Unlocking Portfolio Impact

Prepare to guide the journey to a product portfolio
without breaking the portfolio along the way.

Benefits of experiencing Unlocking Portfolio Impact (UPI)

We prepare you to:  

  • Broaden your perspective and challenge your assumptions about portfolios

  • Appreciate executives' perspective and context

  • Increase your credibility / relevance to portfolio executives

  • Facilitate effective portfolio management conversations

  • Guide the incremental journey to a product portfolio without breaking your portfolio along the way

This experience helps you inspire the many actions needed to move safely towards a product portfolio and support your executives on the journey.

Who?

UPI may be right for you if you are: 

  • In a portfolio operations leadership role, perhaps in the VMO, PMO, or APMO

  • Working as a senior change agent, perhaps in the LACE or WoW teams

  • Stepping into an executive assignment with responsibility for reworking the portfolio

  • Serving as a senior  advisor to a portfolio such as Finance or HR Business partner

What to expect

UPI is a workshop-style course delivered over three full days. It contains an intentional balance of theory and in-context practice to ensure the concepts stick and that they can be applied in your real world situation. It is best experienced by a cohort of practitioners that will collaborate and learn from each other as they apply the skills to your portfolios. 

Topics include

The workshop topics cover:

  • Learning to see where you are, and learn how to talk about where you are

  • Recognizing the evolution patterns of portfolios

  • Aligning on shared language for your portfolio (without introducing a whole new set of words)

  • Identifying your current portfolio state and a shared understanding of "better"

  • Recognizing the obligations and expectations that arise across portfolios in a company

  • Mapping relationships between aspirations, work, people, systems, and money

  • Identifying controls and governance that rely upon and extend from those relationships

  • Choosing shifts and sequences that create flow and simplify the journey

Each module introduces new ways of thinking about the topic, explores the application within your current portfolio context, and describes a set of actions (shifts) you may consider to shape change around that topic.

Collectively, the topics are anchored on helping you deeply understand the current portfolio operating lens, identify the next lens, and see the key shifts that prepare the portfolio for the bigger lift to the next plateau. 

Frequently asked questions

  • The ideal group for a cohort is the loose network of people that will be moving portfolio improvements forward across the enterprise. The group is often anchored by a champion in the Center of Excellence and sponsored by an executive with broad change responsibility across multiple portfolios and business units. 

  • We are generally flexible to the local needs of each company. However, our general teaching day runs from 8:30a to 4:30p, which allows 45 minutes for lunch, 3 breaks of 15 minutes each, and 6.5 hours of active engagement time with learners. 

  • The extended cohort version is fully remote.

    The three-day intensive can be delivered remotely, but we strongly recommend bringing people together to support forming the learning and practice network required to successfully navigate the portfolio change journey that awaits. 

  • We do ask that attendees are limited to full time employees of the company, and that you don't invite vendors, consultants, or contractors without discussing with us in advance.  

  • Three conditions are important for a learning investment like this to pay off:

    • Clear pain caused by the portfolio's struggles to deliver value in a reasonable timeframe at the right quality levels

    • A group of curious, engaged learners that want to make an impact

    • Sponsors and champions willing to provide the ongoing energy and support required for successful change. 

    If these three conditions aren't present, you may wish to consider whetting people's appetite with the Core Portfolio Insights introduction or take on a specific pain point with one of our specific shift workshops to demonstrate the value of a new approach.

  • Physically, we maintain a somewhat informal space to allow each individual to engage in the ways that best serve their learning.

    The optimal experience requires spaces in the room for groups to work at a flipchart or whiteboard without having to talk over other groups, while also being easy to come together for large group discussions or lecture segments. 

    While there are no activities that require large open spaces in the room, it is challenging to create good learning dynamics around a single large central table like those found in board rooms or some telepresence rooms.

    We will require a good quality projector, sufficiently configurable seating, and several vertical writing surfaces (whiteboards / flip charts).

    We ask the company provide appropriate catering for morning/afternoon beverages and lunch or host in a location with easy access to a corporate cafeteria. 

  • Please don't. Of course we won't physically restrain you, but the harm to your learning experience and the classroom dynamic is significant. This harm is especially visible in the virtual setting.

    If you do need to step out for specific meetings during the course, please discuss in advance and we'll do our best to arrange the break and lunch timing to allow for the least disruption to the fewest number of people.