The Lean Enterprise Institute’s webinar “Strategy Deployment: What is it? Why should I care?” drew more than 2,800 online attendees who submitted hundreds of questions on this critical issue of aligning improvement activities with business strategies.

While reviewing all the questions, several major themes emerged, which are expressed by the selected questions that follow. Pascal Dennis, the webinar presenter and author of Getting the Right Things Done: a leader’s guide to planning and execution, provided the answers. Make sure you are on our e-mail list to receive notices when we post more questions and answers.

Q. Have you seen companies get overwhelmed with too many lean initiatives? We seem to think we need a lot of different projects going or were not doing "it" right.

A. Strategy is about focus. What are the three or four critical activities this year? Learning point: Management is a two-sided activity comprising routine work and improvement work. Strategy deployment focuses on the latter. We know that there are fifty other routine activities we must do. But in our strategy we'll focus on these three so that we can improve.

Q. Is there a difference between strategy and policy deployment?

A. No, these are both translations of the Japanese term hoshin kanri

Q.What is the fundamental mental model that must be changed in order to implement strategy deployment?

A. The most important change is probably from "Thou shalt!" to "What do you think?". The latter requires leaders to take responsibility for the development of their people. A door opens thereafter, and a "Thinking Production System" becomes possible

Q. What is a good first step to deploy strategy deployment? Should you start at the top, or with a small-scale project?

A. In implementation work, we like to take a two-pronged approach: bottom-up and top-down -- we meet somewhere in the middle. In other words, begin shop-floor activity with an eye on critical improvements needed at the company level. Thus, our shop floor and system kaizen activities inform one another. If you don’t have this luxury, start in your zone of control, be it a team, department or plant. As your team, department or plant improves, senior management will notice and ask, "Say, what's going on over there?"

Q. Should the strategy formulation come top-down, given the strong role of the leader, or should it emerge bottom-up guided by targets defined by the leaders’ interpretations of requirements?

A. Once the system matures, both top-down and bottom-up strategy formulation occurs. During implementation stages, senior management needs to provide a clear picture of what's vital. In other words, senior management must "frame" reality.

Q. How many issues should we "bite off" when choosing what to work on?

A. I was taught to take on no more than five major issues in each zone.

Q. What is the time frame to conduct strategy deployment from start to finish? How many cycles or years does it normally take for companies to get the hang of strategy deployment?

A. You'll see improvements quickly, simply because we're all talking to one another and about the right stuff. But it'll take three years or more for enterprise PDCA (plan, do, check, act) to develop sustainable roots. Then we need to nourish them with good visual management, problem solving, and management standardized work.

Q. What is the recommended team size for a strategy deployment exercise?

A. Not sure what you mean by exercise. If you mean a strategy development session, then six to eight is a reasonable size. But when you're reporting out early drafts of your A3 strategy, you may have more people there. If you're deployment leader (key thinker) for quality in, say, a large factory, you'll probably invite the department heads and anyone else whose support & insight you feel you need.

Q. Does strategy deployment use value-stream maps to drive results?

A. Value-stream maps help us "grasp the situation" by answering critical questions like: Where are we now? and Where are we going? But they aren't normally real- time management tools. Dashboards are more effective in answering real-time questions like "What are our hot spots -- right now?" and "What are we doing about them?"

Q. Can this work in a unionized environment?

A. Yes, it can and does. NUMMI, the Toyota-GM joint venture in Fremont, CA, is unionized (UAW) and strategy deployment has been working for over 20 years. Key point: engage the union early on. Reasonable people, provided with reasonable information, respond in a reasonable way. Indeed, alignment with the union is critical to engaging front-line team members. Of course, this takes work and sometimes a change in mental models from "The union is our enemy. Keep them in the dark!" to "The union is our partner, engage them so that they can help us to improve."

Q. Can nonmanufacturing companies use strategy deployment?

A. Yes, I have seen strategy deployment work well in healthcare, construction, financial services, and utilities. The same process and questions apply; the answers and countermeasures are different.

Q. What are the most common obstacles to implementing strategy deployment?

A. Dysfunctional mental models such as those illustrated on page 24 of Getting the Right Things Done are the biggest obstacle. Perhaps the most pervasive of these models are the “Thou shalt..." dictator model and the "Don't get caught holding the bag” mindset that regards problems as garbage to be buried.

Q. I’m in middle management. How do I convince management to change so it begins to use strategy deployment? Can you create senior leadership "pull" for this process?

Q. Do you have advice on how to tackle the "Thou Shalt" mental model that exists in a government or military culture?

A. Sadly, "Thou shalt..." is pervasive across sectors (and a source of never-ending material for “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams).  The best way is to expose the roots.  But if it's your boss, you may not want to try.  (Remember that Socrates got executed.)   A respected coach or mentor is best in such cases; someone who'll challenge the leader's mental models & guide them to a deeper understanding.

Q. How well is this strategy accepted by people on the shop or office? Do they need training before launching strategy deployment?

A. Your strategy will be accepted or not based on (a) how persuasive your story is, and (b) how well you've engaged the team in developing the plan.  Basic training is a good support for strategy deployment and should answer questions like: What is it?  Why are we doing it? What is my role?  How will it affect me?  What does it mean for me and our company in the long term?

Q. Many corporate planning cycles create a resource conflict by the planning taking place late in the year when there is also a push for hitting the current plan, any thoughts about dealing with this challenge?

A. Planning shouldn't be so clunky and onerous that it creates resource conflicts.  Strategy deployment is "vacuum-packed" planning & execution -- planning and execution for people who are busy.  Thus, strategies are one-page A3's, not 100-slide decks; checking is an exception-based 50-minute drill not a meaningless 10- hour “drainathon.”  Our enterprise PDCA cycle needs to be swift and intentional.  Important support work includes freeing time but reducing unnecessary feedback loops, overly complex reporting, and so on.

Q. I noticed in the book that time lines were created for both the mother strategies and the lower-level strategies. How do you develop the time lines at the higher level (mother) before the specific tasks and projects have been established? 

A. Timelines for mother A3 strategies won't have the degree of detail that baby A3's have.  Mother A3 owners (deployment leaders) provide a big picture sense of sequence & timing. We trust the baby A3's to develop the finer detail.  The weekly check/adjust process will make timing or sequence problems visible.  When we have shown our team members respect by engaging them through catchball, conflicts are almost always resolved reasonably.

Q. We mostly have unclear targets as most small companies do, therefore, senior management set targets based on "what they want" instead of what can be achieved. What is the best way of finding clear targets if there is no reliable historical data?

A. Sounds like strengthening the measurement system is an important strategic need and should be an action item on your A3s.  In the interim, in the absence of data, you'll have to make a "best guess" based on industry benchmarks and gut feel.  Explain this to the team:  "We're guessing at a target because we lack reliable data.  So the first few years of strategy deployment, our hypotheses will be dodgy.  We may wildly overshoot or undershoot our targets.  But with time we'll develop a deeper understanding of our business and get better at strategy deployment."

Q. Balanced score cards and the associated tool of strategy maps are popular approaches to strategy deployment -- any comments on the strengths/weaknesses of the scorecard approach?

A. Scorecards are a reasonable tool, though not as powerful as dashboards in my view.  The latter visually illustrate the target, actual, history, make hot spots visible at a glance, and explain what we're doing about them in the text box.  If you're using scorecards, I'd say continue and over time move to dashboards.

Q. How do key performance indicators fit into strategy deployment?

A. Good KPI's provide our targets, the needles we are trying to move (i.e. the top left corner of the A3).  Not-so-good KPI's (e.g. obscure financial ratios) can be counterproductive because they cloud the most important questions: What are the hot spots?  What are we doing about them?

Q. What is the relationship between the A3 report and the X-matrix?

A. Strategy is story-telling. The A3 report is "our story" and expresses our synthesis of analysis and gut feel.  It's also a plan-do-check-act (PDCA) story: the top left corner shows the "needles we are trying to move," the bottom box on the left is our diagnosis; the action plan on the right hand side is our "hypothesis"; if we do this we believe we'll achieve the needed results."

The X-matrix is part of the quality tool box introduced in the 1980's TQM wave.  It is a summary tool which shows the relationship between four items (e.g. goal, responsibility, metric, and target).  It has proven to be of limited use in strategy deployment for a number of reasons: no story, too complex, weak link to PDCA, and prone to command and control.

Q. Should there be an A3 for each department, for each division, or one for the entire company?

Normally, we want mother A3s for the three of four goal areas (e.g. people, quality, delivery and cost) and baby A3s for functional departments.  In some cases it’s useful to have a summary A3 for the whole company (e.g. to report to the board or shareholders)

Q. Any general rule on how deep you take an A3? Do you take it all the way down to the operator?

The A3 expresses the critical few improvement activities needed to achieve a vital business goal.  We need not translate these into minute instructions per operator (Soviet style).  Instead, we trust our teams to deploy (i.e. translate) mother A3s into necessary and sufficient activities in their zone.

Q. How often do you update an A3? Is it a real-time document continuously updated when new information is discovered?

A. Once we've developed our hypothesis and written our A3, the Plan phase is done.  We need not revisit and rewrite for we are now into the Do/Deploy, Check and Adjust phases.  The purpose of a plan is to show when we are off the plan -- so we can get back to a good condition.

Q. Why is the term “catchball” used to describe the strategy deployment discussion process?

A. Because the term expresses the give-and-take between and within organizational levels required to achieve a shared understanding.  It's a concept common to many cultures.  For example, in some Native American tribes the "talking stick" is used at meetings, to ensure everyone's viewpoint is heard.  The point is that ideas are passed back and forth until people agree on what's real.

Q. What’s the difference between brainstorming & catchball?

A. Catchball is a scrubbing process that helps us define what's real.  It's anchored in the four-step process described on page 94 of Getting the Right Things Done.  Step 1 is a clear understanding of the gap we are trying to close.  Catchball requires both the right (creative) and left (analytical) sides of the brain. Brainstorming, by contrast, is "blue sky" activity that helps us understand what's possible. It's primarily a right side of the brain process.

Q. I am worried about the catchball process. As you move down the organization, getting feedback and refining what a leader proposed may be translated into something completely different at the shop or office level.

A. The following analogy may be useful:  The leader defines the banks of the river.  "Here is where we need to go."  He or she trusts team members to find their way to the sea.  Some water may slosh over the sides but usually, the team finds its way. Also, remember that the leader has the Check process to ensure the ideas and strategies generated by team members are sound.

Q. Any suggestions or techniques for generating trust during catchball? I have found it difficult to encourage frank discussion when this has not been the prior practice in the organization.

A. What you do, is what you get.  If the leadership team does not practice PDCA, has few standards, hides information, behaves unpredictably (and sometimes destructively) and so on -- that'll be your culture. If, by contrast, the leadership team practices PDCA, sets clear visible standards, behaves in a predictable and honorable way (e.g. consistently treats people with respect etc), then that's the culture you'll get.

Q. Where is the best place for catchball to take place? In an office, conference room, on the shop or office floor? Is it oral or written feedback?

A. Catchball should take place in all of the above areas.  It comprises both written (e.g. scribbles all over an A3) and verbal feedback (e.g. "I'm not sure you've considered all the facts.  Have you thought about this and that?)

Q. Who should lead the catchball sessions?

A. The team leader.  It could be the deployment leader for quality (in the case of a mother A3 review).  It could also be the zone leader (in the case of a baby A3)

Q. Can you compare and contrast the lean’s scientific process of plan-do-check-adjust (PDCA) with six sigma’s "DMAIC" cycle?

A. PDCA and DMAIC are both expressions of the scientific method.  Both are sound.  I prefer PDCA because it's easier to teach and applies more broadly (e.g. front-line problems and well as strategic problems). 

Q. I learned that the “A” in the PDCA is Act, not Adjust. Why did you change it?

A. Just my personal preference.  Adjust seems a stronger word to me.  Some people misconstrue Act to mean "do what we always do." Use whichever you prefer.

Q. How do you select the deployment leader? Is it a functional leader or someone selected by the management team? What’s the short version of his/her job description?

A. Deployment leaders are generally chosen from support functions (e.g. Finance, Production Control, Quality, Human Resources).  Their job descriptions are given on pages 93 and 94 of the book.  It's important that they are peers of the operations management team members.  Deployment leaders need to have deep grasp of their "zone," based on extensive knowledge and experiences, as well as, a resilience that allows them to challenge conventional wisdom in the company.

Q. What do you mean by standardized work for management? How detailed does it need to be?

A. As noted in one of the earlier answers, what we do is what we get.  How can we expect front line team members to work to standards if we are milling around aimlessly? Leaders must define what they need to do annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily.  This cadence will then create a cadence in direct reports.  Normally leader standardized work is a one pager summarizing the check point, frequency, rationale, tool used and next steps needed.

For more information:
Getting the Right Things Done: a leader’s guide to planning and execution by Pascal Dennis describes a practical, how-to approach to implementing strategy deployment in an easy-to-read business novel format. Read excerpts here.

Getting the Right Things Done Workshop Strategy Deployment, also called policy deployment, hoshin kanri, or hoshin planning, is Toyota’s strategic planning system. In this two-day, hands-on workshop, you’ll use interactive case studies and exercises to learn the proven strategic planning system.

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