Portfolio With A View

  Decision Making   Leadership   PMO   Portfolio Management   Stakeholder Management   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

An organization’s cultural behaviors, processes and tools shape the way project information is reported, which, in turn, shapes decision-making at the executive level. In order to improve visibility into project portfolios, we must first reduce the fear of raising red flags — and then go beyond our comfort zones to start looking differently at what we see.

Senior management teams have long argued that they lack the meaningful information needed to accurately evaluate and analyze their project portfolios. And when you set this against the generally accepted wisdom that visibility is a key ingredient for C-level success, it’s clear that the lack of visibility is a major dilemma.

So, if visibility is so important, why are senior executives receiving poor-quality information? And what steps can be taken to remediate the issues?

Historically, the onus has been on the executive to improve their processes. The mindset has been “they are the ones that require the coaching to recognize the inherent benefits in the portfolio.” A fresh look, however, reveals that the challenges (and the solutions) can be much deeper. Specifically, cultural behaviors across an organization can greatly shape the way information, both good and bad, is reported — and therefore can also shape the quality and scope of projects’ visibility across the organization.

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