Real management focus using Hoshin Kanri

The brief

Viasat Broadcasting operates free-TV and pay-TV in Scandinavia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia, with emerging market operations in the Baltics, Russia, Ukraine and Ghana.   In total Viasat operates pay-TV platforms in 35 markets.

The emerging Eastern European markets are fast paced and dynamic, with multiple languages to support, with social, regulatory and political challenges, and with local cultures each with their own character and features.  Local staffing is of high quality and mixed experience.  So building local customer marketing operations is challenging but full of potential.

Strategy

Issues identified quickly included a general lack of management processes, reflected in plenty of day to day activity, lots of hard number objectives but a lack of focus and unclear priorities.  Targets and reporting were in place, but an overall purpose and strategy was missing.  So to make a big difference quickly, there was a clear need for a shared sense of purpose, for a clear management agenda, and for informal management processes to support performance review and agreement of priorities.

Actions

Regular face to face visits soon established positive working relationships underpinned by mutual respect, trust and commitment.  This was followed by a shared commitment to adapting Hoshin Kanri based processes and tools to support regular management review.

Progressive building of the Hoshin tools and formats over several weeks led to an easy to maintain ‘management system’ which gave a clear sense of shared purpose and priorities.  The local Hoshin became the basis for regular weekly updates, face-to-face or through videocall.

The big difference

The motivational effect of agreeing a management agenda with clear focus and priorities led to immediate performance improvements.  Within 3 months, thanks to good progress across the agreed agenda and priorities, performance against business plan had turned round from behind to ahead.  This laid foundations for above target performance throughout the year.

Overall the biggest difference is to have shifted the management culture to embrace a clear strategy, agreed priorities, a performance measurement mindset, high levels of communication, and a long term development agenda.  This degree of professional discipline drove individual performance, team performance and therefore business performance.

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