Project Management Office (PMO) and working to objectives and key results (OKR): a strategy that survives until December
The strategy session is over, the objectives are written down, and the portfolio is coming apart: initiatives without owners, statuses painted green in time for the meeting. We put an operating rhythm in place and hold it: a portfolio of initiatives, weekly OKR check-ins, a monthly review with senior leadership.
A retainer. The minimum cycle is one quarter, after that month by month. Led by the partners in person.
“Strategies rarely die on slides. They die in February — when an initiative has no owner, and the owner has no hour a week”— the partners of Thesis Partners
This is about you if
Six situations clients come to us with. Two or three are enough.
There is a strategy, execution is coming apart
The strategy session took place in January. By April two people remember the decisions, and both are buried in day-to-day work.
Initiatives without owners
There are forty items in the portfolio. Half of them have no one accountable, a third have no measurable result.
Statuses are dressed up for the meeting
Everything is green until the day the deadlines slip. Senior leadership is the last to learn the real picture.
Objectives move from one quarter to the next
OKRs were set, but no one sits down to assess progress. At the end of the quarter the objectives are quietly rewritten to match what actually happened.
Many meetings, few decisions
Status meetings eat up hours while blockers hang for months — no one escalates them.
The portfolio never shrinks
Dead projects are not closed — what has already been invested is too painful to write off. They tie up people and money.
What is on your desk every month
Four artefacts that we maintain and update. Everything lives in your systems, not in ours.
Portfolio of initiatives
A single register: owner, expected result, resources, stage. We revisit priorities every month, without waiting for the annual budgeting round.
Status board
One page for the person at the top. It shows which initiatives are moving, which are stuck and where their decision is needed. We update it for every review from actual data.
Record of decisions
It records what was launched and what was stopped for the sake of what matters most, with the people accountable and the deadlines. A month later we open the record and check which of those decisions have been carried out.
Quarterly OKR review
Scoring the results and going through what was not achieved, without looking for someone to blame, then the objectives for the next quarter. A half-day session; the preparation is ours.
Why this will not breed bureaucracy
Portfolio management rests on how decisions are made, not on the number of reports. We take on the preparation ourselves: we collect the statuses, prepare the board and the agenda for the review. The team spends an hour a week on the rhythm. If after a quarter there are more meetings than before, the format is working the wrong way, and that is our responsibility.
The other half of the work is cutting back. Usually the first thing that happens to a portfolio of forty initiatives is that it slims down to about ten live ones. An outside position helps here — we are not embedded in internal politics and can say out loud that a project is due to be closed. By McKinsey's estimate, around 70% of change programmes never reach a result; those that do almost always have a structured rhythm of execution. That is exactly what we put in place.
How we work
Launch, 3–4 weeks
An inventory of the initiatives: owners, resources, real stages. The output is a portfolio, a status board and the first honest review.
Weekly
20–30 minutes with each initiative owner: where they stand against the results of the quarter and which blockers it is time to escalate.
Monthly
A review of the portfolio with senior leadership — this is where blockers are removed and resources reallocated. Anything that is not moving, we stop.
Quarterly
We score the results against the OKRs and set the objectives for the new quarter. At the same time we check the portfolio against the strategy: what to add, what to close.
After 3–4 quarters
We hand the rhythm over in-house: we prepare an internal owner of the process and step out. By agreement we stay on for the quarterly check-ins.
Frequently asked questions
Our clients and partners
Market leaders, state corporations and top business schools
Press about us
Our partners’ expertise in business and industry media.
Automating industrial plants: overcoming resistance
Thesis Partners partner Boris Kaptelov on why resistance to automation is an argument about the distribution of benefits and risks, who should own the outcome of a project and how not to get stuck in “pilot purgatory”.
We will go through your portfolio of initiatives in a single meeting
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Contacts
We work directly with owners, chief executives (CEOs) and senior leadership.