The hoshin kanri X-matrix makes my head hurt.
I mean, kudos to the person who invented it for creating something so incredibly compact and information-dense. But I’m not sure it’s the easiest way to convey the information in the hoshin plan. Small dots in three locations on a spreadsheet with text running in two directions isn’t a recipe for easy digestion.
image via kanbanize.com
(I was gratified to learn from Katie Anderson that Toyota doesn’t use the X-matrix. Probably they realized that in an effort to make things easier/better/faster/cheaper for workers, it doesn’t really pass the first test.)
As a result, I’ve been using a series of spreadsheets adapted from a template by Karen Martin. Karen’s template is great for making the goals and projects of the annual plan easy to read, since you don’t have to rotate your head like a great horned owl to read the X-matrix. However, one of my clients recently struggled to understand the connection between the corporate goals and their associated projects, and the projects with their associated tasks. The vertical relationship between these three levels—generated through catchball—got lost in the multiple spreadsheets. They couldn’t see how these levels were tied together.
My client came up with a new way to represent the information contained in a hoshin plan that highlighted the relationship between the levels. They essentially created an org chart with all the necessary information—the corporate goal at the top of the hierarchy (where the CEO would be), with specific departmental goals, projects, major tasks, and due dates listed below (where you’d typically put direct reports). They even color-coded the critical tasks for each project to highlight which team was responsible for each task. It looks like this (with confidential information redacted):
This has become one of the most widely used charts in the company. The relevant teams hold hoshin review meetings around it as they track progress towards their departmental goals, and they have a clear picture of how their daily work ties into the larger corporate goals.
This was a terrific improvement on the spreadsheets that I originally gave them. Give it a try—it might work for you, too.