I have just finished a part on IT strategy for "ze book". It's about IT strategy making and selling and is part of the roadmap towards business/IT fusion. To bring you into the mood, I want to share an excerpt with you. To give you the right perspective, IT strategy is step 5 of the 10-step-transformation program.The four preceding steps are:
1. How the CIO can get himself in shape
2. Which data and information he needs before stepping into the boardroom
3. Magical Quadrant with the four IT archetypes and business impact
4. How to find out what stakeholders want: service, agility, enterprise IT or innovation.
"If he has carefully followed the previous steps, the CIO now has all the necessary ingredients to build his IT strategy: he has to use the input from the business, different IT scenarios, figures about efficiency, effectiveness and perform a maturity assessment. A good understanding of the capability of the IT organization will serve as final input for formulating his IT strategy.
It is important to involve key players in both the IT and business organization at this stage so everybody has the opportunity to become involved, participate and take ownership of the strategy. A strategy which is not supported by both business and IT executives will not yield the expected results.
Building blocks of your IT strategy
1. Your initial talks with the business and their decision on your role will give you a reason for existence. Your role in the enterprise should be reflected in your IT shop’s mission and how it plans to fulfill the business expectations.
2. The mission will consequently have to be translated into corporate values. The corporate values tend to be more people-oriented and are also the (as is or to-be) descriptors of your organization culture. Quigley (1994) defines corporate values as "the rules or guidelines by which a corporation exhorts its members to behavior consistent with its order, security, and growth.
3. The next step is to define your vision or mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the organisation (Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, in "Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge"). A vision articulates a credible, realistic attractive future for the organisation" and is more than unfettered ambition or being future oriented. It incorporates cultures, beliefs, value systems and a myriad of force fields.
4. Next in turn is to define your IT strategy and how you want to transition from the current state to the future state: IT strategies tend to be multi-faceted and will consequently be centered around different building blocks like : Governance, IT spending, business applications, processes, people, Skills landscape technology, architecture, service, compliance, program delivery and the like. An IT Strategy should also have notions of strategic themes and strategic initiatives/priorities of the IT organization.
5. The dashboard: The purpose of an IT strategy is to bring the organization to a desired or future state. As similar transitions typically span two to three years, it is important to measure progress in all individual areas. Depending on the maturity of the IT organization, metrics can be defined in terms of both internal or external oriented performance. Metrics should also be closely linked to the IT archetype role as described in the previous paragraph. For those who want to read more about dashboards and Balanced Score cards, Kaplan and co have done extensive research in this domain and will provide valuable input when defining Business or IT balanced score cards. In an ideal world, Business and IT will have shared objectives, thus explicitly linking performance at enterprise level. One good piece of advice, define your objectives the SMART way and be realistic when setting your goals thus allowing for quick wins along the journey.
6. Strategy roadmap: A strategy is one thing but somebody will have to do it. This is why you will need a strategy roadmap or execution framework. The strategy roadmap is about the tactics and how you plan for improvement. Where the strategy is about the what, the strategy roadmap is about the how, the resources, the budget, the processes needed to get you there. An IT execution framework will tell you how you can achieve: efficient and effective project delivery (CMMi, project portfolios), Quality service management (ITIL), effective IT investment policy (governance), quality people (Talent management and active recruitment campaigns, advanced technology (Enterprise Architecture, Standards, SOA) etc.
7. Individual Goals (Performane Management): a good HR policy will link the individual goals to the corporate goals. Of course, you will not be able to consolidate all corporate goals to an individual level but by linking individual with corporate goals, a generic performance management framework can be brought to life.
8. Corporate Identity and brand equity: one of the more right-brain elements in any strategy is that of the corporate identity and corporate image. How do you want to be perceived by your employees and the outside world. Corporate identity extends beyond the “visual identity” such as logos or corporate branding guidelines. It encompasses also corporate communications (how you communicate) and corporate behaviour (internal values). Although most of you will think that this is something which has to be done at business or corporate level, it is also relevant for the employees of the IT organisation. Your IT shop can be seen as subculture within the corporate culture - i.e. it has its own values, beliefs, language, behavior and artifacts. As a consequence, CIOs that want to build a community, bonding and a common culture can use corporate identity as an internal fusion mechanism
9. (Strategic) Communications plan: Effective communication is about communicating the right message to the right audience at the right time - usage of the right channel has a tendency to increase the effect of communication (Dr. Jerry) The strategic communications plan will act as the bonding glue for communicating on your values, culture, themes, metrics, vision and promoting your IT brand.
Now you have it all worked out, you know which role you are expected to play, which objectives to achieve and how you will achieve them. Good work but you are not even half way. As long as people are not aware of your IT strategy, if it has not been sold or marketed, the odds that you will be able to implement it an effective way will decrease with the days passing by.
Creative Communications Officer
It is high time you now put your right-brain side to work for you… or at least, that’s what good CIOs should do. Being able to communicate - although it touches upon the softer side of management - is a key characteristic of effective leaders. Grant, people working in IT do not excel at being great communicators but CIOs are not IT people - well, at least not in our opinion.
Strategic communications is about planning and targeting your communication efforts. A strategic communications plan will tell you in a blink of eye, when you are supposed to tell what to whom - the more advanced version will also tell you how to pass on the message and what channel is your audience’s favorite one.
Putting this in the perspective of communicating an IT strategy means that you communicate all - or the most relevant parts of your mission, vision, values, priorities, themes, actions and future state to your different target groups.
These target groups can be segmented into internal stakeholders such as the board,internal business units, the CEO office, (“the business”), the own IT organization, staff departments etc.
External stakeholders include industry groups, markets, sourcing providers, regulatory, society (always have crisis communication plan) and future employees (applicants and other have a tendency to appreciate companies with a good brand or cool image).
Where is the Mike?
Talking to these different groups will require a more personalised approach. Any good communications matter expert will tell you that. That’s why we will drive you bonkers with questions like: “But what will you communicate, to whom? “Who are those people and are you sure that this is the right moment?” “Can I see a list of priority programs and strategic initiatives… I mean, what is important for your internal stakeholders?” and my favorite one: “if business unit X is pumping 150 million dollars into this department, they damn sure have the right to know what we are spending it on!?”
And don’t you worry about what you are going to say, there is enough going on in the boutique to talk about. Although the way of communicating will be different on a role-by-role basis, there are enough running matters to interact with the public (as in stakeholders ) and initiate the dialogue.
Perhaps you can sell your plan to the board and convince your C-level peers about the business benefits of your IT strategy. This type of communication will require the CIO to talk their language - CFO, CEO, CPO, CMO slang to be more exact. You will be expected to spice your presentation with the obligatory number crunching stuff but keep it simple, to the point and most importantly… make it slick and stick!
Rumor goes that some CIOs even call in the help of communication consultants or an advertising agency to assist them with the marketing of their strategy. Investing in good communications expertise has a positive ROI, that’s for sure. The next step is to ensure that your own management team, resources and even out/insourcers are aware of Stan‘s plan. In principle you should have already hooked up your management team, your lieutenants and intimate circle of trustees by now. Again, a good selling story will prove to be gold when informing them about the nooks and crannies of your strategy… There you go, you have already recycled your marketing campaign once.
The Gang...
Remember Kotter's wise words about a powerful coalition. With these people you will have to create a momentum for change. If they are not informed and consulted about, involved in and committed to the cause, just forget it. You will need your critical mass of change agents to make it all happen. Leaders of large organizations know how to leverage their management teams and inspire them to be change agents. Together they will spread the word and make people part of the change… Viral change is the best possible term I can come up with in this context. The more people become involved the more viral and sustainable the change evolves into. Help your change agents in becoming effective communicators, coach or let them coach where necessary.

Our communications expert says: let your strategy roadmap and business calendar be your first source of inspiration. Pencil in milestones, key events and deliveries, windows for communicating on achievements, service levels etc. Do the same with your business calendar. When are the quarterly results being published, what are the strategic programs in the business and when do they deliver, who are the key players (read stakeholders) what is IT’s part in the delivery, what are the common success stories. Consolidate all this information into one holistic calendar and use this as a base for content, timing, segmenting your audience and using the most effective channels. Don’t overcommunicate though as this will have a counterproductive effect… instead of pulling people, you will be pushing them away"