Many executives and board members find themselves fairly ill-equipped to establish their organization’s strategic direction when it comes to IoT and deal with numerous issues and opportunities that will arise when you consider the latest figures for the IoT market might have reached into the trillions of dollars by 2020. That number appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg and by McKinsey & Company. They are not technologists, at least for the most part. They are business professionals. When they seek assistance from their IT resources (internal and external), most of the time they get a technical response that they do not understand.
I was speaking at one company’s executive meeting and the CIO came in and talked about a strategic opportunity surrounding his cloud strategy. He talked for 20 minutes and asked for questions. No questions were raised. He left the room and just after the door closed, the COO looked at me and said, “You’re a technology translator, would you care to explain what was just said?” That is a great example of how not to address executives and board members on the issues and opportunities surrounding IOT.
Technology has become more critical than ever when it comes to strategic positioning and effectively and efficiently operating an organization. That makes early integration into strategy process and discussions a must. Done correctly, the proper technology strategy can easily lead to competitive advantage. Given its importance, the following three steps are recommended for organizations of any size.
- Continuously monitor emerging technologies and what others are doing with them.
- Put the value and advantages of the emerging technology into the context of your organization. (lowers cost, increases value to your stakeholders/customers and creates new opportunities)
- Create an executive business narrative explaining the emerging technology and what it means to the organization. (The longest one I ever made was just 4 pages – I made it into one 11 X 17 color laminated document that was used as a placemat in front of each member.)
Remember it is about the value to the organization, not the technology. Craft the narrative in that context, keep it light and don’t get into the tech-weeds. Once you have created the single slide executive level emerging technology narrative, you have to get it into the hands of the executives. That is sometimes difficult. I found a technique to covertly get the information in front of executives. This has worked several times and it is so easy. When you are sure of what is in the narrative and it is correct, graphically represented, and perceived as valuable to your organization take the following steps.
Step 1: Print out about a dozen high quality color graphics with interesting metrics.
Step 2: Strategically place a copy next to the executive area copier, break/coffee room, and on the targeted executive(s) assistant’s desk. Careful not to go overboard but you can also target other high traffic executive areas as appropriate.
Step 3: Find articles about the Internet of Things by well-respected business sources (like the ones above) that support your executive business narrative. Print them out, use a highlighter on specific areas that will get the attention of executives, and distribute them the same way as you did in Step 2 above.
Given the size of the IoT market and the projected implications, it is essential that IoT get in front of executives in a strategic business and innovative manner. While there are no guarantees, this is one way to achieve that goal.
About the author: Kevin Coleman is a speaker, author and advisor to some of the world’s most progressive organizations, including multiple Fortune 500 businesses, the United Nations, the Congress of the United States and U.S. Strategic Command. Kevin has more than 20 years of experience in the development and implementation of cutting-edge technology strategies and was the Chief Strategist at Netscape.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
