Most organizations know that in order to grow and be an industry leader, they have to continually innovate and undertake key projects that lead to growth. Unfortunately, many companies do so in a haphazard or non-strategic way.
Here’s what typically happens: Leaders keep saying “yes” as various projects and ideas are presented to them for investment. They say “yes” until they run out of resources. The projects and ideas first on the list get funded in contrast to the best of all ideas across the organization. The sad truth is that the early bird does get the worm. As a result, they waste money and resources, lose momentum, and then wonder why they never achieve their strategic goals.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s a proven approach that enables leaders and decision makers to make a greater contribution to the business, activate the strategic plan, achieve the desired balance, and optimize allocation of limited resources. Here are the four things you need to get right in order to make better decisions so you can maximize your company’s Capital Efficient Profitable Growth (CEPG).
Before your company can undertake any new initiative, you first have to identify your strategy. In other words, who are you and what do you want to do? Unless you know this information, it’s difficult if not impossible to move forward in a productive way.
While most companies have a general idea of their strategy based on their vision or mission statement, often it’s not focused enough to translate into specific strategic goals. For example, suppose you’re a beverage company who offers a variety of soft drinks. How do you grow? You could introduce one new beverage after another and expand into new markets at random, but that will quickly drain your resources. A better approach is to define a specific strategy for growth. For instance, you may decide that you want to be the North American leader in bottled water. Now you have a focused strategy to guide your efforts.
Armed with your strategy, you can now generate ideas that support the strategy. Some people call this step innovation or creative brainstorming. Whatever you call it, the goal is to come up with possible options for advancing the strategy.
Going back to our beverage company example, if the strategy is to be the North American leader in bottled water, your team needs to generate ideas that fit the strategy. Some ideas could include adding nutrients to the water, adding protein to the water, adding exotic flavors to the water, offering different bottle shapes or sizes, etc.
No matter what industry you’re in, long-term business growth depends on these four things: Strategy, Idea Generation, Project Selection & Execution.
Next is to select the portfolio of ideas that are the best for the company to pursue and that will advance the strategy. As you do the prioritization and portfolio selection process, you need to ask two key questions. The first is, “Will this portfolio of ideas and projects deliver our strategic goal?” If the answer is “no”, then you have to do something different. Either you alter your strategic expectation or you increase the number of ideas. Keep going through these iterations until you can say, “Yes, our portfolio has the potential to deliver our strategy.” And remember, at this point you’re simply assessing whether the portfolio will meet your strategic goals. You’re not assessing whether it’s something you actually could do.
Once you agree that the portfolio of ideas and projects will help you meet your strategic goals, the second question to ask is, “Do we have the resources (time, money, people, equipment, etc.) to fund the portfolio?” If the answer is yes, then celebrate and move on to step four. But if the answer is no, then you need to circle back and solve the equation. Can you lower your strategic goals? Can you generate bigger, better ideas? Can you add resources? Change the timing? Scale back the idea? Once you have a portfolio that allows you to say “yes” to both questions, you’ve completed the prioritization and selection process.
Finally, it’s time to take action and actually execute the portfolio of ideas. This is where project management comes into play. As you execute each step to support the strategy, outline the detailed activities needed to complete the project on time and on budget. Assign key people to be responsible for each role, and establish checkpoints so you know if the project goes off track. The more thoroughly you manage the execution of the portfolio, the more success you’ll have.
No matter what industry you’re in, long-term business growth depends on these four things: Strategy, Idea Generation, Project Selection, and Execution. When you take the time to implement this process in your company, not only will you make better strategy decisions, but you’ll also achieve the breakthrough results that achieve the ultimate goal: Increased CEPG.
is the author of “A Fish in Your Ear: The New Discipline of Project Portfolio Management,” and co-founder and president of The GenSight Group, which provides enterprise portfolio management solutions for strategic planning, project portfolio management and business performance optimization. A holder of 14 U.S. patents, Menard has utilized his expertise to advise senior executives at organizations such as Coca-Cola, Cisco and the U.S. Department of Energy. To learn more about Mike Menard please visit afishinyourear.com.
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