Strategy

To say this year has been interesting is an understatement, but even prior to the pandemic, questions were being asked by senior partners, general councils, COOs and lawyers in general. ‘Why do we spend so much on new IT systems, tools and applications, yet the benefits are so minimal?’

The pandemic and our response to it means that the norm is no longer the norm. Organisations need to respond by focusing their efforts around three areas: (1) Dealing with today, (2) Planning for the future, and, (3) Transforming for the new norm

This is something that has been playing on my mind since I started looking at innovation and was asked to define what innovation means. Fundamentally is there a difference between innovation and strategy?

Recently I’ve been in the situation at a couple of clients where an IT Strategy was needed, yet there was distinct lack of an agreed Business Strategy. Either the business strategy was too vague, or it did exist but work was under way to radically change in over the next 6-12 months. In these situations when I tried to facilitate the creation of the IT strategy I hit the obstacle of IT managers not feeling they could define the IT Strategy without a clearer Business Strategy, even though the CIO was asking for them to do so.