Peer to Peer Magazine

75 WWW.ILTANET.ORG three is not 15, which is closer to the average number of "priorities" that emerge from planning commiee work. Choose however you can. If you have allies in management, work with them — usually off the record — to narrow down your priorities. Any more than three priorities is as good as having none, and you will accomplish nothing. » What are the real sources of strategy? Sure, you might get your hands on a strategic planning document, but don't stop with that. Ask yourself what the real sources of firm or company strategy are and connect with those. How do you tell what the real sources are? Follow the money. Does a strategic planning commiee usually have a budget sufficient to execute strategy? Nope. Someone else controls the financial decisions regarding which of the many possible priorities get funded. Find that person or group, because your firm's or company's real strategy emerges from those decisions. Then find important, measurable ways to contribute to those choices. » What will you measure that's important to strategic priorities? Measuring uptime or any of a number of other common operational performance indicators is important. To you. But what can you measure that will be important to the emergent strategic priorities, and how can you help optimize them? Let's say your firm's strategy includes aggressive expansion into other geographic markets. You'll be popping up offices like mushrooms aer a rain. How about if you measure the average cost of rolling out the infrastructure for a new office, and then try to drive it down? Which will firm management want to know more as it rolls out offices: uptime or incremental cost? See how it works? See how you shi from irrelevance to something core to the strategy just in what you choose to measure? Cultural Alignment. "Culture eats strategy for lunch." That quote, oen aributed incorrectly to management guru Peter Drucker, highlights the difficulty of executing strategy where other important elements of the business are at odds with strategy. Trying to push against culture is like trying to push string. You're much beer off finding a way to pull. Ask the same three questions regarding culture as you do with strategy. What are the most important elements of your culture? What are the sources of culture inside your firm or company? And what can you measure to test your alignment with cultural imperatives? That last one might leave you scratching your head. We rarely think of measuring the effect on cultural norms. But it's important to build that bridge too. Let's say one of your firm's cultural imperatives is fostering mobility and alternative workstyles. How about measuring the percentage of work product produced somewhere other than a traditional office? Don't get stopped by the particulars of how to measure. Rather, imagine how expanded mobility can build the business, and then break down expanding mobility into smaller, more easily measured tasks. Then, if nothing else, build out a high-level index of the smaller measurements. Voila! You've measured a cultural imperative. Chronological Alignment. This bridge seems easy. Do what the business needs when the business needs it! But how do you decide when to do what? A first step is to stop being ovine in your decision-making. Made-up numbers are important in discussions like this. Here's a statistic for you: Over 87 percent of all IT projects are done because someone else did them first. A bellwether firm or company goes first, and everyone else follows. Don't do what others are doing; do something that will positively affect the boom line, and do it this year. And, of course, measure its impact. Economic Alignment. You should be geing good at this bridge-building by now. Your firm operates according to either explicit or implicit economic rules. Find the sources for those rules, pick the most important and measure how well you are doing against them. Are your budgets normative? Do your superiors look to industry standards for comparisons? Don't just live with that. Become the best at it and measure to show your impact. Or measure to show why normative approaches do your firm or company a disservice. Find What's Important, Then Measure There's a theme in all this bridge building. First, find what's important to the business in a structured and carefully interactive way. You're designing something that's very expensive and has the potential to affect your business in very positive (or negative) ways. Act like a designer in how you come to understand the business. Then hold yourself accountable. Measure something that's important to the business. And try to make it beer. The cycle of measurement followed by improvement is critical to every successful business. Make yourself part of it. P2P 2 3 4 The Four Essential Bridges Between Tech and the Business FROM THE FUTURIST

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