The skills needed for an effective
Strategic Plan may already be
available in your organisation, while others are available from
consultants and facilitators.
While it is important to involve key
stakeholders, developing a strategy is a management process and not something that can
effectively be done by committee. There are many books and articles
about master strategists, but none about brilliant strategic committees. Creating a strategic plan requires
several steps. Below is a short list of issues worth considering:
Current influences (economy,
politics, legislation, publicity)
Strengths you can build on,
and weaknesses you need to address
Your objectives, and how they
fit in to corporate goals
The recent history of your
organisation
What others have achieved
in similar environments
What tools are, or will soon be,
available
What skills you currently have,
and what skills are available in the wider market
What constraints you face (time,
money, resources)
Often it is useful to employ a
skilled consultant to facilitate the process - but generally the
information and direction needs to come from your own ICT executives and
managers. Taking all of the above into consideration, the
process then involves documenting your options, and selecting
from those the ones that will best allow you to meet your
objectives.
We recommend developing the minimum
number of strategies. How many depends on your situation, but a
few, well thought out, broad strategies will often be more
effective than a shopping list of ideas.