Shaping Portfolio Agility – Details, episodes & analysis

“You have to respect the orthodoxy of the culture that you’re operating within, because it will absolutely hold the way in which things are done. And you will know when you come up against that culture—you will feel it.” - Louise Higgins

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In this episode, we’re joined by Louise (Lou) Higgins. Lou joined ANZ in January 2020 as the Chief Financial Officer of Technology and Enablement. She was appointed Chief Financial Officer of Australia in May 2021 and Managing Director of Suncorp Integration in September 2022. In September 2023, she was appointed to lead the Australia Retail Strategic Delivery function in conjunction with her Suncorp Integration responsibilities until February 2024. Lou currently leads the Strategy and Transformation for the Australian retail business.

In this role, Lou partners closely with the Group Executive, Australia Retail, and the Australia Retail leadership team to deliver a significant and complex transformation and prepare the business for the future.

Lou has a diverse set of skills and experience, having worked across multiple industries during her 20+-year career. She commenced her executive career in London before relocating back to Australia to work as an associate director with Macquarie Bank. In 2010, she became the Chief Operating Officer for Nova Entertainment. In January 2017, Lou was appointed Chief Financial and strategy Officer for the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), where she oversaw the design and implementation of a significant technology transformation of the broadcaster.

Lou also has a diverse Non-Executive Career, having worked for Commercial Radio Australia, Visit Victoria, Qudos Bank, Canteen Australia, OneTwo Finance, and Enero Group Limited.

Our conversation with Lou explores the intricate dynamics of leadership and cultural transformation, set against the backdrop of her recent work leading the strategic Suncorp acquisition.  Her candid insights reveal the importance of empathy, self-awareness, and strategic alignment in driving successful change. 

She reminds us that effective leadership isn’t just about achieving outcomes—it's about how we lead others to those outcomes. 

(00:00) Introduction

(06:15) Why do you think effective partnerships between finance and technology are so rare?

(11:39) What do you mean by the word transformation?

(15:18) How do you hold the tension between transforming the business and keeping it functioning while you do it?

(21:29) What stood out to you when you travelled the world studying banking acquisitions?

(29:49) How do you balance between knowing the whole answer yourself and slowly finding the answer together?

(35:19) What are some of the tools you use to paint the future for your people?

(41:47) How do you encourage the people that work for you?

(46:53) What’s the role of likeability in leadership?

(53:39) How do you navigate the clash of cultures during an integration?

(56:57) How do you deliver hard messages about the need for change as a leader?

(59:03) What’s the one piece of advice you’d give others approaching significant transformations?

“Just as delegation is a skill that can get taught to leaders and often is, the ability to take ownership is a skill that needs to be developed in people, and organizations often do not invest in training that.”  - Evan Leybourn

In this episode, we are joined by Evan Leybourn, the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute. Evan has been a thought leader in the realm of Business Agility since 2008, advocating for organizations to rethink how they operate, lead, and govern to become more human-centric and adaptable in the face of constant change.

Evan's journey began with a realization that organizations needed to move beyond traditional agile practices confined to IT and software development. In 2016, he established the Business Agility Institute, aiming to create a global community dedicated to redefining business structures and cultures. The Institute has since become a hub for research, thought leadership, and collaboration among professionals striving to transform their organizations.

During our conversation, Evan delves into the fundamental differences between agile and Business Agility, emphasizing that Business Agility extends beyond methodologies to encompass organizational behaviors and mindsets. He shares insights from recent research studies conducted by the Institute, including "Bridging the Divide" and "The Balancing Act," which explore the challenges organizations face in collaboration, prioritization, and leadership.

Evan discusses the decline in organizational collaboration observed between 2022 and 2023, attributing it to factors like fear-based leadership and siloed structures exacerbated by economic uncertainties. He highlights the importance of moving towards human-centric governance and leadership models to foster organizational resilience and unity.

Through candid reflections, Evan offers valuable advice on breaking down silos, aligning goals, and investing in leadership development. He underscores organizations' need to build the muscles required to respond effectively to change, no matter how unexpected.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Introduction
• (04:07) What led to the founding of the Business Agility Institute?
• (10:15) What differentiates Business Agility from agile?
• (17:20) What emerged from the institute’s recent research study on trends in organizational collaboration?
• (24:40) What did the onset of the pandemic teach us about organizational agility?
• (33:24) What did the “Balancing Act” study on prioritizaton reveal?
• (39:50) What lies behind the struggle to act on the gap between supply and demand for strategic capacity?
• (45:30) What’s the secret to sustainable change?
• (52:21) How do leaders create time for change?

Throughout the episode, Evan emphasizes that change is inevitable and constant. Organizations that proactively develop the capabilities to adapt and respond to change are better positioned to achieve their purpose and succeed in today's dynamic environment.

Cast:

Evan Leybourn Eric Willeke Mark Richards

References:

• Good to Great - Jim Collins
• Reinventing Organizations - Frederic Laloux
• Integral Theory - Ken Wilber
• Switch - Chip and Dan Heath
• The Principles of Scientific Management - Frederick Winslow Taylor
• Crucial Influence: Joseph Grenny et al
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"Create the visualizations that are going to be useful, do some cleanup work to create the space for people to think a little more deeply, and then make sure you don't waste their time so they can put some wins on the board" - Eric Willeke

With our love of strategy off the leash in Episode 3, we continue down the path this episode. We explore why strategy matters so much to portfolio design. This provides a bridge to understanding how portfolios evolve and change over time, the critical characteristics to clarify early, and the questions that might emerge. It's no use having interesting questions if you have no time to wrestle with them. We conclude the episode by examining some of our favorite approaches to creating space for critical conversations.

 In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Episode Intro
• (1:38) Why is understanding the portfolio's role in the ecosystem important?
• (10:27) How does strategy influence the internals of the portfolio?
• (16:51) What's the best way to begin 'becoming lean'?
• (33:49) Why are purpose, context, and structure essential to clarify?
• (48:09) How do you create space for executives to have conversations that matter?
• (01:04:58) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards Show Notes

Book References:

• Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

"I don't want to have a minnow next to a minotaur because the minnow is never going to feature in the conversation" - Mark Richards

This is the first episode where we deep-dive into strategy. Whether your portfolio is shaping a strategy or deploying one shaped elsewhere, you need tools to contextualize it in the overall enterprise. We take horizon-based investment and Geoffrey Moore's Zone to Win model and explore what happens when you use it as a conceptual model for your portfolio ecosystem.

Along the way, we discuss our belief that you should be able to take an overall enterprise strategy and model your portfolios as logical pieces of it. Each should have a clear purpose and context, and collectively they should add back up to the whole. Our conversation explores the implications of each of Moore's four zones and the insights and implications that emerge when you leverage them to characterize your portfolios.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Episode Intro
• (3:00) Why partition your strategy?
• (7:01) What is horizon-based investment?
• (14:38) How does Geoffrey Moore's Zone to Win model help us understand portfolios?
• (24:56) What is the Performance Zone and how does it apply to portfolios?
• (38:31) What types of portfolios live in the Productivity Zone, and what are the strategy implications?
• (49:04) What is the difference between general "innovation investment" and the Incubation Zone?
• (55:41) When does the Transformation Zone come to life, and what kind of strategies play out there?
• (1:05:02) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards Show Notes

Book References:

• Your strategy needs a strategy – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha
• Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

"In nearly half of the cases I can think of, the things that the teams most hate      providing to governance are the same things the governance team doesn't actually want and doesn't know how to tell the teams to stop providing" - Eric Willeke

This episode dives into the 'Lean' aspect of lean portfolio management. It begins with a brief exploration of lean and systems thinking and their focus on optimizing the whole, improving flow, and reducing waste. We then 'put our lean hats on' to explore lean’s relation to strategy, operations, and governance.

Treating these elements as a portfolio's 'jobs to be done,' we stress the importance of taking the portfolio in your line of sight and understanding its mandate for each job. We share common patterns and variations of mandates we've seen and typical ways in which lean thinking generates positive change.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:39) Intro
• (01:34) Where do you start with lean portfolio management?
• (16:45) What are the first questions you ask?
• (25:47) What are the primary jobs of a portfolio?
• (29:50) How do the mandates typically vary for these jobs?
• (36:56) Governance is often a dominant mandate. How does lean shift the governance mindset?
• (42:00) What are the significant opportunities with lean operations?
• (46:14) How do strategic mandates vary, and how does this affect your initial lean focus?
• (54:07) What are the most common first steps in the lean governance space?
• (58:13) Wrap

Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards Show Notes 

"Start with  questions that paint a picture of today before you try painting a picture of tomorrow"  - Mark Richards 

In this podcast's first episode, we lay the foundations for exploring Lean Portfolio Management. We start with a high-level overview of portfolios and their uses and share our stories of first encountering them. From there, we dig into the few key definitions and elements we feel are critical to setting the stage for the show's arc before diving into the tensions, trade-offs, and recurring definitional pieces.

We stress the importance of being aware of your naturally inherent bias and the criticality of your starting stance:  seeking first to understand. The first questions we pose in pursuit of understanding relate to the nature of the portfolio, the mandate, its context in the ecosystem, and its relationship to strategy, portfolio operations, and governance.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Podcast Overview and Origins
• (02:06) Episode Intro
• (02:58) Our stance on SAFe's lean portfolio management content
• (04:33) Where did our journey with portfolio management begin?
• (15:59) A Portfolio of what?
• (27:15) What lens do you look through?
• (33:37) Where do you draw the line between defining and steering the investment and operating the portfolio?
• (40:31) How do business strategy and business operations interact?
• (45:25) What key themes recur when considering a portfolio within the enterprise?
• (1:01:30) Wrap

 Cast:

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

Show Notes Book References:

• Your strategy needs a strategy – Reeves, Haanaes, Sinha

“Often, there’s a real lack of clarity about where we are now. And it can be a very uncomfortable, painful set of truths that people don’t want to face. But to create progress, you need to face uncomfortable truths and understand where you’re starting from." - Natalie Field

In this episode, we’re joined by Natalie Field. Nat recently commenced as CEO of Informed Decisions and has accrued a wealth of portfolio leadership experience over the course of her career. Highlights include serving as the Chief Digital and Data Officer for BUPA Asia Pacific, Chief Technology Officer at Belong, and General Manager of the digital portfolio at Australia Post.

Nat is a customer-centric leader with 20 years of global experience in innovation, customer, product, digital, data, and technology. A catalyst for change, she has worked across multiple industries, including health, telecommunications, and services. She has a proven track record of leveraging digital, data, and technology to increase the impact of existing business models and unlock new growth opportunities.

She is recognized for her ability to work across organizational silos to create an ambitious vision and bring that vision to life in a way that creates customer and commercial growth while focusing on operational excellence.

Her passion for leadership and accessing excellence in others is combined with a fierce determination to exceed expectations.

During our conversation, Nat delves into the realities of leading large portfolios and navigating executive roles. She shares hard-won lessons about balancing quick wins with long-term vision, building outstanding leadership teams, tapping into their strengths, and using metrics to drive strategic outcomes. Through candid reflections, Nat offers valuable advice on creating clarity, building resilient teams, and managing the delicate balance between purpose and progress. Her approach to leadership is shaped by a clear focus on empathy, transparency, and aligning people with purpose.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Introduction
• (04:02) Where do you focus first when you take on a new portfolio?
• (10:15) Why try to bring the biggest naysayers closer?
• (13:46) How do you balance the tension between sustainable change and rapid results?
• (19:43) What role do you feel metrics play in strategy?
• (27:31) What about purpose?
• (35:58) What stereotypes did you have about the role of a CEO back when you didn’t have it?
• (43:03) What’s the secret to sustaining energy for the vision in the face of day-to-day reality as a leader?
• (46:58) How do you pick your advisors?
• (51:31) Can you provide an example of using a strengths finder to inform your leadership approach?

References:

• Good to Great - Jim Collins
• The  Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
• Reality is Broken - Jane McGonigal
• The Power of Full Engagement - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Gallup StrengthsFinder

"Real strategy deployment empowers teams to act on strategic intent with ownership and clarity." - Karl Scotland

We’re joined by Strategy Deployment expert Karl Scotland in this episode. 

Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations through outcome-oriented, continuous transformation, engaging everyone, everywhere.

Over the last 20+ years, he has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco, SDL, Legal & General, Allegis, HSBC, Bank of America, Vocalink, Sky, and Irwin Mitchel.

During this time, he has been an early adopter of XP and Scrum, a contributor to Agendashift, and a pioneer of using Kanban Systems and Strategy Deployment for product development. He is a founding member of both the Lean Systems Society and Limited WIP Society, active in the Lean and Agile community, and a regular conference speaker. As a result, he was awarded the honorary Brickell Key Community Contribution Award at the 2013 Lean Kanban North America conference.

Our conversation explores Karl’s journey with Strategy Deployment, particularly how he learned and applied it during his time at Rally Software. He explains how models like the X-Matrix help to align aspirations, strategies, and tactics by visualizing and connect strategic decisions to tangible actions. Karl emphasizes that strategy deployment is a continuous, evolving process that requires ongoing feedback and adaptation rather than a static plan. He shares how using Strategy Deployment at Rally fostered collaboration, benefited from customer involvement in strategic planning, and enabled the organization to make more informed decisions about what to prioritize and what to stop doing.

Karl also introduces us to the “TASTE” model he has developed as a framing model for understanding the state of a group’s strategy deployment:

• (T)rue North - What direction are we trying to head in?
• (A)spirations - How are we defining success?
• (S)trategy - How are we going to get there?
• (T)actics - What are we actually going to do?
• (E)vidence - What leading metrics will indicate whether we’re making progress?

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Introduction
• (08:05) What led you to Strategy Deployment?
• (15:42) What is the connection between Strategy Deployment and Big Room Planning?
• (30:45) What happened when you brought real customers into your strategic planning events?
• (38:52) How would you describe the difference between Strategy Deployment and Participatory Budgeting?
• (48:20) What is the thinking behind ‘acting in the present?’
• (54:20) What advice would you give someone starting their Strategy Deployment journey? 

Cast:

Karl Scotland

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

References:

• Karl's Blog
• Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise - Thomas Jackson
• The Art of Action - Stephan Bungay
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt

"So on any given day, I'm just managing those planes and flight patterns and trying to make sense and create that sequencing of road maps.  Or at least highlight, hey, you're not going to achieve that, because this strategy over here in this portfolio isn't even thinking that way” - Christine Babowicz

When we decided to start inviting guests to join us, we were passionate about finding people with real lived experience to share their hard-won insights and wisdom.  We were very grateful when Christine Babowicz agreed to join us as our second guest, and she certainly brought plenty of wisdom.

Christine currently serves as Head of Global Execution Excellence at MetLife. She joined MetLife almost nine years ago after spending time at Intel and Adesa.  Initially serving in a PMO capacity, she became involved in the launch of MetLife’s Global Lean-Agile CoE 6 years ago. It quickly became a pull-based global agility and ways of working transformation.

Her role has recently expanded into partnering with Enterprise Strategy and 16 portfolios across MetLife to bring their AI strategy to life, focused on creating differentiated experiences for their associates and customers.

Over the years, she's spoken at various Agile Conferences and SAFe Summits, and her topics show her passion for leadership empathy during times of change. She was also a founding member of Raleigh-Durham Women in Agile. Recently, her leadership style and transformation efforts have earned her the Triangle’s Business Journal 40under40 award. 

Our conversation takes us through her journey as a change leader over the past six years. Christine shares the challenges of forming an Agile PMO amidst established practices and how her background in lean thinking shaped her approach. We discuss the importance of translating between old and new methodologies, building empathy and trust with stakeholders, and focusing on the problems portfolio leaders face rather than the solutions the textbook provides.  She also shares the value of grounding conversations across portfolio boundaries in the organizational mission and a deep understanding of business processes.

As a leader, she highlights the privilege of these transformative roles and the importance of staying humble and prepared when navigating such complex landscapes.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Introduction
• (05:44) What was it like forming an agile PMO in the middle of a very project-centric world?
•  (11:01) How do you navigate the translation between the old and new worlds?
•  (15:21) What triggered your transition to portfolio?
•  (21:03) With 16 portfolios, how did you pick where to start?
•  (24:50) What was your first step once you found your leverage point?
•  (30:08) What’s critical for a coach trying to connect with portfolio-level leadership?
•  (35:27) What secrets have you found to enabling change across portfolio boundaries?
•  (39:56) As a change leader, how do you make it safe for your team to tackle challenging conversations?
•  (47:28) Have you found recurring patterns that enable scaling of your change efforts?
•  (52:46) How do you help leaders balance aspiration and obligation?
•  (59:52) What parting wisdom would you share?

Cast:

Christine Babowicz

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards

“The right collective organization tends to have fewer blind spots, because, by definition, a team is a transactional memory system of sufficient predictive power that we can know how to work together” - Luke Hohmann

When we decided to start inviting interesting guests to join our portfolio conversations, Luke Hohmann was an obvious first choice.  

Luke is a four time author, three time founder, SAFe® Fellow, keynote speaker, and internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. His passion is sustainably profitable businesses, because it is only through sustainable profits that a business can thrive.

As Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks he works with executives to fulfill their mission of helping our customers create sustainably profitable businesses. His most recent book, Software Profit Streams™: Designing Sustainably Profitable Businesses , is co-authored with Jason Tanner and shares key insights from their experience helping businesses succeed. 

He co-founded Every Voice Engaged, a nonpartisan 501c3 nonprofit  that helps citizens, governments, and nonprofits collaboratively solve unsolvable problems. He founded Conteneo, creator of Weave, the Strategy Engine, and Knowsy, later acquired by Scaled Agile Inc.

Our conversation blends deep insights with practical advice. Luke shares stories from his extensive experience, discussing how to start a Lean Portfolio Management journey by understanding and improving existing practices rather than introducing entirely new ones. He emphasizes the importance of having the right people at the portfolio table, including often-overlooked roles like finance and HR, to ensure a balanced and holistic approach. 

Luke also delves into the cognitive challenges leaders face in balancing long-term strategy with immediate operational demands, offering strategies to navigate these complexities. He highlights the significance of recognizing when something should no longer be a portfolio concern, advocating for a focus on reducing unnecessary burdens to maintain agility. Throughout, Luke interweaves his Profit Stream™ thinking, showing how profitability can be integrated into portfolio management, especially in traditional settings. He concludes with a compelling argument for why embracing these practices leads to a more sustainable and successful organization.

In this episode, we cover:

• (00:00) Introduction
• (06:00) Where do you begin your Lean Portfolio Management journey?
• (14:25) What are some common mistakes you see people make?
• (18:57) Who are the right people to have at the Portfolio table?
• (35:56) How do Portfolio Leaders manage the cognitive load of balancing tomorrow’s strategic focus with today’s operational demands?
• (40:17) How do you determine what should and should not be a Portfolio concern?
• (47:43) How do you introduce your Profit Stream thinking into more traditional Portfolios?
• (56:19) What is your parting wisdom on why someone should embark on this journey?

Cast:

Luke Hohmann

Eric Willeke

Mark Richards