Review of life gets in the way series to date:
1. Importance of history and taking time to review as a part of your plan
2. Finding a priority, knowing what is important is the key to using tech effectively
3. Forget the Tech! That is right, drop the tool focus and look at the mission
But then after posting and promoting #3 I realized I missed something, but what was it? I had an unfinished thought in my head. What were the lessons I learned when implementing #3? OH yeah, then I went ahead and added this:
3b. Mission critical is not mission impact
I added that even though it wasn't part of my original plan or thought process. As I worked through the process of these blog posts and re-read the articles, it brought up a question I never fully resolved. Which leads me directly into this post.
Years ago a small team of YMCA IT staff collaborated to create the IT Alignment model that I talk about so much. The explanation of how this model was created is a great example of reviewing history, learning from mistakes and incrementally adapting your strategy.
It was a slow start to creating the model, we all wanted fast results. But we kept taking time to talk through the successes and failures we were all having and adapted it to our strategy. We would review what others had done or were trying. We would look for model or best practices. We would just try things.
In the end the key seemed to be persistence and adaptation. We didn't let the slowness of the process or the false starts stop us. Rather we used that history and those mistakes to drive our future success.
Anyway, here is that history:
http://steveheye.blogspot.com/2009/03/it-alignment-over-years-story-and.html
I know this is weird to promote my blog on my blog, but hey its my blog and I will cry if I want to... oh wait I think I just confused myself with song lyrics. Why is it so easy to get distracted? Anyway I better get back to, oh wait, is that a red notification number on my Google +...
