Between The Lines – Swim Lanes on the Portfolio Board
Recently, as I was leading the design of a C-level strategic portfolio board (
There was disagreement within the group about possible line contents. Three suggestions were put forward:
- You could represent the areas of the company (Finance, Legal, IT, Controlling, …) in the lines. This could make sense at the portfolio level: You can see which initiatives are happening where.
- We could code the priority of the initiatives in the lines. There are “must-have” initiatives that are extremely important, initiatives that are somewhat important, initiatives that would be nice to have, etc.
- What if the lines represented the role of the initiative in the market? Does the initiative help the company differentiate itself in the market? Are we simply following the competition or is it, generally speaking, just an investment in things that need to be done?
Regardless which one is chosen, you can always include the other variations in the representation. If you decide, for instance, to use the areas of the company for the depiction, you can denote the priority of the initiative with different colored notes, and simply write down the role in the market on the note. This isn’t the problem.
The point is, whatever is depicted in the line will be discussed. In the first suggestion, the discussion revolves primarily around the internal organization – it’s dealing with budgets, and the question of who benefits from what. The second suggestion initiates the discussion in a vacuum, so to speak, because how do you define the importance of an initiative? In this case, you walk into the trap of political games again and those involved begin to argue, in each case, why their initiative is the most important.
It should come as no surprise that I am a fan of the third suggestion. When those who are responsible think about the role of an initiative in the market, the focus of the company turns outward. At the portfolio level, this discussion is far more interesting, and more important, than just the question of “Who’s paying?”. All of a sudden, you start dealing with what really makes sense and, for example, if a differentiating characteristic really is a differentiating characteristic, as it is currently understood. In this discussion, you can further hone the company’s positioning.
The way I see it in this situation? It’s a good idea to show the strategy on the board! Putting your role on the market on the swim lane might be a good first step towards this direction.