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THE ARE MANY important and durable lessons I’ve learned in
Japanese management after studying, working, and visiting Tokyo for
at least eight times in the past, including a year-long human
resource fellowship program in 1993.
This includes the following: You should always
tighten the cap of a Kikkoman soy sauce bottle and place it in a
hotel laundry plastic bag with kanji (Chinese characters) graphics
before putting it in your suitcase.
I also discovered that it is possible to gain
weight even in a country peopled by those who like to eat raw fish
and pizza pie with yellow corn and squid rings.
But more than anything else, I’d like to say
with deeper insights that it’s none other than Hoshin Kanri which
is the equivalent of strategic planning for many Japanese companies.
If the Americans have Management by Objectives (MBO),
then the Japanese have Hoshin Kanri, except that I’d like to say
it’s definitely much better.
You can also figure this out from Prof. Jeffrey
Liker and Michael Hoseus, co-authors of the book The Toyota Culture:
The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way (McGraw-Hill, 2008).
Hoshin Kanri or policy deployment translates
into a bigger and holistic “direction and means management.” According
to Liker and Hoseus, Toyota uses the Hoshin to get the entire
organization on one page and that push it into one big competitive
advantage.
While the American MBO focuses on results, the
Japanese Hoshin is concerned with both results and process while
using two-way employee communication, and allows their active
participation. That’s how I tend to favor Hoshin Kanri to the
archaic MBO.
Whenever I got back home from Japan, the main
thing everybody asked me aside from the omiyage (souvenir) was:
“How was it?” And I found myself answering – “That was
expensive. And I hope you like it.”
So I’m afraid that my perspective about the
Hoshin was severely limited, similar to the experience I had
whenever I had the chance to toast Kirin beer with some Japanese
friends, while folding my legs in an awkward position.
This is my fault. It was stupid of me to
visit Japan without learning at least some yoga exercises. That’s
why, from hereon, I solemnly promise myself to correct this mistake
at the first sign of an impending invitation from another
organization running and eager to shoulder my all-expenses paid
trip.
I still can’t get over this fortune for some
time now. I’m not saying that they do this to me as a
fumbling Japanologist. I’m sure that it could happen
routinely to, for example to a government official, a motoring
newspaper columnist, or an academician who is bored teaching inane
subjects.
But most of us, if we live in areas with
electricity, endure an enormous amount of telenovela (soap) and
political hostility, we’ll be happy to live and work in some
foreign lands like Japan at least temporarily, so that we could have
something in the future. And that future includes a Hoshin
experience.
The drawback, of course, is that if you’re in
Japan, you’ll have to contend with a lot of rules and strict work
discipline, majority of which are not written. Or if they are
written, they’re insanely difficult to comprehend: Come on
time, don’t smoke, wear a uniform, clean as you go, do overtime
work even if not told, and don’t make waves unless you’re in a
beach.
Of course, this is a good philosophy for
everyone. That’s how Toyota is now trying to beat General
Motors and the rest in their ball game. And so you better start
with Hoshin if you want to crank out zero-defect products, be
trusted enough to have lifetime employment in 3D (dirty, difficult,
or dangerous) jobs, and be accepted in super restrictive culture
like Japan.
That’s why the Japanese so eagerly copy the
Americans so that they could have something to improve on under the
concept of kaizen (continual improvement) like what you can probably
imagine in a Management by Japanese Objectives.
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Rey Elbo is a consultant on human resources
and total quality management as a fused specialty. Reader’s
feedback may be sent to kairoshq@info.com.ph
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