Every CXO would like to link up to the company’s overall strategy. You as a CIO has probably been through Gartner’s enterprise architecture papers that tell you how to connect to the overall strategy. Simultaneously there is a ‘race’ from every CXO to connect to strategy and be relevant.
Are the CXO’s going to be united around the corporate strategy, or are they just strengthening the functional silos that exist in almost every business? A CIO can play an important role in breaking the functional silos and create ‘harmony’ between the business functions. How? Well… , continue reading.
First, you need to ask yourself:
Who gives me advise on Corporate strategy? How can I articulate Corporate strategy?
I have read a lot of papers from IT advisors that shows how Enterprise architecture, Capability Models, and Value models are helping you to define and implement a strategy. But I disagree that they are giving you the full picture of how to define, articulate, cascade and execute strategy for ‘all business functions’.
In my mind, this is “strategy in a box” where they give you standard models like standard objectives, the standard KPI/metrics/indexes (through a Value model), and to achieve this you need to be capable and have resources, people, skills, processes etc.
I believe in a good process and methodology for defining, cascading, operationalizing strategy. But I don’t believe in pre-defined models where you should check your capability based on some consultant templates. No wonder why IT often crashes when they start to talk about Strategy from a pure Capability Maturity Model point of view.
Have I provided them with a platform to develop and cascade strategy in a collaborative manner?
Software support for strategy is very weak in almost every company. Therefore, every CXO creates their own business management solutions focused on their own functional business domain with a ‘bolt-on’ for strategy implementation. Instead of ‘one strategy’ you will get x numbers of strategies based on the number of CXO’s.
You as a CIO can provide your business with a platform for the various business domains (true Corporate Performance Management) and let them link up to an overall strategy for the company. Overall Corporate Strategy should be the ‘Corporate glue’ binding all business functions together. In Corporater Business Management Platform you have this capability.
Give the CXOs the power
Give the CxOs the power to build their own business solutions in a business orchestration platform. Go beyond your diagram of where servers are located and how IT systems play together with people and processes. Give the business people the tools they need to manage their side of performance and link it all up to a unified defined strategy. Then and only then you will become the hero that gather and not spreads.
To facilitate this and help you do this we have created the Corporater Business Management Platform. A business orchestration platform for Business where strategy can be the glue binding the business functions together. Please take a look at our videos of what is the platform, how does the platform work and see if this can be something for your business.
