Aligning Strategy Using Decomposition

Strategic Technology Services Management (STSM) calls for a collection of strategies, organized into strategic initiatives and focus areas (the Strategic elements of the STSM Framework).  Every strategy should derive from the organization's mission, vision, goals, objectives, and guiding principles (the Foundational elements of the STSM Framework). One useful tool for visualizing this collection is a strategy map.  For example, a typical top-level city government strategy map could look something like this:

Municipal Government Strategy Map

In government organizations, the strategy map represents a value chain similar to those for a business, but with a different end point. At the top of the value chain is the Constituent/Stakeholder perspective, because government organizations are in the business of satisfying constituent and stakeholder needs (e.g., Citizens, Officials, Staff, or Partners). In governments, the end of the value chain is the effectiveness of services and service delivery at addressing those needs and constantly improving outcomes that affect the community’s quality of life. As can be seen, improvements in use of technology represent a key organizational capacity strategy that supports all other strategies. In addition, most of the strategies shown at this macro level can also be represented as more narrow strategies addressing the management of technology services.

Using the example Focus Areas cited in a previous post, STSM calls for a continuous strategic, tactical, and operational planning initiative to primarily address the needs defined for an Ensure Quality focus area. This iterative planning initiative also impacts all other focus areas and technology services activities. This type of initiative is most often referred to in business fields as strategic management. It is also considered the cornerstone of the strategic leadership model.

Pathways: Plan for Future

One way to visualize this initiative and its outcomes is to use a variant of the strategy map called a strategic pathways diagram. The individual strategies incorporated in this planning initiative (Refine Strategic Plan, Develop Tactical & Operational Plans, Measure Performance Against Plans, Disseminate Plans, and Review & Update Plans) provide the crucial connections between the initiative and it's higher-level focus groups.

This is only one example, at the technology services strategic planning level, of how the Improve Utilization of Technology strategy can be decomposed into additional, more detailed strategies that directly link to the organizational strategic plan.  I'll address more examples in future postings.