[Music] time to kick off 2024 with our next series on the Enterprise agility podcast I'm John Lim and for January we've got a great conversation on strategic planning today's podcast will dive into the ways that organizations are improving strategic planning process as well as how strategic portfolio management can be leveraged to create enormous efficiencies without further Ado let's see from our experts Andy Jordan Anda Sharif hello everybody and welcome again to our next podcast I'm really excited for this one in the next couple because I am joined by nusa Sharif and nusa knows everything I mean not just about service now not just about strategic portfolio management or specifically strategic planning which we're going to be talking about now Nua knows everything so um feel free to reach out to any questions on nuclear fusion or astrophysics or any of that she'll be great but anyway we're going to talk about strategic planning because that's really exciting and much more exciting than nuclear fusion so strategic planning is something that organizations have been doing since the dawn of time and it's also something that organizations have been doing remarkably badly since the dawn of time there's a lot of focus on the problems with strategy execution but I've been managing projects and programs and portfolios for more decades than I care to remember and in all that time I can't think of a single organization that didn't approve too many projects that didn't think that magically this year it will be able to do 200 projects even though for the previous 10 years it have failed miserably to do more than a 100 it's just something that they're not very good at and organizations have been recognizing this finally in the last few years and they've been embracing this idea of strategic portfolio management as a business approach and this is really designed to address one of the core fundamentals of of strategic planning problems which is the disconnect between the setting of the goals and objectives and the actual establishment approval of the projects and programs and epics and whatever that is going to be actually delivering on those goals and objectives in the past the execs have stopped at the this is what we need to achieve piece and then the various department heads have worked with their teams to come up with proposed initiatives which have gone through a review process and and been approved or rejected based on business cases and those business cases are just not always as effective and efficient as they could be so strategic portfolio management is an idea that says okay we set those goals and objectives but then the leadership team establishes those major Investments the Key Program level initiatives they may not be called programs they may be called something else but those major program level initiatives that are going to be delivering the goals and objectives that the organization wants to achieve and will'll give one person one individual accountability for the success of that investment and allow them to manage that investment as they see fit to actually get the work done through agile through hybrid through waterfall through ad hoc through whatever they want through projects through epic through products however they want to structure it that work can be self-contained and as long as it makes the contribution to the goals the okrs that is expected to then all is good and this has really been a GameChanger for strategic planning because it allows leaders to now directly send everything through so that's great in theory but it actually has to happen in the real world so nusa let me bring you in here you're working with a lot of organizations who are doing some amazing things as a result of of their access to service now SPM what are you seeing when it comes to how they're implementing strategic planning and and leveraging these powerful software tools to help them connect the the plans the Investments the work and ultimately the benefits thank you Andy and um thank you for the introduction yes I know everything thing um so actually we've been talk we've been talking to a lot of organizations um especially in the uh area of SPM and exactly what you mentioned is that organizations are embracing strategic portfolio management because they want to be able to connect their goals to work that is being delivered and gain the outcomes that they wish they would need to have in order to stay competitive in the market every day when you look at the news you see some some companies are going out of business um and mostly it's because they are not agile enough to change to Pivot what they're doing um in terms of any changes in the macro macroeconomic environment that is happening and it's all because of the traditional ways of planning so as you mentioned um we talked to organizations and they say well our planning organ um organization is in this side and is managed uh by another group where the delivery all the work that is being done is done in another Silo there is no connection between them and there is this disconnect uh really hurts them in terms of delivering value to their customers as I mentioned at the beginning if the planning uh starts let's say at the beginning of the year they start with this goal and if they don't communicate it to all the other groups in the organization and they don't align to those goals and in case of change if nobody's um communicated clearly to all the all the different parts of the organization let's say there doesn't matter how they're delivering it it's agile if it's um traditional doesn't matter but it's that bridge it's that platform that brings all of them together to deliver on the goals that is set um for the organization and all of them can contribute to delivering value to their customers and stay competitive in the market and service now with our strategic portfolio management uh we bring that platform we bring um everyone on the same um I would say um we're connecting we have the bridge from goals all the way to um all the way to delivering teams and um at the end outcomes and we put all of the resources and Investments allowing to those goals so it makes it very seamless it helps everyone to deliver on what they need to do and stay motivated actually I think the point you made there n about the uh the silos is is critical I think that's one of the biggest challenges that organizations face is that they end up with work being managed in a silo that even if they're trying to align with the organizational priorities it's always got a slightly different perspective it's got the department view of what this the organization wants to achieve as opposed to that leadership enterprise-wide perspective and I think that's one of the key things that that a solution like service now SPM can give people it gives that same view that continuous consistent visibility that complete trans transparency across the entire organization and supports the ability to break down those silos that that really is a game Cher isn't it exactly Andy actually uh so when we talk to customers and they talk about organization they say well we are all working towards our organization's goals and in in their Silo so not the companywide strategy not that North Star that everybody wants to work towards everyone will have their own goals and they think that they're delivering on those goals and at the end of the year they're going to go to uh their organization lead and say well we deliver it on what you ask but it's it may not be aligned to the um to the goals of the um of the company so that is a problem that we see with organizations absolutely and I think that's really what makes this or what has made this in the past so difficult to resolve is people just don't realize there's a problem until it's too late and if you listening to this podcast this is just for the initial planning piece we've then got that whole exercise of replanning and continuous adjustments because the world is inconsiderate enough to not stand still and that's something that we're going to explore in the next podcast where n is going to be joining again me again whether she likes it or not so thanks everyone for listening and we'll talk to you again soon thank you so much Andy would love to join you [Music] again