Bonus 1 — Portfolio Prioritisation — Allocate, Don't Add
Run your function as a portfolio: rank projects, allocate capacity, name what you'll stop, defend the cuts. Stop accreting work; start choosing.
On this page▾
- Bonus module 1 of the Manager-of-Managers program. Theme: Resource allocation as the leader's primary act.
- Quarterly portfolio doc with named stops — the real artefact you produce.
- Same shape as core 12: 90-min pre-read, 4-hr monthly intensive, falsifiable artefact.
- Reviewed by CHRO, VP/Director, sitting CEO, and OB faculty lenses.
At this layer, your job is no longer to ship — it's to choose what gets shipped. Most directors fail not by misexecuting projects but by carrying too many. A portfolio approach forces ranking, surfaces hidden costs, and gives you the language to defend stopping work upward. Without it, you become a delivery function for everyone else's priorities.
What the evidence says
- Doerr (Measure What Matters), Grove (High Output Management): the most leveraged executive activity is choosing the small number of objectives that earn capacity — and starving the rest.
- BCG portfolio research: organisations that explicitly stop 10–20% of their initiatives each year out-perform on the surviving ones; those that never stop accumulate 'zombie projects' that consume 30%+ of capacity.
- Reinertsen (Principles of Product Development Flow): Cost of Delay and WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) are the strongest evidence-backed prioritisation methods in knowledge work.
Pre-read (90 minutes)
- Read: portfolio thinking for functional leaders — Strategic Initiative Portfolio (SIP) frameworks from BCG, McKinsey, SAFe (30 min).
- Read: Cost of Delay and WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) — the cleanest economic prioritisation method (25 min).
- Read: the 'stop doing' list — Collins (Good to Great) and the discipline of subtraction (15 min).
- Reflect (20 min): list every initiative your org is running. Mark each: critical / important / nice-to-have / shouldn't exist. Sum the capacity. Where's the overload?
Monthly intensive (4 hours)
- 1Portfolio inventory (45 min)Each leader brings their initiative list. Coach forces a 2-axis sort: strategic value × capacity cost. Most portfolios have a long tail of low-value, high-cost zombies.
- 2WSJF scoring (60 min)Cohort scores their initiatives on Cost of Delay / Job Size. Coach challenges every score; consensus emerges that 20–30% of work doesn't earn its slot.
- 3The stop list (60 min)Each leader names 3 initiatives they will stop this quarter. Coach pressure-tests: who pushes back? What's the political cost? What's the comms plan?
- 4Capacity reconciliation (45 min)Match the surviving initiatives to team capacity (heads × weeks × focus factor). Almost always over-committed by 30–50%. Force the cut.
- 5Wrap (30 min)Public commitment: which 3 initiatives stop, by which date, with which comms.
The artefact you produce
A one-page portfolio: ranked initiatives, capacity allocated, named stops with rationale, and the comms script for each cut. Reviewed by your manager and the cross-functional partners affected.
Tools at this layer
| Layer | Examples (2026) | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio management | Productboard, Linear projects, Jira Advanced Roadmaps, Asana Portfolios | Visualise the whole function in one view |
| Economic prioritisation | WSJF / Cost of Delay calculator, RICE, ICE | Force ranking with shared math |
| Capacity modelling | Float, Runn, Tempo, simple spreadsheet | Match commitments to actual head-weeks of focused work |
| Stop-list discipline | Quarterly review ritual, project sunset template | Make killing work normal, not heroic |
Here's my function's initiative list with rough costs and strategic value [paste]. Help me: (1) score each on Cost of Delay / Job Size (WSJF), (2) recommend the bottom 20–30% to stop, (3) name the likely political pushback per cut and draft the response, (4) reconcile the surviving list against [N] heads × [M] weeks of capacity.
Between-session homework
- Portfolio doc drafted with WSJF scores.
- At least 3 initiatives explicitly stopped — comms sent.
- Capacity reconciliation complete; over-commitment surfaced upward.
- Quarterly portfolio review added to operating cadence.
Success signal
By end of this module, you can name every initiative your function is running, you've publicly stopped at least three, and your cross-functional partners know what you're saying no to and why.
Reviewer notes
The directors I promote are the ones who say no with reasons. Anyone can carry a long list — leaders prune it.
The first portfolio cut is the hardest because someone always sponsored that project. The second is easier. By the third, your team trusts you to defend their capacity.
If a director can't tell me what they stopped this quarter, they're a delivery function, not a leader. I look for the stop list more than the start list.
Resource allocation is the executive's defining activity (Bower, 1970). Sixty years of research confirms: organisations that ration capacity outperform those that ration funding.
Read next
All playbooksTwelve modules for the second transition — from operating a team to designing and stewarding an org. Org design, strategy, calibration at scale, comp…
Move from translating company strategy into team goals to setting the strategy for your function. Hypothesis-driven planning, bets-based portfolios, and…
Design the weekly/monthly/quarterly/annual cadence, the metrics that get reviewed, and the operating reviews that actually move decisions.