“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 6 Digital Strategy-Execution Continuum

We are at the dawn of the Digital Era, the biggest challenge now is the increasing rate of change, and this isn’t going to change. Hence, preparing a strategic plan is important because it points the organization in a direction where it can maximize its value position and reap long term benefit. Nowadays, information is permeating into every function of the business and technology is the disruptive force, hence, IT needs to be part of an overall corporate strategy to accomplish the organizational business objectives. However, often the main problem is that business executives still limit their vision of IT as “IT support a strategy.” Indeed, the CIO’s role as C-level needs to provide technological vision and contribute to the formulation of the business strategy where new trends of technology will provide strategic business capabilities to the business that will enhance the competitive advantages of the organization.
IT strategy and digital strategy are integrated into business strategy: A digital strategy is not just about the plan to design a pretty website or marketing strategy, it has a purpose of driving customer engagement and experience as a cross-functional responsibility, uniting all silos to contribute to great customer experience. IT strategy as a subcomponent of business strategy is how to leverage the resources and assets of the IT departments to create the optimal business value, generate revenue growth, brand or increased market share. Hence, the digital CIO is not just an IT manager, but an enterprise leadership and executive role who is responsible for information agenda, which includes driving customer engagement and experience as a cross-functional enterprise responsibility.
Vision-strategy-execution flow: Vision is where you want to go, the strategy is about how you get there, the roadmap, and execution is about taking actions and defining measurement to achieve the strategy. And IT needs to get involve in every step of such vision-strategy-execution flow because now technology is changing so rapidly, that ignoring an emerging technology will put our organization behind the competition. CIOs should have a holistic view of the business from the business executive perspectives and to provide added value of information & technology, they should also have the strong business knowledge to be able to communicate with other executives, in order to deliver business-driven solutions, not just IT services.
Running a bimodal IT to balance agility and stability: In strategy execution practice, even in the simplest organizations, the speed is not homogeneous across the enterprise, there are differences between “front office” and “back office,” enterprises with multiple businesses and associated business models. The traditional IT organizations are often perceived as a “back office” function and slow response to changes. Hence, a bimodal IT can accelerate changes with digital speed and keep business stability with industrial speed. And IT can steadily transform from a support function to a digital transformer.
With the increasing speed of changes, digital strategy and execution are interdependent, they are not linear steps, but and iterative continuum. It’s important to follow the logic steps, but be agile and flexible to adapt to the emerging changes in strategy execution. And the success of strategy management undoubtedly lies in the timely execution, selection of KPIs is the another tricky part, but metrics help you keep on the right track of the business objectives, so measure the right things and measure them in the right way to make smooth strategy execution and achieve the ultimate business vision.

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 4 CIO as Talent Master Introduction“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 3 “CIOs as Change Agent” Introduction“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 2 “CIOs as Digital Visionary” Introduction“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 1 “Twelve Digital CIO Personas” Introduction"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Introduction"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Book Preview
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