Aligning to your company's growth strategy

Some functional executives like CIOs have difficulty aligning their function's strategy to the corporation's because sometimes corporate strategies are not clearly communicated beyond the publishing of mission and vision statements. I have had clients say, "we can't develop our strategy until the corporation clarifies theirs." Regardless of what is published or not published, a company's real strategy is indicated by the actual trade-offs that are made, how people and divisions are rewarded, and how priorities are set. CIOs and their staff can develop a set of assumptions about the drivers they need to respond to and engage their business partners in confirming and articulating those drivers.

Many companies are right now focused on growth. In fact, a recent ComputerWorld article states that "Around 60% of CIOs expect their businesses to grow faster than the global economy, which the IMF predicts will grow at around 5% a year until 2012." However, companies use various strategies to grow their company. IT executives can use Gartner' s Seven Levers for Growth model to develop assumptions about their company's growth strategy and engage their business partners in dialog. They can then modify their strategy to ensure they are enabling and exploiting such opportunities.

The model mentions these seven levers for growth:

• Improve operations
• Improve products
• Exploit channels
• Target customers and markets
• Acquire companies
• Connect the ecosystem
• Create blue oceans

Effective IT governance ensures all decisions advance and support the IT and corporate strategies.

Technorati Tags: IT Strategy

Comments

[Steve Bogner]

Yes, the growth is brisk. When IT organizations grow, they often call in consultants like me to help them out; and there is very little slack in the consulting market these days. If I could clone myself, I could keep three of me busy!

One approach I've seen functional organizations - like IT and HR - take is to centralize their own core functions and then distribute resources (primarily staff) out to the various business units. It's a sort of hybrid approach that can work well; but you have to have your own IT/HR processes running smoothly prior to doing that (in my opinion). And that's the tough part for many of those organizations.

[Hector]

Thanks for the advice Steve!