How to use Hoshin Kanri in personal life?

Well, before COVID-19 it was difficult to have a balance in our lives, well, nowadays, the challenge is higher. For me, a Continuous Improvement manager from Mexico, and a firm believer of taking self-responsibility of our mental health, I want to show you a way of how companies work towards their business goals and how to apply it to your personal life.

Maybe you will think, “This is not something new”, and believe me, I am sure you have read it before! What I have found, is that sometimes (well, most of the times) we need someone else to tell us, and in other side, we are not ready to implement something new in our lives.

The first thing I want to share is the principle of Hoshin Kanri, what means “HO” means method or a way to do things, “HOSHIN” could be interpreted as compass, “KANRI” means management. This principle is focused in communicating the enterprise goals to everyone and break into small parts.

Well, in the other hand, I want to share about a principle that a coach a few years before showed me: the wheel of life. Some authors talk about 8 pieces, other more, other less… the importance here is try to evaluate each step from one to ten, what you really need, is to be very open of your own feelings…

Once you know your answers, you can find the parts of your life you have the biggest gap.

Choose the ones you want to work with, or to improve in a certain time.

Later, how to match this with HK? Well next step is to remember, we have limited time, limited resources, and so we need to be sure, of what we would like to work onto.

Are you familiar with SWOT analysis? We would need to do our own and very personal.

Set a specific time of what you would like to have the results, but then establish a monthly or weekly indicator that would let you know if you are going for the right path or not.

Talk and set accountability with the ones you love or you trust the most and can be your allies to conquer your goals! And remember… to celebrate each goal you have achieved, feel proud of it! But, what happen if you cannot accomplish what you have set in that periodical indicator? Well you will have to analyze what drop you out of your goal and try to set a countermeasure.

Maybe we will not have perfect results, but as is very well known, “a thousand miles road starts with the first step”.