The Two Biggest Mistakes in Strategy-Making
The two biggest and probably most common mistakes in strategy-making are:
- Not having a strategy at all
- Not changing the strategy as needed
Today, very few organizations are unaware of their own content management problems and the challenges related to managing their content assets. They know that they can both manage and make use of their content assets better, but too often they fall short by putting their hopes to technology alone.
What these organizations should do instead is of course, after having defined clear and measurable objectives (what they want to achieve and when it shall be achieved), to develop a content management strategy (what to do, when to do it and who should do it) that will help them achieve their objectives. Such a strategy must not only identify and describe what technologies are needed to fulfil the business objectives, but it must bring together the people, activities, technologies, content and other resources which are needed to achieve the objectives.
An organization that wants to leverage its content assets must both define clear and measurable objectives and develop a strategy that describes what actions already have been taken and which needs to taken in order to achieve the objectives. The strategy must focus on the actions needed to achieve the objectives: what to do, when to do it and who should do it. And since the enterprise inevitably will be subject to a lot of different changes over time, the content management strategy must be adjusted as needed. New developments and conditions on the market, new technologies, new laws and regulations, fiercer competition, and changing customer needs are just some of the things that might call for changes of the strategy. The strategy must be dynamic and allowed to evolve over time.
Finally, it needs to be said that a strategy is meaningless if it is not practical and realistic. Unfortunately, many strategies are pure fantasies, based on unrealistic objectives which state where the organization wants to be within a certain period of time, but not where it realistically can be. There should not be a wide gap between the "want" and the "can". The organization must simply have - or be able to allocate - the resources and other pre-requisites that are required to execute the strategy.