The Strategic Program Lens
Becoming Efficient at Work You Never Chose
Delivery discipline applied to an unranked portfolio makes an enterprise faster at the wrong things. Intake, not execution, is where strategy is usually lost.
Written by Steve Kopecky · 6 minute read
Founder & Principal, Compass Performance, Inc.
01
Everything approved, nothing chosen
Where there is no intake discipline, initiatives enter the portfolio through relationships, urgency and seniority. Each is individually defensible. Collectively they consume every hour of delivery capacity the enterprise has, and the strategic priorities are funded with whatever is left.
The signature is a portfolio in which nothing has been declined in twelve months. A portfolio that never refuses is not a portfolio; it is a list.
A portfolio that has declined nothing in a year is not governing anything.
02
Chartered before started, staffed with released capacity
Two failures repeat. Work starts before it is chartered, so the outcome, benefit, owner and end condition are negotiated afterwards, usually under pressure. And work is staffed with named people who have not been released from anything, so the plan quietly depends on discretionary evenings.
Both are correctable with a rule rather than a system: no initiative starts without a signed charter, and no charter is signed without a named release of capacity. It sounds bureaucratic until the first quarter in which the portfolio delivers what it said it would.
03
Status honest enough to decide on
Governance depends on reporting that can carry bad news early. Where amber is politically expensive, the portfolio reports green until it reports red, and the executive team loses the only window in which intervention is cheap.
The test is simple and uncomfortable: when did an initiative last change status to amber, and what happened to the person who reported it? The answer tells the executive team exactly how much its reporting is worth.
Exhibit
Exhibit — The intake decision sheet
One page per candidate initiative, decided at a single standing forum. Candidates without a released resource are held, not started.
| Candidate | Enterprise priority served | Benefit and owner | Capacity released from | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warehouse automation | Cost to serve | $1.2m, COO | Facility project deferred | Start |
| Regional expansion study | Growth | Not quantified | None identified | Hold |
| Customer portal | Service | $400k, Service director | Portal phase one closed | Start |
| Reporting rebuild | None stated | Not quantified | None identified | Decline |
The value of the sheet is the decline column. A forum that produces only 'start' and 'hold' has no intake discipline, only a queue.
Signals the portfolio is running the strategy rather than serving it
- No initiative has been declined in the last twelve months.
- Work is under way that was never chartered.
- Named resources are assigned without being released from prior work.
- Status moves from green to red without an amber period.
- The enterprise cannot state, on one page, the small number of initiatives that matter most.
Strategic execution is not primarily a delivery capability. It is the willingness to choose, in public, what the enterprise will not do this year.
Interactive exercise
Efficient at work you never chose
Click the first question to ask about the portfolio.
The program portfolio is delivering on time and on budget. Strategic results are flat.
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