Getting strategic: Why you need a strategic workshop

It isn’t like I hate planning. In fact, I am looking at my paper planner and my Outlook calendar right now as I write this blog post.

But, when I was a government IT director, planning could be hard to fit in. And, while I considered myself to be a planner, I did not always enjoy it. I knew that good planning could help me get the resources I needed to support our staff and serve our constituents and customers but …

Maybe you feel the same way, or perhaps, some of these thoughts color your planning interest:

• We are too busy to spend hours with end users in a strategic exercise

• I already know what they (end users) need

• I do IT, not brainstorming

• I am worried about budget, keeping my staff, and cybersecurity and … (fill in the blank), I don’t have time to stop and plan

• I am afraid to bring up content services (formerly known as enterprise content management), my end users aren’t sold on the technology and I don’t want to have an unproductive session

Expert leadership

What if you could find a way to do the planning you need to do without having to facilitate endless discussions? And, what if the plan was achievable, maybe even in 12 months?

If you answered a cautious “Yes, maybe. Tell me more …” Hyland can help.

Hyland’s Enterprise Advising team is facilitating two-day strategy workshops that are short, effective planning exercises that give you a reason to plan without the burden of facilitation and design. Over the course of two days, the workshops move from leadership’s vision for your organization to IT’s needs to the challenges of your business teams.

Throughout the workshops, enterprise advisors help the discussion along, making sure you learn more from end users than they typically share with you. Advisors also take the opportunity to bring ideas and small amounts of education to a discussion that can help end users see the potential of the solution. While this valuable discussion takes place, your enterprise advisor documents your needs, examines them through their Hyland solution expertise and writes a plan.

One of the advantages of the strategy workshop format is that it does not deliver 200 pages that your organization is unlikely to read. The report is 10-15 pages in total and has separate short sections that leadership, IT and business users can consume easily.

It’s written to be read. And used.

One year to success

And the best part? The timeframe for the plan is 12 months.

The workshop’s strategic plan is a concise set of recommendations that will address the challenges we uncover during the workshop and help your organization lay the foundation for an even bigger impact in the future. This was an intentional design.

Too often, planning frameworks lay out long periods of time and long lists of action steps. When that happens, it can be easy to lose momentum and disappoint end users when improvements do not emerge.

If this type of planning is starting to sound more interesting, you can read more about it here. Meanwhile, your account manager is ready to help you sign up and host a strategic workshop.

Get strategic

“Getting strategic” might be a chilling thought for your organization, but with some help from Hyland and a workshop format designed to maximize the impact from people’s participation, you might reconsider.

And, if that strategy workshop can deliver a concise impactful report that documents challenges that are limiting the value you are getting from your Hyland investment, it’s hard to say no.

Let’s talk.