The Case for Everyday Portfolio Thinking

Most organizations believe they’re strategic because they have a plan. In reality, they have a list. The difference between the two is discipline, a structured way to connect what you say you want to achieve with what actually gets done.

In one of my consulting engagements, I asked a leadership team, “How much of your organization’s time do you actually spend on strategy?” Their guess: about 25%. The truth? Six percent. That six percent represented the sum total of strategic effort across ninety-eight employees. It was a powerful moment of silence that told me everything I needed to know about how their portfolio was functioning, it wasn’t.

Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) is not about the number of projects you complete; it’s about the intent behind each one. When you’re clear on intent, everything else, prioritization, governance, even resourcing, starts to make sense.

The fix often begins with visibility. When you track not just work done, but why it’s being done, you start seeing strategy as a daily habit instead of a quarterly retreat topic. That’s when strategy stops being an event and becomes culture.

If you don’t know where your strategy lives in your organization, it’s probably living in a PowerPoint deck, not in practice.