It occurs to me that as I describe elements of a good strategy that some readers may be tempted into thinking that I am prescribing a method for developing strategies. To be clear, I am not. Strategy development is an essential task for the business to accomplish. A robust and rigorous business strategy will include internal and external analysis. Some of these insights – particularly external analysis – are likely to be beyond the capabilities of the business architect, even if they are positioned in the business organization instead of IT.
There are may be some individuals whose titles are business architects but positions require them to develop business strategies for their organization. In those cases, I would suggest that they are playing a different role – the role of business strategist. The role of the business architect is to translate the strategy into plans for execution.
The key activity for the business architect with regards to strategy, irrespective of how and whom develops it, is to ensure that it is clearly articulated and comprehensible to the business’s key stakeholders. It may seem illogical that a business strategy is developed that isn’t comprehensible or clearly articulated but this often does occur because the strategies are often initially developed for a very limited audience. They are entrenched in contextual understandings that may be obvious to those working within the organization but completely alien for those on the outside.
I find that to be the case with my sales organizations. From my limited experience, it seems that sales organizations have a common way that their strategy is communicated internally that I have difficulty interpreting. There are a number of deliverable formats that can be used but the end goal should be to clearly communicate the future state vision, the key priorities and actions that get there, and the outcomes that enable measurement of success.
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