The Twelve Principles of Strategic IT Partnering
The essence of what it means to be a Strategic IT Partner.....
As a consultant I get the opportunity read broadly and in depth looking at how the IT business partner role is evolving. I get to reflect on how I performed in my corporate roles and recognise where I could have improved. In addition, this consulting role allows me to speak to dozens of clients on a monthly basis to validate where we as a discipline are. As a result I've distilled these principles.
You'll read these principles and you'll think "well, that's obvious". That's the point. They should be self evident truths. Despite the obvious nature of these principles, I find there is still plenty of opportunity in our day to day work to apply these. In effect we sabotage our ambition of wanting to be more strategic by allowing the distractions of other people's agenda to get in the way. Performing the role of IT Business Partner is tough. We're at the highway intersection of all that is change within an organisation and it is so easy to swept up by it rather than be the co-driver of it. So, armed with these principles, we can shine a light on our work and hold ourselves accountable to these principles and determine whether, in fact, we're positioning ourselves to be strategic partners longer term.
A simple application of this list is to ask your line manager / budget holder / decision maker / leader / business stakeholder whether they agree to these principles. If they do, fine. You can further qualify this to ensure you then have the remit and authority to conduct the extra / different activities to fulfill them. If not, it's an opportunity to clarify expectations and set the agenda. What principles would they agree to instead?
There is a rationale for each of the principles below the checkerboard.
1) A company, department or team must do something valuable for it’s stakeholders.
2) Value needs to be expressed as clear outcomes.
3) To realise value you must have an outcome, an activity and a link between that outcome and activity.
4) Outcomes are refined and shaped by those who lead the destiny of that company, department or team.
5) Leaders must ensure planning for the long term to ensure the long term viability of the company, department or team.
6) To plan effectively, you must review the outcomes from past activities and decide how to improve future activities.
7) To plan and communicate effectively, the impact of the activities needs to be understood for all stakeholders.
8) To be an influencer you must create trust with your stakeholders.
9) To create trust, you must have empathy in your relationships.
10) To create trust, you must plan, communicate the plan and do the plan.
11) Planning, communicating and doing the plan happen concurrently, not sequentially.
12) The sooner you apply a small lesson learnt, the bigger the value later.
1) A company, department or team must do something valuable for it’s stakeholders.
Quite often, we forget to look beyond the financial measures imposed on a company, as if they are the only thing that is important. Sure, they're important but it isn't why a company exists. Why did the founders create the company in the first instance? What problem is the team trying trying to solve? How are they trying to make life better? Asking questions like these helps us understand the core value offering.
2) Value needs to be expressed as clear outcomes.
Which market, what product or what service? What material impact will you have on those markets, products or services and how will you know? Are there milestones, thresholds to be reached? Define success so that everybody knows once the goal has been reached. Measuring these attributes is fundamental to the success of the partnering role because it helps you fulfil principle 3, 4, 6 and 7.
3) To realise value you must have an outcome, an activity and a link between that outcome and activity.
We can easily create to-do lists and project plans. By themselves they do not justify their execution. We need to demonstrate how activities contribute to the outcome. Going shopping, cooking a meal maybe fun things by themselves, but the value obtained is only when, say, my wife appreciates the prepared meal. A personal example of a link is: "To make my wife feel appreciated by cooking her a meal". If I don't achieve the outcome with the activity, I haven't realised the value... (I'm not a good cook)
4) Outcomes are refined and shaped by those who lead the destiny of that company, department or team.
Leaders, whether by title or by political nouse who sway decisions in their favour have to define the outcomes they want and, equally importantly, be held accountable for them. Once defined we can see clearly whether they support the broader aims of the company or whether they are enlightened self interest. Making sure that definition occurs is a key tactic to ensure good governance, decision making, prioritisation, and so on.
5) Leaders must ensure planning for the long term to ensure the long term viability of the company, department or team.
A short term fixation on the yearly budget or the quarterly revenue targets isn't going to save the company from the latest technology trend, new competitor offering or legal compliance requirement. Long term planning reauires validated learning - experimentation to assess what is the best approach to take advantage of new opportunities or threats. The lessons learnt then informs a roadmap that scales prototypes into enterprise, mass market offerings. That process can take years. Think of Tesla Motors and how they started with the roadster to end up with the model S, or the leadtime to prove the efficacity of new drugs in the pharmaceutical industry.
6) To plan effectively, you must review the outcomes from past activities and decide how to improve future activities.
I believe planning should be looking fowards out of the windscreen, whilst checking the rear-view mirror. That is, in simple terms, incorporating the lessons learnt from previous implementations and applying the outcomes of continuous improvement techniques into our future activities. The sad fact is in many instances we don't make time for this in our schedules and miss out on a (great) reputation building opportunity.
7) To plan and communicate effectively, the impact of the activities needs to be understood for all stakeholders.
Whilst developing business cases we quite often don't appreciate some of the inherent risks in implementation. Will the users adopt the system or prefer to stick to the old? Will there be enough helpdesk support for ongoing issue resolution once system has gone live? Quite often the only way to address these risks is to think of the activity from the stakeholder's perspective - What's in it for them? Once you've come up with a solution, the "sell" is going to be easier if you can articulate the benefits and features from their perspective.
8) To be an influencer you must create trust with your stakeholders.
Trust is the emotional currency you create that you can use to trade with your stakeholders. The more trust you have, the more influence you can wield. People buy things off people they know. That buying decision is an emotional decision that is informed by the instinct they have about the other person. In other words, "Trust". A simple example: "Can anyone recommend me a solicitor?" That "anyone" is normally your group of friends, business colleagues or family. Their advocacy is an implicit bargain of trust. Likewise, who are people going to trust in your organisation to ask for advice? Would you be recommended?
9) To create trust, you must have empathy in your relationships.
I've been in a few environments where there has been little or no trust. Arrogance, refusal to listen, contempt, lack of respect very quickly turn a collabrative place to work into a minefield of backstabbing and blame. To overcome this hurdle I've found being on the same "level" as your audience fundamental. What do I mean? Listening to really understand their perspective (not waiting for the slightest pause to force your agenda); using the same language as they do; face to face contact; co-location in the same office; recognising that everybody has strengths and giving them opportunity to shine through; respecting the opinion of others; and so on.
10) To create trust, you must plan, communicate the plan and do the plan.
You'll become a credible authority if you do these three things. If you can be relied on to set expectations and deliver those expctations, people will trust you, notwithstanding principles 8 and 9. A simple example: A plumber comes to fix a leaky tap. Did they turn up on time? Did they correctly diagnose the problem? Did they fix the issue and bill according to quote? If yes, what are the chances you would use them again?
11) Planning, communicating and doing the plan happen concurrently, not sequentially.
The basic message here is to increase the number of cycles / iterations to our activity. Making small adjustments frequently is better than sudden, unexpected movements infrequently. It helps in terms of managing the "no surprises" expectation. Updates little and often to the plan, in communicating and in execution have a cumulative effect over time. If we lump our activities say to the yearly budgeting cycle then it reinforces our short term mindset of one year. The planning window for this one year is in fact maybe 3-6 months, which depends on information you have to hand during that time that maybe incomplete and not reflecting future trends. To extend the planning window beyond 6 months we have to dedicate time every week or month on a rolling basis to incorporate new information. How about planning with a time horizon of 3 years out, with a major update every quarter?
12) The sooner you apply a small lesson learnt, the bigger the value later.
Planning on a regular basis helps identify risks, and if we're reviewing lessons learnt and doing continuous improvement then we can demonstrate credibility by incorporating them earlier rather than later. The other aspect to this principle is "Validated Learning". In order to identify the potential solutions that need to be implemented in the next 2 to 3 years, we start from a position of unknowns. To reduce the number of unknowns, unfortunately the best approach is trail and error, i.e. a series of experiments to test what activities deliver the best outcome. From this we can then make an informed selection of a small number of options. These lessons learnt help inform our strategy and build our roadmap.
