After much deliberation and seemingly endless back-and-forth, strategic goals and objectives for the year are now set. Many company executives already have a good idea of the initiatives they want done to help the company achieve these goals. From there, different departments like Underwriting, Claims and Marketing execute on those initiatives or projects.
Executive Summary
When the day-to-day project hose and the strategic initiative hoses are running at full blast, can your team manage the workflow? That's one of the questions Consultant Carol Williams asks as she advocates taking a portfolio or enterprise view of projects. Portfolio management helps to avoid problems of work overload and the creation of new risks that fall through the cracks as different departments respond to meet the company's overarching strategic goals in a siloed fashion.As executives, it is easy to just tell everyone in the company to go forth and conquer. While that may work for a company with only five employees, insurers rarely fall into this category.
Here is where the challenge comes: You need people to work on those strategic initiatives while still maintaining the day-to-day running of the business. How do you merge these two areas to make sure you and the other executives have a complete picture of how people in the company are allocated to activities and projects?
Without a concerted attempt to coordinate these disparate efforts, different parts of the company will simply run with it. For example, Claims will work on a particular project, while Marketing will focus on projects pertaining to their area.
