Portfolio Map
Arguing about a Portfolio Map - a simple block diagram - can help your leaders move from emotional to rational discussions about staffing
Context
A multi-product company with product, platform, and enabling teams. Costs are accumulating in areas that don't directly generate revenue and you need to work out what would be a more a balanced investment, given that everyone is asking for more resources.
I learned this play from Eric Willeke, an expert in all things product and portfolio at scale in large enterprises. We had hired Eric's firm to help us understand value creation at a music tech company in a time of significant change. Eric asked us to start with this play.
Play
Create a one-slide picture that shows how your teams interact with each other, with direct customer impact at the top and supporting teams at the bottom. Then argue about it. Have different leaders draw their own versions, make changes, even vandalize the picture to get it to show what you want to communicate.
Discussion
One of the key sources of waste is that different people in the company have entirely different understandings of how value is created and the role of different teams in this.
We often don't understand the rationale behind the investments we are making; staffing accretes over time, and everyone feels that some teams are under- or over-staffed.
The problem is that you don't agree about WHICH ones.
When you talk about each group one at a time, you lose sight of the whole. Arguing about a picture enables everyone to improve their understanding of how value is created - this in turn allows you to shift from emotional/political/reactive conversations about staffing to rational/strategic/proactive conversations.
The picture at the top is similar to the one we drew at the time. Let's dig into what each part means.