The Catchball Process
The Catchball Process
The Catchball Process
www.lrpjournal.com
Introduction
One of the current active topics in strategic management is the
involvement of employees in the strategy deployment stages of
the process, particularly in western companies, which have
struggled with the concept of relating top management goals to
the daily work of employees. It is preferable if the top management goals are integrated through the formulation and development of policies and, by the involvement of a wider group of
managers through consensus. This should enable a higher level
of buy-in to the goals, improved understanding of the enablers
to achieving them, and the motivation to communicate them
into practical daily work processes. However, this has proved to
be a difficult process for western companies.
Many Japanese companies have already established an effective
strategy deployment process, known as Hoshin Kanri, which
attempts to integrate top management goals into daily oper0024-6301/01/$ - see front matter
c 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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A particular approach for enabling the strategic planning process has been the adoption of Strategic Business Process Management, which requires the organisation to be conceptualised as a
series of business processes.6 Yet a fundamental question is what
should organisations do once they have developed a processbased architecture to ensure that the business process review does
not merely lead to a list of several dozen processes with little
further development? The crucial point is not the basic questions
relating to strategic planning, but rather the techniques and
organisational approaches which companies have traditionally
used to answer them. Therefore, to be effective, strategic planning must use a process, which is not separated from implementation, and involves a series of regular iterative reviews.
Hoshin Kanri
Overview
Hoshin Kanri is an organising framework for strategic management, which is concerned with the following four primary tasks.7
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Adaptations
There have been a number of adaptations of Hoshin Kanri to
align the technique to western thinking and management
approaches. Examples include: Policy Deployment at AT&T, Managing for Results at Xerox, Goal Deployment at Exxon Chemical,
Policy Management at Florida Power and Light, Hoshin Planning
at Hewlett-Packard and Hoshin Kanri at Digital Equipment and
the FAIR model developed by Witcher et al.8 FAIR is an acronym, which relates to the PDCA cycle: Focus (act), Alignment
(plan), Integration (do) and Responsiveness (check).
One of the early innovators in policy deployment application
in the UK was Rover Group with the development of their fiveyear quality strategy through policy deployment.9 The Policy
Deployment project at Rover progressed through further iterations and refinements as an adaptation of Hoshin Kanri.10 This
paper will expand upon the catchball process developed for
implementation at Rover to ensure effective consensus with the
deployment of top management goals into working processes, as
operated daily by employees.
Research implications
Areas of difficulty
Although Hoshin Kanri has been extensively used in Japan for
more than 30 years as a methodology for integrating strategy and
Total Quality Management (TQM), its adoption in the West has
been low, except in a number of innovatory companies. This
may be due to confusion with the translation, or merely because
the approach incorporates a number of difficult phases which
require mastery. This is further compounded by the general lack
of reference to Hoshin Kanri in quality management textbooks,
other than superficial descriptions. Research in the UK has identified a particularly difficult nature of Hoshin Kanri implemen290
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employee involvement and continuous improvement. Crossfunctional management also relies on a refinement in the organisation of management relationships, to allow continual checking
of target and means throughout the Hoshin implementation
timescale. It is this iterative process of discussing and debating
plans and targets at each level until consensus is reached, along
with methods for meeting the goal, which ensures that the total
organisation is committed to the same goals.13 This paper will
address these fundamental research issues with the development
of a unique process, which has been designed to solve problems
associated with the implementation of catchball within the
Hoshin Kanri technique. In particular, it will present the concept
of involving managers in the formulation of policies by consensus, to effect the translation of top management goals into daily
working processes.
management style
alone is not enough
Management style
When deciding on an appropriate process design for the consensus-building element, known as catchball within Hoshin Kanri,
it is necessary to consider the prevailing management style within
the organisation.14 It is suggested that the criteria by which
judgements are made, either by groups or individuals, are based
on the notion of shared mutual concepts and missions. This
implies a management style that is based on creative, flexible
and responsive principles. However, having the right balance of
management style alone is not enough. What is required is a
process for sharing ideas based on originality, coupled with the
benefits of group analysis and agreement whether that is in the
setting of Hoshin targets, or reviewing the achievement of targets
for incorporating within the next corporate strategy cycle.
Consensus building techniques
The research identified a number of consensus-building techniques for consideration within the implementation of the catchball process within Hoshin Kanri. These were reviewed in order
to optimise the development of the catchball process at Rover.
Ringi system
A particular consensus-building method known as the ringi system of decision-making is reputedly employed by more than 80
per cent of all Japanese industries.15 Rin means submitting a
proposal to ones superior and receiving their approval, and gi
means deliberations and decisions. The ringi system is characterised as a bottom-up method of decision-making, which has to
have unanimous approval of everyone in the system. Ringi allows
individuals to communicate a level of dissatisfaction without
actually halting the course of the decision. This approach is more
often applied in the decision-making processes within operations
rather than in the area of strategy. Therefore it could be adapted
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Catchball aims to
involve people as
team members rather
than individuals
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Social judgement
Face-to-face encounters
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A major process
review was conducted
to establish a
framework for the
quality strategy
Hoshin Kanri
relate to the concept of agreeing the means for achieving the four
strategic objectives, otherwise known as the vital few hoshins.
The milestone definition used was: an action or event whose
occurrence can be objectively verified and which will materially contribute to the improvement of the process. Therefore, a milestone
can be something which is carried out; such as re-engineer a subprocess, or achieve a result such as reaching a target level for
customer satisfaction. The main concept behind the milestone
plan was to distinguish between the hard and soft interdependencies often found in major projects. Hard dependencies are
the type typically encountered in sequential projects, such as
engineering programmes, whereas with soft dependencies it may
be possible to commence some tasks before the final training
programme is completed, as in the case of Statistical Process
Control (SPC). The extent to which any one activity must be
completed in a network of soft inter-dependent milestones for
the goal to be achieved depends on how far the other activities
have been completed. In this case, failure to achieve any one
milestone does not invalidate the plan: it simply imposes a higher
level of achievement as a minimum requirement on all other
milestones. This concept became known as geodesic planning,
which avoids defining specific inter-dependencies, instead relying
heavily on commitment to the vision.
Designing the catchball process
Agreeing the milestones for each year by consensus became a
major issue, for which a number of potential solutions were considered.
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Process owner
Customer
Supplier
New Product
Introduction
Project Directors
Manufacturing
Manufacturing Directors
Sales Directors
Service Director
Finance
Business Strategy Director
Logistics Directors
Product Directors
Sales Directors
Purchase Director
Manufacturing Directors
Logistics Directors
Product Directors
Business Planning
External Customers
Dealer Network
Product Directors
Manufacturing Directors
Personnel Director
All Company Managers and All Company Managers
Employees
Rover Learning Business
All Company Employees
All Company Managers and
Managing Director
Employees
Manufacturing Engineering Manufacturing Directors
Logistics Directors
Purchase Director
Business Strategy Director Executive Committee
All Company Managers
Logistics
Logistics Directors
Product Improvement
Product Directors
Management of People
Corporate Learning
Maintenance
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Manufacturing Directors
Sales Directors
Manufacturing Directors
Sales Directors
Purchase Director
Sales Directors
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Data collection
The case study was driven by primary data, as collected by the
principal author during the catchball process design and
implementation. The data collected during the initial interviews
was summarised into the Delphi questionnaire in the form of
initial milestones, which were summarised into date order simply
by mean and range from the survey respondents. This was carried out to provide points of discussion at the workshops, rather
than to determine analytically the planned date of achievement,
as it was the involvement at the workshops which provided the
main value in the consensus-building method within the catchball process.
Catchball process status and measures
Two main process measures were used within the catchball process. One was a holistic view of overall progress, the other an
individual process measure. The reason for instituting the measures was to ensure that the catchball process was implemented
with the rigour often associated with any normal company project. Both measures were presented in the form of simple charts,
which tracked the status for each process through the milestone
development stages, and were reported monthly to the Executive
Committee. Figure 6 shows an example of the catchball process
and measures of elapsed time, which identifies actual addedvalue process time and delay time, along with Delphi questionnaire response and group discussion attendance.
The elapsed time through the milestone development stages
was measured and recorded along with respondent rate to surveys and workshop attendees. These measures were critical for
two reasons. First, the initial application of the catchball process
for milestone development had taken 60 working days. This
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would mean that it would take at least two years to get to the
first draft of the quality strategy. Second, it was essential to
ensure that the sample respondents achieved complete participation. By setting up the workshops up to three months in
advance and instituting rigorous follow-up procedures, it was
possible to reduce the total elapsed time through the milestone
development stage to 40 days, comprising 14 days process time
and 26 days delay time.
Figure 7 shows an example of the catchball process status
chart, which was used as a holistic measure to assess the
implementation of the catchball process against the nine key
business processes. In total approximately 700 managers were
involved in the development and agreement of the milestones
for each of the nine key business processes, and the total exercise
took 12 months and approximately 8,000 man-hours.
Communication process
The length of time required to operate the catchball process
across the nine key business processes, involving 700 managers,
and taking 12 months, required a high degree of commitment
and patience from Rover board of directors. Although having
secured the commitment early on in the process, the quality
strategy team encountered a major issue once the strategy had
been developed and concurred by the board. The main output
at this stage was the creation of a single A3 page format, which
encapsulated the complete strategy and 89 milestones, which represented an ideal communication media, as shown in Figure 8.
However, the board members themselves struggled to reach
consensus, with the novel idea to release the quality strategy to
the 3,500 managers within the company for the purpose of ongo-
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Discussion
This case study has addressed the fundamental issue of integrating top management goals to daily working, particularly in western organisations, where this has not been achieved with success
for a number of reasons. One of the main problems with western
organisations is that strategic planning is often considered, and
implemented, as a separate process from the operations side of
the business and the output subsequently imposed across the
organisation, as a series of projects and management action
plans. This tends to result in a lack of ownership across the company, as a major consequence of misunderstanding the strategic
objectives, and more importantly, of how to integrate them with
working level processes. Second, the strategic objectives often
become difficult to track in terms of progress results, due to the
aforementioned misunderstanding and lack of integration with
what actually happens in the day-to-day business of the company. A solution to this problem has been suggested as the adoption of the Japanese technique known as Hoshin Kanri which
attempts to integrate top management goals into daily oper-
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ations. This is achieved by involving employees across the organisation in the strategic planning process through individual and
team contributions, in a non-threatening culture of consensus
building. Yet, although Hoshin Kanri has been successfully
applied in many Japanese companies, its adoption in the West
is considered as low.
A review of the main issues surrounding the difficulties in the
application of Hoshin Kanri within western organisations concluded that one particular area of difficulty concerned the links
between corporate strategy and annual planning. In order to achieve a high degree of co-ordination of Hoshin activities, with
either normal daily work processes or specific projects, a consensus-building process known as catchball is needed. Therefore, the
research question addressed within this paper was how can the
consensus process known as catchball, be effectively implemented in
western companies to facilitate the Hoshin Kanri method, to translate top management goals into daily working? This was
developed following a conclusion drawn at Rover that Hoshin
Kanri had already been demonstrated by Japanese companies to
be an effective strategy deployment technique. In particular, it
was felt that Hoshin Kanri would achieve effective involvement
of managers, generally in strategy development and deployment
throughout the organisation. However, it was concluded that to
apply catchball effectively within the cultural constraints of a
major western organisation a unique process would need to be
designed, rather than be expected to occur naturally.
A catchball process was designed for application at Rover as
a means for agreeing improvement milestones for the companys
quality strategy. The process was developed using a novel combination of the Delphi technique to achieve individual contributions, and consensus-building workshops based on group
judgement approaches, by considering the outputs of the Delphi
surveys. The catchball process involved approximately 700 managers totalling 8,000 man-hours contribution over a 12-month
period, to agree the initial 89 milestones contained within the
Rover Group Quality Strategy. The milestones were agreed over
a five-year horizon covering the period 1991 to 1995, and were
aligned to the nine key business process visions, four strategic
objectives, and the overall corporate vision. This delivered a strategic plan, which conformed to the principles of Hoshin Kanri,
and was communicated across the company in a one-page A3
sized format.
An early learning point was that managers initially struggled
with the concept of thinking more than one year out, and
required facilitation throughout the interviews to develop their
strategic thinking. However on most of the key processes, the
basic issues started to crystallise after about four to five interviews, which could then be used as input on subsequent interviews. However care was taken to ensure that the interviewees
were not stifled by previous comments, and therefore were
allowed free thought during the interview. Another area of difficulty was to prevent what became known as high guts to brains
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A novel process
allowed the company
to overcome
resistances to the
notion of catchball
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Conclusions
1 Research has demonstrated that effective application of
Hoshin Kanri requires mastery of the concept of a process
known as catchball for building consensus, to translate top
management goals into effective policies and working level
processes.
2 A catchball process has been designed based on an adaptation
of the Delphi technique by incorporating group judgement
methods, which was aimed at achieving consensus from a
large sample size. This was implemented at Rover by involving
approximately 700 managers over a period of 12 months
(8,000 man hours), in the development and agreement of
milestones to achieve policy deployment of Hoshin Kanri targets. The application of the Delphi technique within a strategic
planning and deployment phase represents innovation in
western organisations.
3 The solution adopted for implementing the catchball process
at Rover allowed the company to overcome cultural resistances to the notion of catchball for achieving consensus. This
was achieved by involving employees in the strategic planning
process, applying the outputs from the Delphi surveys to create specific data for discussion at the group workshops.
4 The one-to-one interview stage within the catchball process
assisted in getting managers to think more than one year out,
by iterating outputs from previous interviews as inputs to subsequent interviews. Measures were applied to manage the
implementation of the catchball process as a project and
improve efficiency. Also, the workshop stage within the catchball process, which represented an adaptation of the Delphi
technique, was facilitated to ensure that achievable dates for
each individual milestone within the five-year time horizon
were agreed by consensus.
5 It was not necessary to use the Delphi technique on subsequent annual iterations of the quality strategy, as a critical
mass of understanding had already been achieved. Therefore,
the group judgement elements were retained, based on process
workshops to review progress against the milestones from the
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