Over the last years, I’ve heard consultants, analysts, experts, gurus and even some vendors preach that strategy is the vital ingredient that’s too often missing in many organisations. For ECM projects, I certainly agree that technology is rarely the right place to start. However earlier today at the Online Information conference in London, I argued that an ECM strategy is not required.
I’ve previously commented on the problems with strategy. Let me add that during my recent conversations with ECM practitioners all over Europe, I’ve heard several times that strategy projects might resonate well with managers, but often end up as costly exercises with many meetings, e-mails, documents, some politics, some tactics, but unfortunately very little action. Be careful with the word strategy and remember that many successful ECM projects don’t have one specific ECM strategy!
In these tough times what you need is to create value. To get things done in your ECM projects, you definitely need a sense of direction. Rather than spending too much time on writing a strategy, I suggest you take an incremental, low-risk approach and simply ensure you continue to demonstrate progress.
Good luck!
James Robertson December 5th, 2008 23:19
Amen to this! This is exactly what I argued in an article a while back:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_avoidlongterm/index.html
Cheers, James
Graham Oakes December 5th, 2008 23:19
One of my favourite sayings is “The ability to execute is a strategic capability”.
Many organisations spend a lot of time writing strategy as a way to put off executing. Sometimes this is necessary — very collegial organisations can use this process as a way to build the necessary consensus before acting, for example. When they do achieve consensus, they then act decisively.
For other organisations, it’s a problem — they’re putting off executing because they’re scared of failure (e.g. due to the politics that the action will unleash).
So for me it’s not either/or — either write strategy or execute. The two are intimately linked. Most effective action happens within a well-defined strategic context (albeit one which recognises the need to respond to changes in the environment).
If you find yourself always writing strategy and never acting, then you need to change the strategy. Your first objective, written explicitly into the strategy, should become to “build up the ability to execute”.
(The best way to do this is often by working in very small iterations and demonstrating regular progress — inch pebbles rather than milestones. But this is not random iteration. It’s being done with a very distinct strategic purpose.)
Cheers,
Graham
Scott Liewehr December 5th, 2008 23:19
While I definitely agree with the nature of your post (avoiding the inevitable “analysis paralysis”), I hesitate to endorse it completely because I worry that some may take it out of context andl get the wrong message. In this Age of Innovation where new features and “cool” technologies are springing up almost weekly, we need to make certain to avoid the trap of implementing “technology for the sake of technology” and keep our customers’ needs and interests at the forefront of our mind. I agree with your advice about demonstrating incremental progress, but we need to ensure that “progress” is not defined as a successful launch of *any* feature, but rather that it is the implementation of features or functionality which gets us closer to some pre-defined goal or which satisfies a pre-identified need. Typically, these needs and goals are defined during the strategic process which need-not be long and drawn out. There are many flavors of strategy, and I’d prefer to advise short, strategic check-ups which serve to maintain a focus on our users, their needs, and the tools we’ll implement to satisfy those needs, rather than avoiding any such process altogether.
Janus Boye December 8th, 2008 23:19
Thanks for the good comments from around the world.
I appreciate the support and additional background on long-term planning that James Robertson from Australia offers in his article.
Graham Oakes from the UK contributed with his vast experience and has a very good point that strategy is not either you have one or you don’t and offers helpful advice on how to proceed.
Scott Liewehr from the US is concerned that practitioners may take my message out of context and get the wrong message and points out the different flavours of strategy.
I would add that:
- Before proceeding with a strategy project, make sure to define terms first. My definition of ECM may be different from your’s.
- Remember to define measurable success criteria
- Make sure to back up any strategy with relevant data do support the initiatives, e.g. what data to you have to support your recommendations (did you talk to vendors?)
- Figure out what strategies you need. For an ECM initiative an ECM strategy might seem relevant, but perhaps a more extensive information management exercise is really required? Also, what is the relationship between ECM and other related fields, e.g. your intranet?
All the best with your ECM projects in 2009!
Matt Hamilton December 9th, 2008 23:19
“(The best way to do this is often by working in very small iterations and demonstrating regular progress — inch pebbles rather than milestones. But this is not random iteration. It’s being done with a very distinct strategic purpose.)”
– Graham Oakes
I think this is one of the best approaches. One of the main points I made at my talk on Open Source and Content Management at this same event, was that the OSS licensing model (ie no up front license fees) lends itself much better to iterative development/deployment of an ECM system. Also with no per-seat/per-server licensing there is no barrier to the further growth of the system. Organisations normally only buy the number of licenses they need for a particular deployment, this of course needs to a (perception) barrier when it comes to expanding beyond that — ‘Do we really need to let dept X author content?’.
-Matt
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