Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Opportunity for Alignment
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
If you are like most IT executives, the process of preparing the annual business plan is anything but fun. For most it is an ordeal, one to be done quickly and with dispatch. Some just blow the dust off last year’s plan, update a few numbers and call it quits. However, the process could be viewed as an opportunity to renew focus and to improve IT’s alignment with the overall strategies and objectives of the enterprise.
-
Typical business plans comprise the following components
-
Executive Summary, Mission Statement and Strategic Direction
-
Overview of the Company
-
Assessment of Past Performance – Strategic and Operational (Strengths and Weaknesses)
-
Assessment of the Market and Competitive Forces
-
Goals and Objectives (Positioning and Outcomes)
-
Organization Structure
-
Financial Budgets and Forecasts
The intent of the plan is to explain what value the organization will deliver in the coming one to three years, why that is good and how it will go about doing it. Unfortunately most plans, especially internal ones, tend to focus more on budgets than they do on value delivery and thus become an agonizing exercise to produce; all too often becoming a negotiation on cost control rather than a collaboration toward growth.
Like all internal organizations…
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire |