Excuses, Excuses

Given the choice between creating an IT strategic plan and having a root canal, many CIOs would choose the periodontist. "No one would say they love doing it," says Orlov. "[But] it's a pause for thinking and a divergence from reacting and responding."

However, many CIOs find it impossible to pause. "I hear that a lot: 'I'm too busy with the day-to-day; spent time on that last year and it was pointless'," says Forrester's Cameron. And with the increasing complexity in IT, the dread surrounding strategic planning has grown. "At the moment, you have these three tectonic plates converging in IT: the need for growth and innovation, continued cost discipline as a result of the credit crunch and IT's changing role in the business," says Aron. "With those three things pushing against each other, strategic planning can get very complicated."

But if strategic planning is like getting a root canal, remember: You endure the pain now in order to prevent a greater agony later on.

"[Strategic planning is] the one tool CIOs can use to communicate the value of IT," says Orlov. "It's something that can shore them up and arm them when people challenge them about what IT is doing. So you have to set aside some quality time for that." During her last six-month evaluation of IT's progress, Petit gave her department an A for being a low-cost, high-value provider of IT services but a D on working with the product development team to incorporate technology into KI's furniture products. "We had a goal to have an innovation group within the IT department and that hasn't happened," says Petit. "We spend a lot of time operationally and less time looking into the future."

Not surprisingly, Petit has trouble making time for planning. "It's a struggle," she says. "It's so easy to get dragged back into daily operations because we're staffed so lean and mean."

To fight that pull, Petit keeps a bar chart taped to her computer screen tracking how much time she's spending with other managers, talking to external peers, meeting with vendors. Anything not project- or operations-related counts. The goal is to hit 32 hours a month, or 20 percent of her time (although she tracks it in minutes, 1920 of them) spent planning. "In bigger companies, where the CIO role is more strategically focused and people wear one hat, strategic planning is probably a lot easier," she guesses. "But in small to mid-sized companies, we have to wear a lot of hats."

Her boss, in theory, supports her efforts to spend more time thinking strategically. "But when it comes down to whether you're going to do something about strategic planning or the network is down," she says, "you're going to take care of the network."

Exante's Kelly says that if strategic planning is important, IT needs to put its money where its mouth is. "Often the problem is financial," Kelly says. "Everything is focused on capital expenses."

Kelly says he has invested in people and processes to make sure the IT strategic plan remains a priority. "You need a dedicated team," he says. "Most organizations don't assign IT strategic planning to someone as a full-time job. Hence it doesn't become a discipline; it becomes a burden." But Kelly made strategic planning the full-time responsibility of his directors. "Once the positions were open," he says, "we found people were itching to do it."

"Someone in IT should be thinking about IT strategy most of the time," agrees Orlov. "And their job the rest of the time should be making sure they're connected to everything that's going on in the business."

If an IT leader (or his reports) can set aside extra time for strategic planning now, the theory is that it will become an organic part of their lives and interactions, less like a series of appointments that you'd just as soon cancel.

And it will get easier.

"If you did a strategic plan for the first time last year, you'll find that this year it takes less time. And next year will be even better," says Cullen. "You can focus more time on discussions with people and less time on the mechanics of putting it together.

"It could even become the part you like best about your job because that's where you can talk about what you want to do and why it matters to the organization."

And that's fun. Which is why strategic planning isn't really like a root canal. Root canals have no fun parts.