Strategy deployment software: from the X-matrix to every person's work, judged every month

Strategy deployment software holds a company's goals for the year, carries them down to each plant, team and person, and tracks every month whether each goal is being met. In LeanSuite the year's objectives sit on an X-matrix, each goal has an owner, a pillar such as Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost or People, a Why it matters statement and the KPI it is measured by. A goal is cascaded with a reply-by date, each level replies, each initiative a person works on is connected to the goal it serves, and every month the goal shows Met or Missed from its KPI.

Yes, and most plants that try end up doing so. Hoshin kanri sets the three to five year breakthroughs and this year's objectives through catchball; OKRs give a team a measurable objective for the cycle; KPIs and the bowling chart track ongoing health. They are three vocabularies for one thing: the few goals that matter, carried to every level and checked on a cadence. In LeanSuite you start from whichever you use. The objectives sit on the X-matrix, each one is a goal measured by a KPI, and the cascade, the replies and the monthly verdict are the same whatever you called the goal.

A KPI tracks the ongoing health of a process: first-pass yield, OTIF, the recordable injury rate, every month, for years. An OKR describes a change you want in a cycle: raise first-pass yield to a new level by year end. The two meet when the key result is measured by the KPI. That is how LeanSuite works: a goal is the change, the KPI it is measured by is the number, and once the month closes the goal shows Met or Missed from that KPI.

Use the X-matrix when leadership plans the year as a whole: it puts the breakthrough objectives, the annual objectives, the improvement priorities and the KPI targets on one page with the correlations and the owners between them. Use OKR wording when a team needs one objective and a few measurable results for the cycle. In LeanSuite the X-matrix is the company's page per year, read clockwise from the breakthrough objectives at the bottom, and every annual objective on it is a goal that cascades and is measured by a KPI, so a team that writes its own version in OKR words is still linked to the matrix through its parent goal.

Cascade this goal asks who should act on it, the facilities or, from a facility goal, that plant's teams, and when, with a reply-by date and a message. The goal then shows how far the cascade has got, for example cascaded to two facilities, two of two replied. Each facility sees the request under My goals, pending until it answers, and a facility goal cascades on to its teams the same way. From there the goal goes down to the individual person.

Catchball is the back and forth that makes a cascade two-way: the level above proposes a goal, the level below says how it will take it on, and the plan improves on the way down. In LeanSuite it is each level's reply to a cascaded goal: adopt the goal as written, write its own version, which creates a goal with the parent goal attached and is the recommended reply, or mark the goal not applicable and explain why. Requests show as pending or answered, so leadership sees who has not replied yet.

As people work on their initiatives, each one is connected to the company goal it supports. An initiative that serves no company goal goes in Other. That is the point of the module: everyone, the person doing the work and the leaders reviewing it, can see whether the work is moving something the company set out to do.

The cascade runs from the company to the facility, the team and the individual person, so each goal ends with someone's name on it and the initiatives they work on for it show the company goal they serve. The Strategy module does not run performance reviews, one-to-ones or pay from those goals. People development in LeanSuite lives in the skills matrix and the training module.

From its KPI. Once a month closes, the goal shows Met or Missed for that month, and the current month shows the results so far. The goal's page carries a January to December table of target versus actual with a tick or a cross per month and year to date. A goal with no KPI attached cannot be judged, which is why Goal health counts goals without a KPI.

A grid of company goals as rows and facilities as columns for the last closed month. Each cell reads Met, Missed, No facility KPI or Not judged. Three counts sit above it: missed this month, missed two or more months in a row, meaning facility KPIs that missed this month and the month before, and goals without a KPI.

The review starts from the Goal health grid and the goals' own KPIs. Leadership sets up its own meeting schedule; the meeting links the KPIs it reviews and their owners, in a reporting order, and the people speaking prepare their part in the system before the meeting. A red KPI opens an action, an A3 or a project from the same screen, so the decision and the follow-up are recorded where the number lives.

Excel holds the X-matrix well for one person on one day. It cannot cascade a goal with a reply-by date and collect the replies, it cannot link a person's initiative to the goal it serves, and the monthly Met or Missed has to be typed in by whoever remembers. Each plant ends up with its own sheet in its own words, and the review becomes a round of emails. In LeanSuite the goal, its KPI, the replies, the initiatives and the verdict are one record, the same one the huddle boards and the bowling chart already use.

The KPIs behind the goals are the plant's own KPIs, with KPI trees that roll up from department to plant to company, KPI boards and the bowling chart. A red KPI opens an action, an A3 or a project, kaizen projects are tagged to the goal they serve, and a fix that worked at one site can be shared as a best practice with the others, with adoption tracked.