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One of the people I most respect as a business leader often repeats the phrase “go slow to go fast”. There is a nearly identical Toyota way principle which states that slow and deliberate planning will speed up execution of that plan greatly. The reverse is also true. Quick and shallow planning leads to poor execution with many delays and rework, and this is too often the case. Of course companies can have quick planning and a great culture of execution but this has a higher cost both in terms of effort and the organizational learning that fails to happen as a result of curtailed feedback to the next cycle of planning.



By faithfully following the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) whether in problem solving or business planning, we can develop an organization that improves rapidly, that is self-correcting and that is sustainable. When PDCA is not practiced at the highest levels of the company, the realm of strategy and long-term planning, even excellent companies face decline or the inability to respond quickly to shifting conditions. One major element in the recipe for Toyota’s success may be the thorough practice of PDCA, both explicitly and implicitly. For the most part the leadership has gone through years of hands-on training and mentoring in the use of PDCA as a thought process and management method.



We could say that to have effective execution all we need to do is adopt PDCA and teach it to everyone. However this is much easier said than done. This requires much practical education and learning by doing, starting at the leadership level. The ideal way to do this is to adopt policy deployment (hoshin kanri) as a management practice. Using hoshin as a framework for implementing lean manufacturing or lean healthcare can also be a great way to test the limits of management commitment, the validity of the goals of the implementation and to create a regular review process for the implementation. But sadly since it is a strategy planning deployment method and only indirectly delivers business results, too many times leaders skip this step and go directly into implementing what may be hastily laid plans.

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