Does jargon–or Japanese terms like ‘Hoshin Kanri'–get in the way of clear communication in your organization?
It reminds me of the classic Saturday Night Live ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!' sketches, where Sean Connery (played hilariously by Darrell Hammond) would completely misread category names to hilarious effect. That inspired me to create this meme about ‘Hoshin Kanri':
See more fun memes on my site LeanMemes.com.
Would it be easier if we just called it ‘Strategy Deployment' or ‘Policy Deployment'? It's the same concept, but with a name that might be easier to digest for everyone.
On a different note, it's funny that we so often use the Japanese word for waste (“muda”), but value is called… value.
Weird, right?
Have you ever seen a Lean term–whether in English or Japanese–get hilariously misunderstood at work? I'd love to hear your stories!
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Hello Mark,
I am currently studying the Lean Six Sigma Process at university and enjoyed reading your article. A question I have is what do you think is the purpose of the jargon? from a student’s perspective, it only seems to make it harder to learn.