When something big changes mid-year, hoshin plans tend to fail in one of two ways. They carry on as if nothing happened, or they restart planning and lose a quarter. Most changes need neither, just a response sized to the change.
In this guide
Key Takeaways
- →Changing nothing formally and restarting the whole cycle are both failures. Size the response to the change.
- →Six rungs, from a countermeasure in the monthly review up to a breakthrough change through the strategy process.
- →Most changes sit at rungs 1 to 4 and fit inside the normal quarterly review.
- →A fired kill signal should be a fast decision, because the condition was agreed at planning.
- →Keep the original target visible beside the revision. Silent rebasing is the one rule that matters most.
- →Retiring a priority means moving its people and funding explicitly, not just removing a row.
Two bad responses
A major customer leaves. A market contracts. A priority’s bet clearly hasn’t paid off. The plan locked in January no longer fits.
Some organizations respond by changing nothing formally. The matrix stays as it was, while people quietly work on something else. By the reflection, nobody can tell what the plan actually was. Others respond by reopening the whole plan: a new offsite, a new matrix, new catchball. That costs weeks, and much of what was working gets disturbed along with what wasn’t.
The better response depends on the size of the change.
The replanning ladder
| Level | Change | Who decides | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A countermeasure for an off-track row | Row owner | Monthly review |
| 2 | A correlation regraded | KPI owner with priority owner | Quarterly review |
| 3 | A priority retired or added | Executive team | Quarterly review |
| 4 | A target changed | Owners through catchball, approved one level up | Quarterly review or special session |
| 5 | An annual objective changed | Executive team | Special session |
| 6 | A breakthrough changed | Executive team and board | Strategy process |
Climb only as far as the change requires.
Most mid-year changes sit at levels 1 to 4 and fit inside the normal quarterly review. A full restart is almost never needed. Even a changed breakthrough usually leaves most annual objectives and priorities intact.
Replanning should be sized to the change. A countermeasure doesn’t need a new offsite, and a new strategy doesn’t fit in a monthly review.
Triggers worth acting on
- A losing bet. A primary correlation in outcome lag, diagnosed as a broken mechanism. Typically level 2 or 3.
- A fired kill signal. The condition agreed at planning has been met. Level 3, and the decision should be quick because it was agreed in advance.
- An external shock that changes what a target can realistically be. Level 4, through catchball.
- A strategic shift, such as an acquisition or a market exit. Levels 5 or 6.
The second trigger is the one the planning season sets up. A kill signal is only a fast decision if it was written down when the correlation was gated, which is the discipline in The X-matrix is a set of hypotheses.
Rules for changing a locked plan
- Record the date and reason on the objective, priority or correlation that changed.
- Keep the original visible. A revised target sits alongside the original, not over it.
- Re-phase the plan values for the rest of the year, so the bowler reflects the new plan.
- Move the resources. When a priority is retired, assign its people and funding explicitly.
- Tell the levels below. Changes that affect site or team commitments go through a short catchball, not an announcement.
Keeping the original target visible matters most. Silent rebasing makes the year look better than it was and robs next year’s reflection of its most useful evidence.
A worked example: three changes in one year
| When | Trigger | Ladder level | Decision and record |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | Kill signal fires on the supplier portal priority: adoption flat after four months | 3. Retire a priority | Retired at the Q1 review; two people moved to low-carbon steel agreements; reason recorded on the priority |
| July | Competitor price cut in one region; territory comparison shows swamping | 4. Change a target | Regional services target reopened through catchball, 34% to 32%; original shown alongside |
| October | Acquisition of a service business announced | 5. Change an annual objective | Special session adds the integration objective; breakthrough unchanged |
Illustrative.
None of the three restarted planning, and each was decided at the lowest level that could handle it. By December, the reflection has three dated, explained changes to learn from, instead of a matrix that quietly stopped matching what the business was doing.
What replanning needs from the software
Read the five rules again and notice that four of them are about what survives the change, not about the change itself. Record the date and reason. Keep the original visible. Re-phase what remains. Move the resources where everyone can see them. These are storage requirements, and a plan held as a document meets none of them, because editing a document replaces what was there.
That is why the first bad response in this article is so common. When changing the plan properly means a new version of a file and a note somewhere about why, people stop doing it and simply work differently. The plan then stops describing the business, quietly, in about a month.
| Rule | What the tool has to do | How to test it in a demo |
|---|---|---|
| Date and reason recorded | Changes written to the item’s own history | Change a correlation grade and show me its history |
| Original visible | The committed target kept as a baseline beside the revision | Revise a target and show me the original |
| Re-phase the rest of the year | Monthly plan values editable for remaining months only | Re-phase from July without touching January to June |
| Move the resources | The retired priority’s owners and funding reassigned on the record | Retire a priority and show me where its people went |
| Tell the levels below | A short catchball rather than an edit | Change a cascaded target and show what the site sees |
| Spot the triggers | Flag green priorities whose KPIs are flat, and fired kill signals | Show me everything in outcome lag right now |
Row 2 is the rule this article says matters most, and the one a document cannot keep.
Row 6 is what turns the ladder from a policy into a practice. Levels 2 and 3 depend on noticing that a bet has stopped working, and that noticing is a report rather than an intuition: priorities reporting green while their KPIs stay flat. Without it, the quarterly review discusses whatever someone raised, and losing bets survive to the reflection. Primary, secondary, partial covers what regrading at level 2 actually involves.
What a silent rebase costs
Take the July change in the worked example. A regional target moves from 34% to 32% because a competitor cut prices. Recorded properly, that is a two-point gap with a named cause, and next October’s reflection can ask whether the response worked. Rebased silently, the year ends at 32% against a target of 32%, the objective reports green, and the reflection learns nothing. The two-point shortfall against the breakthrough is still real; it has simply stopped being visible.
Repeat that across a few objectives and the breakthrough quietly becomes unreachable without anyone deciding to abandon it, which is the same failure described in setting targets from the trajectory, arriving by a different route.
On licensing, the published models differ in shape. OnStrategy lists $200 per month for unlimited users. i-nexus publishes a free Starter tier for up to five users and $28 per user per month at its Standard tier. Rule 5 is the relevant test here: changes that affect site commitments go through a short catchball, which needs the sites inside the system rather than on the receiving end of an email.
Profit.co publishes two plans, Essentials and Enterprise, quoting against modules and scale rather than a public seat rate. Hoshin Kanri sits in Essentials with OKRs and Goals, Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Roadmap, so a retired priority’s people and the team OKRs they move to are on one data model, which is what makes rule 4 something you can actually show rather than assert. What drives the cost of hoshin kanri software covers what else to total.
The 30-day free trial is long enough to load your current matrix and walk one real mid-year change up the ladder to see where it lands.
Replanning in Profit.co
Profit.co keeps mid-year changes on the same records the year runs on. Decisions to keep, downgrade or upgrade a correlation are written to its strength history with the date and reason. When a countermeasure A3’s Act step would change a committed target, it opens a catchball session rather than editing the target, and the original commitment stays as the baseline, which is the “keep the original visible” rule enforced by the product.
The exception queue and four-quadrant chart surface the cases that usually trigger level 2 and 3 decisions, and plan values can be re-phased for the remaining months. More on the planning software page.
That maps the ladder onto places rather than intentions. Level 1 is a countermeasure on the row, raised in the monthly review cadence. Level 2 writes to the correlation’s history. Level 4 reopens catchball rather than overwriting a number. Each rung leaves a dated record, which is what December’s reflection reads.
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Questions this article answers
Match the response to the size of the change, from a countermeasure in the monthly review up to a breakthrough change through the strategy process, recording each change on the item it affects.
Rarely. Even a changed breakthrough usually leaves most annual objectives and priorities intact. Change only what the new situation requires.
No. Keep the original visible alongside the revision. Silent rebasing hides the year’s real performance and removes evidence from next year’s reflection.
Retire the priority at the next quarterly review and reassign its people and funding. The decision should be quick, because the condition was agreed when the correlation was gated at planning.
Write the date and reason to the item’s own history, keep the original commitment as a baseline, allow re-phasing of the remaining months, and reopen catchball rather than overwriting a cascaded target.
Look for priorities reporting green whose KPIs are flat, and for kill signals that have fired. Both are reports a tool can produce, rather than things someone has to remember to raise.
