23The Written Word—a.k.a. IT Strategy
Susan Barley, one of my mentors, liked to say, “If you didn't write it down, you didn't do it.” Does your company have an IT strategy? If you said yes, but you can't produce a document, then you don't have a strategy. Strategies exist on paper, or at least in a PDF, not in the CIO's head. I'm not judging here; in my 20 years as a CIO, at least half the time we didn't have a written IT strategy. According to my LinkedIn poll, only 49 percent of companies have a written IT strategy.
Align Your Strategy
A well-written IT strategy clearly aligns IT's actions with the business objectives. Are you sick of hearing how you need to align IT to the business? So am I. First, IT is part of the business, not outside of it. I recommend that you erase the phrase “IT and the business” from your vocabulary. Instead, say “our partners in the business.” Words matter, and how can you expect to be included if you don't include yourself? By using the word partners, you establish IT on equal footing across the organization.
Treat the IT strategy as a subset of the business strategy with equal footing to the other strategies, as shown in Figure 23.1.
Figure 23.1: IT Strategy Alignment
What if there is no corporate strategy? If your company doesn't have a written strategy, you need to resolve this before you can move on. Hopefully, that's not the case; however, ...