	“The company loans money for unforseen situations.”
Pride	“Create pride by insuring the quality of everything you do.”
Communication	“People must strive to communicate with frankness and honesty.”
Informality	“don’t be shy or stick to formalities.”
Suggestions	No prizes for suggestions. Everyone must speak out and all opinions are welcome.
Women	Women discremination programs.	Women/Men equally treated.(*)
Vacations	Are vital for people/s health and company’s welfare.

(*) my add-on

Beyond Budgeting Process - the other Agile Management Way

Posted via email from pierreneis's posterous

the Beyond Budgeting Approach - a Case Study

Presentation and case on Beyond Budgeting in London April 29th 2009 by Sigurd Aune CFO SpareBank 1 Gruppen

View more presentations from SpareBank 1 Gruppen AS.