Three Reasons Why Good Strategies Fail: Execution, Execution...

An article from Wharton reinforcing that whilst creating sound strategies may not be an easy task, it's the execution of those strategies that provides the greater challenge.

Common sense is not common practice

An interesting interview by Neil Sutton with Michael Stanleigh in ITBusiness.ca that reinforces the need to stop talking about the problem of failed IT projects and get on with applying fundamental management discipline. To quote Neil "Stanleigh openly admits that most of the advice he dispenses is obvious and should be second nature to anyone with good business acumen. The problem is the big picture gets lost and the details take over."

Tech: Spending Wisely, Not More

An article from Business Week reinforcing that it is how organizations manage their use of technology that creates business value, not how much they spend on the technology.

IT's Hardest Puzzle

An article in CIO Magazine by Michael Schrage that reinforces the point that business value is not automatically created by implementing technology - business value is only created when the technology is used to do things differently or to do different things. Organisations need to shift their focus from the technology to managing IT-enabled change.

Delivering real business value from IT-enabled change

Most organizations continue to fall far short of realising the potential value of their investments in information technology (IT). This is a symptom of the failure of corporate governance to evolve to meet the needs of a complex and rapidly changing business environment. We continue to focus on the technology when we should instead be focusing on the changes that IT both enables and requires.

If we are to realize the full potential of IT-enabled change, we need a continuous and dynamic governance process that manages the full investment cycle from strategy through execution to the full realization of value - a Strategic Governance approach. An approach that ensures clarity of the desired outcomes and enables understanding of the full scope of effort required to achieve those outcomes. One that senses and responds to changes in the internal and external environment, to our understanding of what is working and not working as expected, and to our assumptions.

If they are to survive, let alone prosper, organisations must continue to demonstrate that they understand how to create value, have strategies capable of delivering value both quickly and over the long term, and must have a track record of successfully executing those strategies. In the private sector, how well this is done plays an increasingly significant role in determining market valuation. In the public sector, the mandate, public perception, and viability of the organisation may well hinge on the clarity with which its actions and investments can be tied to value.

The problem with postmortems

This article from today's Computerworld.com by Thomas Hoffman illustrates an on-going problem that we have with IT projects. It is no wonder that we have trouble realizing real and demonstrable benefits from our investments in IT.

We could significantly reduce the cost of our healthcare system if we ran it the same way as most organizations run IT projects - let the patients die and, in a few cases (13% in the case of IT according to Gartner), perform a postmortem to see why they died. It may save the system money but would unfortunately not help achieve, what I hope are, the desired and expected outcomes of the system.

Healthcare is/should be increasingly moving to prevention, early diagnosis and intervention and making the most appropriate use of all available resources to achieve a favourable outcome. So should IT!

We need to:

spend much more time up front understanding the business outcome(s) that we are trying to achieve and thus, to the extent possible, preventing problems down the road;

have a dynamic "sense and respond" governance system that senses early when things are not going to plan, diagnoses the cause and initiates intervention to contain any impact.

We must also recognize that, even if "successful", IT projects alone do not contribute business value - only when technology changes are combined with complementary changes to other resources, including business processes, human resources, facilities, organizational structure etc., will real business value be realized.

Should a CIO be driving your company's future

An itbusiness.ca article today by Sarah Lysecki discusses the results of a recent survey of over 2,000 executives from 75 countries including Canada which show three-quarters of executives believe that chief information officers have a role to play on the board of directors.

This is good news and represents a great opportunity for those CIOs who are up to the challenge. There is a crying need at the board level for an understanding of the role of IT, how to select the right IT-enabled business investments IT investments and how to execute those investments to drive the greatest business value.

The IT Governance Fish

What would you do if you walked into your boardroom and found a dead fish in the middle of the table?

1. Ignore it and carry on as if it wasn’t there.


2. Commission a study of the world’s oceans to see if there is a fish missing.


3. Deal with the dead fish.
   

When it comes to the “dead fish” of IT governance, most organizations opt for option 1, the “we’re no worse than anyone else” or “we’re hoping that it will get better” school, or option 2, the “the less you want to do something the more you study it” school. Unfortunately, when you leave a dead fish lying around it certainly doesn’t improve with age. Option 3 is the only acceptable answer. Why then is it the one most rarely chosen? Probably because it’s not easy – but then who out there has a job description that reads: “Will only be required to handle easy tasks”? As I’ve said before, and will keep saying, it’s time to deal with this dead fish!

The power of questions

While searching for the elusive "next big thing", or eagerly embracing overly simplistic solutions to complex business problems, leadership would do well to heed the words of Claude Levi-Strauss when he said "The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions." The "four ares", as introduced in The Information Paradox are a good starting point for such questioning:

• Are we doing the right things?


• Are we doing them the right way?


• Are we getting them done well?


• Are we getting the benefits?

Getting the Word on Portfolio Management

A CIO magazine article that discusses the setting up of the Enterprise Portfolio management Advisory Council (EPMAC). This sharing of knowledge and ideas by organizations who are wrestling with the issue of IT value on a daily basis provides a great opportunity to advance not just thought but also, and more importantly, action in this space. As a member of the Council, I will provide a link to the website when it is established as well as provide relevant information from the Council activities.

Nick Carr Underestimates the Most Important Parts of IT

A thoughtful article by Tom Pisello in CIO Insight challenging Nicholas Carr's now infamous views on the strategic value of IT.

Managing an uncertain journey to an uncertain destination

This recent CIO article by Rob Austin reinforces the need for Full Cycle Governance as described in The Information Paradox ...a governance process that recognizes that both the destination (outcome) and journey (program and project plans) will change during the course of implementing an IT-enabled change program.

Why So Many Big IT Investments Do So Little for Shareholder Value

A recent article from Wharton cites figures from Gartner Research claiming that "on average, 20% of the corporate IT budget is spent on initiatives that don't achieve their objectives. That means $500 billion of bad investments." The article goes on to suggest that one of the main reasons for this waste is that "companies often lack the management discipline they need when evaluating technology proposals."

The need for balance

Another Mckinsey Quarterly article titled "Building the healthy corporation" stresses the need to balance short-term (performance) and long-term (health) results. It quotes a recent survey in which "...more than 80 percent of the executives responding said that they would cut expenditures on R&D and marketing to ensure that they met their quarterly earnings targets - even if they believed the cuts were destroying long-term value. The article goes on to stress the need for organizations to work on five different aspects of performance and health: strategy; metrics; communication; leadership; and governance.

Click on the title above to read the full Mckinsey article.