Making the IT strategy 'real'

Developing an IT strategy that is understood and accepted by the business and IT practitioners is a major challenge for many businesses. A lot of effort is invested in developing an elegant strategy, the future state architecture is sound and the board is pleased. Still, beyond one or two new projects, the strategy fails to get traction and there is large gap between the strategy and quality of the results.

Unlike most strategy consultants Kogekar Consulting have extensive experience in execution planning. We have helped clients create IT strategies that are well understood and effectively executed. Here we summarise key learning from our experience – how to plan an effective IT strategy and engage stakeholders.

Executive Summary

Creating an IT strategy that is understood and effectively executed by the stakeholders has been a difficult challenge in many IT Groups.  This is rarely acknowledged but results in a lack of adoption or operationalization. There are many reasons for this:

• Focus of the strategy tends to the board or C-level team, which make the document too high level for the typical middle manager whose support is needed for implementation.
• Strategists and architects, who focus on big ideas, typically drive strategy development and complex concepts. These concepts are difficult to execute, thus they appear to be disconnected from the on the ground realities of IT. Practitioner involvement can provide a different type of thinking, which enhances the abilities to execute the strategy.
• Strategy needs to take account of people and operational realities. Often there is little effort made to engage with stakeholders like key business managers, IT middle managers and experts during the strategy development process. Lack of engagement further reduces their buy-in. However, these stakeholders are absolutely essential for bringing realism and ‘owning’ strategy execution.
• Few understand that a good strategic planning process also requires the utmost attention to the ‘hows’ of execution. It’s substance and detail must come from people who are closest to the action and understand their customers, resources and capabilities.
• Many strategies underestimate the effort required to create the new organisational capabilities. Strategies also fail to provide a framework for identifying and developing talent – at all levels – talent that is needed to execute the strategies.
• One key aim of the strategy is to establish a direction and state ‘how we shall operate”. The specific programs and initiatives get all the attention, and overshadow the underlying philosophy.

The successful execution of the strategy requires that not only the board and senior executives of the company approve the strategy. But also, other stakeholders like department managers, project leaders and key support staff understand the strategy and are clear about their role in the execution. Strategy execution requires going down from a 50,000 ft to may be 50 ft level. This requires identification, prioritisation and implementation of very specific actions. Many organizations don’t realise the contribution practitioners can make to a realistic execution planning.

Strategy planning is a great opportunity for engaging stakeholders. It provides a process to understand how well IT is supporting the business, where the business is headed, how the business and technology landscape is changing and what we must do to improve our effectiveness.  It is also an opportunity to communicate, “what we shall do differently” because if nothing changes, the new strategy becomes just a piece of paper.