I was talking the other day with a colleague about Project Portfolio management and how many organizations still don’t understand the need to implement a balanced approach to the investment of their resources (money and people) into the project work being undertaken. Coupled with this discussion we chatted about people management and that there is always this push to improve people and turn them all into ‘A’ players.

It got be thinking about the potential of People Portfolio Management and like a typical Project Portfolio how we need to look at our people as a balance of :

1) Those that keep the business running

2) Those who want to grow the business

3) Those who want to transform the business

There is nothing wrong with having people on your team who do a good job day in day out and who ensure the phone gets answered, bills paid, widgets made, sales closed, statements balanced etc and in fact if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be able to focus on other forward thinking projects.

There are those who want to push things harder and see things grow and have the drive to do it and lastly the group who truly want to transform an organization and who understand the risk involve but thrive on that challenge.

As you can read the word ‘skill’ hasn’t been mentioned once. In fact the portfolio is about having people perform work they desire to do because as much as certain skills matter it is attitude and drive of people that will deliver results.

Next time you look at your business ask yourself do you have your people portfolio balanced and have them focused on maintaining, growing and transforming.

To be continued…