If you want to get ahead, get a strategy map

Over 50 people signed up for a one-day pre-conference workshop I gave a on Balanced Scorecard to link IT strategy to corporate strategy at Terrapinn's Help Desk 2007 Conference in Sydney in June, 2007, which the organisers thought was something of a record.

The surprising thing was that almost all the participants were using Balanced Scorecard to measure performance against a range of KPIs they had developed for the IT Department. And very few of them felt it was working particularly well for them.

Perhaps the reason for their dissatisfaction was that none, not a single one of them, used a strategy map as part of their strategic business planning to enable them to communicate their IT strategy to their knowledge workers.

And none of them could even say they understood their organisation's high-level corporate strategy. Or that they even knew what the corporate strategy was. Even vaguely.

And none had ever seen a corporate strategy map for their organisation. Which makes you wonder why? And if the IT department is told to align its strategy with corporate, how can it ever do that in an organization that cannot even internally communicate it's high level strategy clearly?

A strategy map shows you and your team where you have decided you should be going. It's a must-have for proper strategic execution. IT, Corporate, Operations, Marketing, anything.

If you want to get ahead, get a strategy map. Plain and simple.

Don't even think of leaving home without one.