It's The Strategy, Stupid

Some years ago, after being confronted by accusations that my IT was not strategic enough, I figured I had better get my hands around some of this strategy stuff. So I consulted the various strategy masters. All of my reading, studying and conversations have allowed me to boil strategy down to its essence. And here it is:

Strategy is what we use to do more smart stuff and do less stupid stuff.

Please let me explain. Defined and used properly, we use strategy as a decision filter. As a filter, we should decide in favor of activities that create and support our sustainable competitive advantage (the smart stuff) while deciding against the activities that erode our sustainable advantage (the stupid stuff).

I was recently invited by the CIO of a company to help them define their strategy. This company had grown rapidly, and the CIO felt that the company was now pursuing too many opportunities and losing focus. As a result, he was unsure of how to align IT with this diffuse business. The CIO recognized that it is nearly impossible to "strategically align" IT to an unknown strategy.

Exactly right.

I met with the management team and explained that our goal was to define their strategy. I then told them that if they thought of strategy as how they created and maintained their sustainable competitive advantage, it would be much easier.

In order to define their strategy, we used several tools, including:

To their surprise, it took us about an hour to get consensus on their sustainable competitive advantage. We then set about using this strategy as a decision filter. We wanted to make sure that the company was optimizing its smart stuff while reducing its stupid stuff. We passed their major activities through the strategy decision filter and identified things they needed to do better. We also identified things they were doing better than strategy required.

To finish off the session, we turned our filtering into a strategic plan. We defined how they would improve their strategic weaknesses (this is very smart) while also simplifying and not overinvesting in the other activities (stop doing the stupid stuff). Both the company and the CIO now knew what to do.

Too often, strategy seems daunting and intimidating. I have found that framing strategy as a decision filter is a pragmatic, easily understood way to achieve the critical benefits strategy can and should provide.

Try it for yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised with the results.

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