7 ways to manage portfolio changes

Traditionally, I tend to be the type of person who works on one major transformation. I myself have not been in a Portfolio Change role, though I’ve worked with Change Leads who have owned a portfolio that is usually an area of the business or to a specific transformation or outcome. Either one is fine. So what I’ve seen work really well and what I would do differently is the following:

1. Understand what a Portfolio Change role is

It’s good to gauge what the role actually entails in your organisation, as it can include different things in different contexts. Generally you might have other Change Managers who could be reporting into you, or you’re overseeing but you’re not their line manager. You’ll be responsible for the whole portfolio, whereas they might be specifically involved in a particular program or project that reports into the portfolio (check out the 3 Ps definitions in PMBOK for the differences between portfolio, program and project). 

2. Map all the changes

In a Portfolio Change role, it’s important that you take on the responsibility to map all the initiatives and projects, those supported by a Change Manager and those that aren’t. There’s a lot of BAU (Business As Usual) changes that don’t get any Change Management support but your role in portfolio is to make sure those rats and mice don’t fall through the cracks in favour of the major transformations. They still take capacity from the business. As a Portfolio Change Lead, you’ll want to focus on the strategic objectives/outcomes/imperatives that you have as a portfolio or business.

3. Maintain good relationships across that portfolio

It’s critical to build and maintain good relationships across the business of that portfolio, regardless of the changes and transformation. This smooths the way for any challenges that happen within each of the projects or programs. It might be that you lend a bit of authority or influence or help get roadblocks cleared for a Change Manager. You become more of a business relationship manager, feeding information from projects back into the business and vice versa. If there's major changes happening in the business, like a new process, you can take that information from the business and cascade that back down into your different projects. It's a different level of role. You'll probably be doing less delivery, less writing of comms, less training needs analysis, less change impact assessment and you are more gathering inputs from different areas and projects and building relationships. Keep meeting up regularly with key managers or leaders in the business to keep that business relationship really strong. You're almost a conduit between the transformation and project space and the business.

4. Create more of a portfolio view of changes in that business

Creating an overarching portfolio roadmap of changes can be so helpful and being a business liaison can help you learn about this stuff and also question if it’s strategically aligned (particularly if some changes and initiatives may clash!). Let’s say you work in a bank and the business unit you take care of is Insurance. You might have a roadmap of the next 12 months of every single transformation and program and project that's going to be hitting that business unit, when they're going to hit and maybe even which teams within that business unit it's going to hit. But then also remember the BAU stuff. Remember to put in the peak times, End of Financial Year, performance review periods, holidays etc. You’re looking at everything often from two lenses. You're looking at it from both the project lens and everything that's happening from a project perspective, but then you are actually sitting a bit more on the side of the business. You also need to consider everything that's happening in the business as well and make sure that everything can get supported across both. I always recommend that you do capacity and clash management as Change Manager on a project anyway, but as a Portfolio Change practitioner you definitely want to be doing it. I’ve actually created a portfolio view of change for an entire organisation before - I was working on just one digital transformation but I knew we needed to know what was happening across the entire business from an IT perspective, so I created a portfolio roadmap of all the changes at every department. For example, if HR was picking a new system, even though IT wasn’t running the project I included this initiative on the roadmap. 

5. Create change playbooks

It’s so helpful to get alignment and consistency and set a standard for how change is done in a portfolio by developing a change playbook. I actually talk about Change Playbooks, what they are, what to include, and how to roll them out in Module 6 - Inspiring Through Change in my Leading Successful Change program.

6. Report into the Executive or Portfolio SteerCo

You might be responsible for reporting into the Executive team or a portfolio level Steering Committee. But usually at a portfolio level, the Steering Committee just is the Executive Team because you are working at such a senior level. With this, you might be responsible for gathering inputs. One change I worked on, the Portfolio Change Lead got all Change Managers to put the change impacts of their projects into one format for a rolled up portfolio-level change impact view to then present to SteerCo. You can use that influence and visibility to clear paths for the Change Managers who might be reporting up into your portfolio. Or even just the business stakeholders, as you’ll have good relationships and could advocate for them and their general business struggles.

7. Focus on what’s important for that business

I always recommend leading fit-for-purpose change, and it’s no different for portfolio level. You might have one business area that cares more about capacity and clashing so you’ll spend more time summing up all the BAU and change initiatives that might take up capacity over the coming month, quarter and/or year, and another that cares more about the timing and particular dates of key activities.

Lata xx

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