Strategy

Organizations, even ones that have been in existence for decades, sometimes argue that they are not mature enough to take a particular course.

The Capability Maturity Model describes the maturity of organizational processes. Five levels of maturity are defined starting at the initial or chaotic, repeatable, defined, managed, and optimized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model.

This is very curious. I don't know any individual who runs a company who publicly acknowledges that they are not mature enough to do their job. How is it that an organization that is run by mature individuals can argue that it is immature? If it really is immature, why is this said with a shrug? Surely the recognition of immaturity should be treated as a major crisis!

This issue around immaturity is now being addressed by business coaching. Coaching provides an organization with a common language and set of frameworks. It enables an organization to reflect on the causes of the immaturity and discover ways to transform them.

Once an organization has agreed a context, it is very tempting to jump straight into implementation. By taking the time to craft a strategy, the implementation phase will go more smoothly. It does mean that you have to slow down to speed up, and this can feel frustrating. We know what the problem is. Why not just jump in and fix things along the way?

Context answers the why question. Strategy answers the what question: what are we going to do differently? Implementation answers the how question.

In the remainder of this book, we will describe the key aspects of the strategy in more detail. The strategy document can be divided into sections in accordance with the key aspects of the strategy, namely:

• Making a business case

• Using a Framework

• Adopting a Methodology

• Implementing effective Governance

• Understanding the Toolset

Here is an example of what a strategy overview might look like:

The business case

ABC Co. has three wholesale divisions that sell electricity, gas and telecommunications. The telecommunications and gas businesses were acquired. Currently the organization has difficulties in responding to customers because each division is a silo. Customer information is not centrally available and we are not able to cross-sell effectively. In effect we are three separate companies.

The framework and methodology

This project will create a central repository of information about the organization in order to understand who we are today and how we can become one company. The Board has selected the Enterprise Designer framework and methodology to capture the key information. Population of the central repository will be done one project at a time. All major projects will contribute to, and extract information from, the central repository.

The toolset

ProVision® is the tool that will be used to capture, maintain and present the information. This toolset has been selected as it is capable of capturing all the key information about the organization relatively quickly. As we gain greater expertise, we can add ProVision's server-based repository, Knowledge Exchange®, to enable greater communication and collaboration. We can also bring the models into Metastorm Open Text Business Process Execution. This will allow us to describe a process in ProVision® and then track individual process instances in real time.

Governance

The Program Management Office that reports directly to the Board will have overall responsibility, accountability and authority for this initiative. The Board has appointed global business coaching company Shirlaws to advise them on implementation strategy.