The Art of the One-Page Strategy

Tell a business story about what success looks like, and how Technology can contribute to that success.Construct a business story. Build a narrative that will engage the customer.Less than 35% of the c-suite ‘Get IT’, or ‘Understand’ IT’s contribution to business success.The IT Narrative: Information and Technology Strategy.It’s all about telling a story. Use words like ‘Digital’, and ‘IT’ artfully, while telling a story:
• Draw a picture of what business success or a successful business-model looks like
• Understand your stakeholders
• Craft your approach. With the COO, you’ll talk about process change, CEO – business growth, and CMO – customers.
• The business story remains the same, it’s just the approaches that are different.There’s an opportunity to stretch what people think about in business and technology. Be aware of the sensitivity with who you’re working.The Artful Approach.
The artful approach is to know when to pull people like a rubber band knowing it’s never going to go back to its original shape. And when to take them gently on a journey or a path.
The artful approach implies brevity.
• Offering up key-points
• Separate the what from the how, initially
• Describe what the business needs to do in order to be successful in the Market Place
• Do not go into the details of how to make it happen until you have the right people on-board with where the business needs to go
• Bring them in-line, or alternatively align with how you’re going to make that happenUnderstanding who your stakeholders are is an important part of telling a business story.Many CEOs and CIO’s use the One-Page Strategy as an opportunity to not only tell the story but also to decide what the initial investment levels are going to be, and in which capabilities.Storyline to the One-Page Strategy
Slide 1: Context. What’s happening in your industry or business? Going from A to B, and its implications.
Slide 2: Business story. Picture of your business-model. What does success look like, given the context? The mission will be the core of your story.
Slide 3: How well positioned are we to deliver, not just as IT, but as an Enterprise on this business story?
Conclusion: Request for funding. Roadmap for goals.We see a lot of strategies that have a lot of details that have to do with Technology itself. They rush to bottom line of what the answer looks like, but then they lose their audience along the way. Because they have not talked to the value the Enterprise needs to have, in order to be successful: given their business context.NOTE: Strategy, not Technology drives Digital Transformation