Given at the 2012 Boeing Project Management Conference in Mulkiteo, Washington. This presentation focuses on how project portfolio management is a critical piece for tying leadership, strategic IQ, and organizational health together. This presentation was originally given at the Boeing Project Management conference in Mulkiteo, Washington in October of 2012.

1. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Leadership, Strategic IQ, and
Organizational Health: How Portfolio
Management Ties It All Together
Tim Washington
Boeing PM Conference
October 3rd, 2012

2. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Agenda
• PPM Overview
• Strategic Leadership
• Strategic IQ
• Organizational Health
• How PPM Ties It All Together

3. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Leadership
Strategic PPM Organizational
IQ Health
Portfolio Management is a critical piece for bridging strategic leadership,
strategic IQ, and organizational health

4. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
What is
“Project Portfolio Management”?

5. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Project portfolio management is a combination of various
management disciplines:
Business management
General management
Project and program management
%Management Disciplines

6. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Project portfolio management (PPM) is a
management discipline that drives
strategic execution and maximizes
organizational value through the
selection, optimization, and oversight of
project investments which align to business
goals and strategies.
Paradigm Shift #1: Projects are an important vehicle for executing strategy
PMI Quote

7. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“Portfolio management is the strategy-based, prioritized set
of all projects and programs in an organization reconciled
to the resources available to accomplish them.”
Paradigm Shift #2: The single project view to a total portfolio view.
Stanford Quote

8. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“Managing [the] composite groups of projects
with the same rigor, balance, executive
leadership, and decision-making involvement
as the company’s financial
portfolio. Portfolio Management is an
ongoing process that includes decision-
making, prioritization, review, realignment,
and reprioritization.”
Paradigm Shift #3: Projects are investments!
Financial Portfolio Quote

9. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
The Purpose of Portfolio Management
• Execute Strategy
• Deliver Maximum Value
• Enhance Decision Making
• Manage Organizational Change

10. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Portfolio Management Benefits:
• Higher return on project investments
• Lower organizational risk
• Greater confidence of meeting customer
commitments
• Balanced project portfolio workload
• Healthier organizations
• Increased project throughput
PPM Goals

11. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
At the highest level, Project Portfolio Management has four basic components:
Select the Right
Projects
Selected projects must align
with the business strategy and
meet other important criteria
Improve Optimize
Portfolio Value Portfolio Value
The Goal:
Ensure value is delivered by Maximize Value to the All the steps necessary to
comparing expected benefits Organization construct an optimal portfolio
with actual benefits; drive PPM given current limitations and
maturity constraints
Protect
Portfolio Value
Project benefits must be
protected in order to deliver
maximum portfolio value

12. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
A good governance structure is central to making PPM work.
PORTFOLIO GOVERNANCE
(Strategic Planning)
Select the Right
Projects
“Portfolio management
Improve without governance is an Optimize
Portfolio Value empty concept.” Portfolio Value
Protect
Portfolio Value

13. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Strategic leadership Includes:
1) Business acumen
2) Active engagement
3) Proactive view
4) Balancing long-term and short-term needs
5) Communicating a consistent message

14. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“The only way for teams
to build real trust is for
team members to come
clean about who they
are, warts and all”
Trust

15. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“When there is trust,
conflict becomes nothing
but the pursuit of the
truth, an attempt to find
the best possible answer”
Conflict
Trust

16. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“When leadership teams wait
for consensus before taking
action, they usually end up with
decisions that are made too late
and are mildly disagreeable to
everyone. This is a recipe for
mediocrity and frustration”
Commitment
Conflict
Trust

17. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“To hold someone
accountable is to care
about them enough to
risk having them blame
you for pointing out their
deficiencies” Accountability
Commitment
Conflict
Trust

18. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Results
“No matter how good a leadership team
Accountability
feels about itself, and how noble its
mission might be, if the organization it
leads rarely achieves its goals, then, by
Commitment
definition, it’s simply not a good team”
Conflict
Trust

19. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
“I’m convinced that if the rate of change
inside the institution is less than the rate of
change outside, the end is in sight. The only
question is the timing of the end.”
--Jack Welch, former chairman of GE

20. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
• Shape environment to own advantage
• Organizational agility-capacity to change
High IQ: Expert • Distributed strategic Intelligence
• Mind-set of change
• Debating when to change
Moderate IQ: • Keep pace and react to external change
Competent • Clear options, criteria, and processes
• Don’t realize the need to change
Low IQ: Ignorant • Strategically blind
• Incompetent (“let’s pretend”)
Video

21. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Two Requirements for Success
SMART HEALTHY
• Good Strategy • Open Communication
• Creative Marketing • Clear Direction
• Efficient Technology • High Morale
• Quality Operations • Lots of Energy
• Solidly Engaged

22. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
We Need Clarity (aka alignment)
1) Why do we exist?
2) How do we behave?
3) What do we do?
4) How will we succeed?
5) What is most important for us, right now?
6) Who must do what?
These questions must be answered together, not in isolation

23. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Leadership Needs to Over-communication Clarity
Problem: leaders confuse the mere transfer of information to
an audience with the audience’s ability to understand,
internalize, and embrace the message that is being
communicated.
Great leaders see themselves as “Chief Reminding Officers”

24. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Leadership Needs to Over-communication Clarity
The point of leadership is to mobilize people around
what is most important
Most organizations are unhealthy precisely because they
aren’t doing the basic things, which require discipline,
persistence, and follow-through more than sophistication
or intelligence.
Employees hunger for consistent, authentic, and relevant
communication

25. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
How PPM Ties It All Together

26. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
How PPM Ties It All Together
Cohesive Leadership Drives accountability and
(≈ Strong Governance) better decision making
better strategies and
Higher Strategic IQ
better strategic plans
Greater alignment to
Organizational health strategic goals which drives
greater project execution.

27. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Some Closing Thoughts
BUILD UP…
Level 5 First Who, Confront the Hedgehog Culture of Technology
Leadership Then What Brutal Facts Concept Discipline Accelerators
DISCIPLINED PEOPLE DISCIPLINED THOUGHT DISCIPLINED ACTION
GOOD TO
GREAT

28. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
For more information

29. Leadership, Strategic IQ, and Organizational Health
Contact Information
Name: Tim Washington
Email: twashin@costco.com
Web: www.ppmexecution.com
@ppmexecution
http://www.linkedin.com/in/timawashington