Key takeaways
- A portfolio without clear choice costs a lot of energy and delivers little
- Work with a single visible overview and fixed moments to stop or scale up
- Rank initiatives by expected impact and by the evidence you already have
- Limit work in progress by team and link each project to one owner and one clear outcome
- Measure attention, turnaround time and ratio of discontinued and scaled-up projects
Many organisations have a long list of projects. Everyone is working hard but the whole thing feels slow. In this blog, read how a clear portfolio can help you get more impact from the same people and the same budget.
Where it often goes wrong
In the ‘’Monday meeting' Discuss your project after project. Every new campaign, website update, internal training plan or test with a new tool is only briefly discussed. Teams deliver results, but the overall picture is missing and the story gets fragmented.
More and more time goes into tuning, consultation and planning. The available attention for real work is shrinking.
The crux of the problem is that few real choices are being made. There is no clear picture of what comes first and what has to wait or stop.
One overview and one language
Start with one shared portfolio. Put all initiatives in one overview. For each initiative, note down:
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target
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owner
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lead time or time estimate
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costs or capacity required
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expected effect
Have all teams work in the same structure. That makes comparison easy.
Also use simple status labels such as running, reviewing and stopping.
This way, stopping becomes as normal as starting. A project that doesn't work may disappear from the list. That creates space for something better.
Prioritising on impact and evidence
Not every idea is equally strong. Not every idea is equally certain. Make those differences visible.
Give each initiative two scores:
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a score for expected impact
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a score for how strong the evidence is
For evidence, consider data, previous results, customer feedback and experiences from pilots.
You can then easily distinguish three types of projects:
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high impact and low evidence: start as small pilot
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high impact and high evidence: rapid scale-up
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low impact: do not start or actively stop
This is how you shift from opinions to informed choices. It becomes clear why one initiative takes precedence over another.
“Prioritising everything is the same as choosing nothing.”
Limit work in progress
A common mistake is starting too many projects at once. Each team then gets fragmented.
Therefore, set a hard limit per team. For example, a maximum of three initiatives active at the same time.
A new project may not start until a spot becomes available. That seems strict but it delivers three things:
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more attention per project
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shorter processing times
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fewer failure costs because you see earlier what does not work
Teams experience more calm and focus. Managers get a more realistic view of what is really possible.
Measure what really matters
Finally, it is important that you also measure the portfolio itself. You can look at, among other things:
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the number of discontinued initiatives per quarter
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the median turnaround time of projects
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the proportion of projects with demonstrable impact
Discuss these figures as seriously as turnover, costs or other business goals.
This way, quitting becomes not a sign of failure but a sign of maturity. Your organisation learns faster and gets more results from the same effort.
Book a meeting with Tarquin, founder of MediaGuru, to solve your challenges.
