Friday December 7th was the second session of the AIM IT Leadership Academy on Strategic Planning. The session was the AIM institute downtown building.
The meeting was on the second floor Combine Community Meeting room.
Like the first meeting. I had an assigned seat with the agenda for the day was laid out at the table.
Strategic Planning
The morning started off with a talk about, What is Strategic Planning?
The three things the presenter wanted us to know:
- What is Strategic Planning?
- Tell how you would do it?
- Motivate to develop and Embrace.
Today’s IT Leader is similar to other roles in leadership.
Relationships & communication give you a credibility mindset.
Having a vision of Operational Excellence starts with Strategic Planning.
We teams are:
- Visionary + builds operational plan
- Communicator + own the numbers
Don’t break what works today?
How do you measure? Which is hard?
Is what you are changing a strategic enabler?
- Know the Business
- Know your business
- Create a plan & effectively communicate that plan
- Execute, measure, adjust
Employees want to know how to help the plan?
What do I do with the plan?
IT can help:
- Grow Revenue
- Reduce Operating Expenses
- Manage Risks
Know the business:
- Read company newsletters
- Read announcements
- Read about industry
- Face to Face with business
- Business Initiatives
Know your business
- Products and services
- Assets and Resources
- Talent Development
- Technical Investments
How to communicate a plan?
- Obstacles and how to overcome them
- Timeline
- Measure Success
Why we choose to “not” be strategic?
- Not good
- To busy
- Value in it
- Not my job
- Nothing to show
Why to embrace Strategic Planning?
Pros
- Career Advancement
- Work life Balance
- Budget Done
- Happy
Cons
- Limit Career
- Up late at night
- Budget issues
- Not happy
Omaha Companies
The rest of the day involved hearing strategic plans from different CIO’s of Omaha based companies.
Farm Credit Services of America
Werner Enterprises
Nebraska Furniture Mart
The presenter would take time telling the group about their company. Then tells us about that companies strategic plans. The final part of the their presentation was to tell us a strategic problem their company would like each table to attack. The table would then spend 30 minutes to build a 3-minute presentation using what we learned from the first presentation of the day.
The 30 minutes was challenging. The ability to get our table to gather ideas, create a solid talking point, then determine how it would be presented.
After each table gave their presentation to the board which were the three CIO’s. The board would ask questions.
Questions
How do you measure you request?
What’s going to go wrong?
Where did you get a proposal?
What is your contingency plan?
Feedback
Years ago, Information Technology was seen as overhead. The current state of a business is IT is core to the business. How will your language have IT engage in a recommend when presenting a strategy? Are there ever objectives to educate other parts of the business? Are there costs to get up and running? Then be careful in numbers? What is a timeline to the proposal?
Awesome ideas start with words that get to the point.
If you did a good job in presenting your strategy. The response to your proposal should be “What do you need from me?”
Presentation Skills
The last hour of the day was working on Presentations Skills. Members of the Omaha Chapter of Toastmasters International.
Tips for presenting or speaking:
- There are no rules
- Let things go
- Talk about self
- Prepare
- Transitions
- Remove distractions
- Audible Level
- Eye Contact
- Visual Aids
- Tell the best story, then keep telling the story.
Takeaways
This class made me get “It” when looking at levels of leadership. I know grasp the roles of different levels of leadership in terms of planning and leading an organization. The acts of planning are the same at any level, but it is the breadth of responsibility of the planning on why people are chosen to lead from a organizational level.