Tag Archives: Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning: How Not to Waste Your Time 

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Strategic planning can be more effective by focusing on three principles: first, prioritize the planning process over the final document; second, timely execution is crucial, as plans quickly become outdated; third, concise plans of four pages promote clarity and strategic thinking. These methods aim to enhance organizational responsiveness and focus.

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Organizations in Four Part Harmony

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What exactly makes up an organization and how is work done within them?  This is a subject of a handy mental model I use when I am trying to understand an organization; an organization in four part harmony.

1.    Harmony 1, Infrastructure: the furniture, furnaces, machinery and head offices of the organization.  Note that in many organizations infrastructure is often a non-tangible.  For example a computerized airline reservation system or perhaps a finance system.

Steamfitter, by Lewis Hine (American, 1874–1940) . Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accession Number: 54.549.56

Steamfitter, by Lewis Hine (American, 1874–1940) . Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accession Number: 54.549.56

2.    Harmony 2, Operations: these are the day-in-day-out processes, tasks and procedures which we typically hire people to do.  Accounts payable clerks, widgets assembler or process engineers are hired because payables need to be clerked, widgets assembled and processes engineered.

3.    Harmony 3, Ad hoc activities: if you have a reserved parking spot close to the head office of an organization, I bet this is what you do all day.  Sure, you were hired to do operations (Chief Executive/Finance/Information Officer) and sometimes operational work sneaks in when you are not looking.  More than likely though, you have crossed into the grey and smudgy no-man’s land that separates operations from the world of the ad hoc.

4.    Harmony 4, Strategic thinking/planning: Periodically, the leaders of an organization will set aside their many ad hoc and fewer operational activities to complete strategic plans.  Strategic plans hopefully answer questions like, do we have the right infrastructure, efficient operations and why are there so many ad hoc activities.

Four Perfect Harmonies

If you dig out your old college text books, organizations are described as functioning something like this.  Wise executives poke their heads up from the fray and gain strategic knowledge.  In turn, this knowledge is used to tweak infrastructure and adjust operations.  Ad hoc opportunities are few and nearly always involve entering into new markets, maximizing shareholder wealth or stakeholder well-being.

Dilbert and The Four Harmonies

In a Dilbert’esque world, the four harmonies work in isolation.  Most of the management focus is on performing ad hoc work that usually involves fixing or infrastructure or operations.  This is because infrastructure suffers from a lack of investment while operations are conducted by poorly trained leading the newly hired.  The only time either of these harmonies get any attention is when they fail and then they are hastily repaired, usually in an ad hoc manner.

Beyond the Harmonies

Most organizations fall in between these two extremes.  Ideally infrastructure is like a well-run furnace on a cold winter’s day – well-functioning, appreciated and invisible.  Time invested in operations saves management effort solving future ad hoc problems (an ounce of prevention is worth of pound of cure).   Ad hoc efforts need to be the exception and not the standard modus operandi of an organization.  Unfortunately management through heroics and drive by management can make it difficult to operationalize a corporate culture used to the adrenalin rush of the last moment.

Finally strategic planning should be an ongoing rather than intermittent activity, ad hoc activity.  Ideally, an orchestra-conductor makes small corrections to the harmony rather than having to stop the tune and start again from the top.

Organizations are much too complex to fit into four neat buckets, but it is surprising how this simple model has help me channel my thinking about complex and abstract structures, such as organizations.  So, how well does your organization manage the four harmonies and what are your thoughts on the mental model?  As always drop me your thoughts, ideally via a singing telegram in four part harmony.

The SWOT+4 Planning Model

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Information Management/Technology (IM/IT) is expensive. As well, the advantages it provides are fleeting and easy to imitate (or worse steal). An organization must strategically and operationally plan for its investments in IM/IT. The problem is, what exactly should be in the Strategic or Operational plan, and what are the questions the plans are trying to answer?

Over the past 20+ years I have being pondering these questions. Being a visual person, I have developed what I am calling the SWOT+4 IM/IT Planning Model. It is a bit busy but here it goes. At the centre is the SWOT matrix. Overlaying the SWOT matrix are the four-central IM/IT questions and on top of the questions are the respective planning tools to answer the questions.

SWOT+4 Planning Model

SWOT+4 Planning Model

At the core of the SWOT+4 model are the organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This 2×2 matrix is a mainstay of strategic analysis. Although familiar to virtually everyone, in brief it is a method to view a situation from two key dimensions: internal versus external and positive versus negative. For example, Strengths are internal-positive attributes whereas Threats represents the external-negative possibilities.

Unfortunately, the SWOT tool is incomplete when it comes to evaluating an organization’s IM/IT. For example, is a change of technology an opportunity or a threat? Are the existing IM/IT systems a strength or a weakness? The answer to both questions is – it depends. As a result, I have used a Four Question Model for IM/IT Planning over the years as an analysis checklist. In order of priority the questions are:

  1. ORGANIZATIONAL PLAN: What is important (e.g. priorities, plans and strategies) to the organization? This is at the centre of the model and crosses all four SWOT considerations. Included in this question are things like the organization’s vision, its mission, business plan(s), budgets and all things strategic.
  2. ORGANIZATIONAL IM/IT: How can/does/should IM/IT support or impede what is important to the organization; does the organization have the right IM/IT and if not, when will it get it? This is an internal consideration although it touches the external dimensions of the SWOT model to represent amongst other things benchmarking and industry best practice. This question is ideally answered by both the strategic documents discussed above and the IT Department’s operational plan(s).
  3. IM/IT CAPACITY: How well does the organization DO IM/IT, is it getting better, worse or about the same? What about the fleet of applications or physical resources; is the organization still running Windows 3.1, Office 95 or has it been able to adopt leading/bleeding edge technologies. How about the organization’s Bespoke and COTS applications, are they on current versions or getting long in the tooth? These questions are internal considerations for the organization.
  4. IM/IT FUTURE: What is on the organizational event horizon that will affect or change the above? There are both threats and opportunities in this respect for an organization. Hacker activists, lower technology costs, legislation (e.g. privacy or technical) and changing industry standards are all examples of future changes that may be positive or negative.

Finally two typical planning tools are overlaid on the SWOT and 4 questions. The bottom and foundation is the organization’s business or strategic plan. IM/IT may have its own strategic plan or it may piggy back on a larger corporate plan. Irrespective, the plan should be able to answer the questions of (q1) what is important and (q4) what is on the horizon for the organization? The IM/IT operational plan focuses on the questions of (q3) current capacity and (q2) near term organizational IM/IT activities.

The delineation between the plans is not clear and ideally they should overlap each other rather than having a gap. The operational plan purposely extends into the Threat quadrant of the organization and the Business Plan relies on organizational strengths to capitalize on opportunities in the environment.

Beyond the Box

What do you think? Is the SWOT+4 Planning Model a muddled mess or does it provide a conceptual basis in which your organization can begin to structure its IM/IT planning. What is the value proposition to understanding and using the model well? I believe the model can support faster technology adoption, lower cost of implementation and ownership and better leveraging of IM/IT assets. Stay tuned as I am hoping to drill in a bit more into the model in future blogs. For example:

  • How a lifecycle approach can be used to measure IM/IT Capacity (q3)
  • The roles and technologies involved in delivering Organizational IM/IT (q2)
  • How much IM/IT should be in an organizational plan (q1), and
  • Where to buy a good crystal ball for the IM/IT Future (q4).