Hoshin Kanri is a method for cascading strategic objectives through an organisation so that daily work connects to direction, and progress travels back up. Also called policy deployment.
It addresses a specific failure: a strategy formulated annually, presented widely, and then disconnected from what anyone does the following Tuesday. Hoshin translates each objective into the level below it, so that a corporate goal becomes departmental goals and then team activity, with the line of sight preserved in both directions.
The part that distinguishes it from ordinary cascading is catchball — objectives are negotiated between levels rather than assigned. The level receiving a target argues about its feasibility and what it would require, and the target changes as a result. That exchange is where commitment is actually created; skip it and you have a distribution mechanism.
It also forces selection. A Hoshin process with fifteen priorities has not made a decision, and the discipline is in what is excluded. Organisations that will not exclude anything get the same dilution they had before, now with more paperwork.
