How to Drive Transformative Change with Portfolio Management

About this webinar

Dr Al Zeitoun and Stuart Easton explore how culture, leadership, learning and enterprise portfolio management interact when organisations are trying to turn strategy into change and keep adapting as conditions move.

What you'll hear

• Treat culture as something people can shape. Al connects strategy, culture, leadership and ways of working, arguing that practitioners can influence them through behaviour, language, education and ownership rather than treating culture as something fixed around them.
• Choose methods that fit the organisation and the change. Al treats standards, frameworks and ways of working as guides rather than prescriptions. The question is what fits the organisation, the problem and the change, not which methodology wins.
• Build a PMO that learns and changes the business. Al describes future PMOs as learning engines and change entities: their job is mainly to change the business rather than run it, with tactical and mechanical work embedded elsewhere or automated. He argues that the label matters less than a clear mission and executive authority, and places the PMO directly with the executive team.
• Start with value and the real change problem before process. Al contrasts successful transformation with one of his own failed PMO experiences, where processes and templates were put in place before the organisation had established the value it actually needed. In another consulting example, the team delivered the agreed statement of work but missed what the client really needed: less executive resistance to the change. On executive buy-in, Al distinguishes change people want from change they are forced into, warning that imposed change can arrive too late or fail to stick; Stuart adds that the case should start from leadership's problems rather than the PMO's methodology or certification.
• Connect goals to the portfolio choices behind them. Al argues for portfolio management as an enterprise muscle connecting strategy, investment, resources and value across the organisation. Stuart makes the decision gap concrete: goals such as reducing carbon footprint and improving profit do not by themselves say how resources should be allocated between them. Al adds that OKRs become meaningful in portfolio context and that prioritisation should support a wider conversation about the organisation's strategic choices.
• Keep a North Star while the route adapts. Al argues for clear direction with greater visibility in nearer planning horizons while learning and adaptation continue as conditions change. His human digital thread connects technology with trust, empathy and human leadership rather than treating digital change as purely technical.