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Portfolio Planning

Venture Capital and the descent into irrelevance

Portfolio Planning July 9, 2010

The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Elemental finance: you assume the amount of risk suitable for an expected payoff. You assume bigger risk and its bigger payoff with the full caveat that there is an equally big downside loss that could happen. Invest in a money market and get slow, steady, decimal-point-% returns; [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 2

Portfolio Planning July 2, 2010

The key for organizations to grow and to thrive relies on how to manage projects and how to manage projects for organization success becomes an industry competitive advantage.  But why do so many projects fail? Is it lack of preparation? Is it lack of communication? Is it lack of commitment? No, those are symptoms. Projects [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; impact analysis template

Portfolio Planning June 29, 2010

On my previous post, Scope or:  how to manage projects for organization success that included the eBook Scope – Kills Bad Breath and Kills Projects [link below] I introduced the importance of scope before a project launches.  The numbers on project failure are sobering:  90% of all projects fail and this post follows up both the [...]

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Human capital risk, now that’s real risk

Portfolio Planning June 24, 2010

You commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people and when it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs.  Human capital risk is the real risk, but most investment firms don’t focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on quantifying the people or [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 1

Portfolio Planning June 18, 2010

Organizations rely on projects to remain competitive.  Projects are the way organizations deliver and realize their executive strategies.  The ability to deliver a project is the ability to compete.  Scope kills projects and projects that are not delivered kill organizations.  Scope is one of the most important ways to manage project success.  And when projects [...]

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Sales, finance, and human resources, only room for 2 at the table

Portfolio Planning April 30, 2010

There are really on 3 swim lanes, or functions, in business. Every business function is subordinated to either; sales, finance, or human resources. How can HR possibly have any impact when business is all about sales, brining in the money and finance making the best use of the money?

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Human capital portfolio management and simple math

Portfolio Planning March 23, 2010

A venture’s viability really comes down to a bet on a team to deliver.  It is the interpersonal process where venture performance is most impacted. Modern portfolio theory allows investors to maximize return and minimize risk.  The goal is to estimate both the expected risks and returns, as measured statistically, as an accumulation of investments.  Why [...]

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Innovation Boston and Budapest, or Dirty Water and the Blue Danube

Portfolio Planning March 19, 2010

13 years offers a great opportunity to revisit most relationships.  At first blush, Boston and Budapest seem to have little to share or offer each in a study on innovation.  However, both share unique innovation environments that reveal themselves upon further review. I am a Boston native and, after my undergraduate degree from Berklee College of Music, Boston [...]

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Risk is an unnecessary (p)art of the deal

Portfolio Planning March 4, 2010

To identify where risk is a real part of the investment deal you will commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people.  When it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs, but most investment firms focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on [...]

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4 tips to use Twitter for project management

Portfolio Planning January 21, 2010

In my last post I presented a case to manage your projects as a business portfolio. The ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, and within scope directly impacts your organization’s ability to compete and stay alive and project failure is an organization-wide risk. In this post I want to introduce Twitter to manage [...]

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Why your business strategy is a project portfolio

Portfolio Planning January 13, 2010

It starts with an executive need: a new market evaluation; improve operating margins; a game-changing technology; your competition is eating your lunch. Whatever the reason, a project is how an organization translates an executive strategy. The ability to scope and deliver a project is a competitive advantage. The best organizations realize project management capability as [...]

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IT failure, too much information in Information Technology

Portfolio Planning December 8, 2009

Technology enables information, but why are so many information technology projects failing? 74% of all projects fail, come in over budget, or run past the original deadline* 90% of major Information Technology (IT) project initiatives fail to be completed on time and on budget* A survey by the international consulting firm KPMG finds that 56% [...]

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CSI Music Industry, Part 1: The Crime Scene

Portfolio Planning December 4, 2009

First in a series of investigations into the death of the music industry record business. Background: I went to Berklee College of Music as a conducting and arranging major. I switched my major to music business mid-way when I discovered how lawyers and accountants make the major decisions about the music I heard. I wanted [...]

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All projects are human capital projects

Portfolio Planning November 19, 2009

The valuation of a company usually involves 4 areas: physical capital, financial capital, intellectual capital, and human capital Valuation is a combination of science, art, and straight voodoo (Enron anyone???). Voodoo aside, when I recast these valuations from a new angle, I see each relies, in their entirety, on people: physical capital – people are [...]

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3 reasons for failure: change, participation, and risk

Portfolio Planning November 1, 2009

An organization builds a culture of success when it can take a strategy, identify and prioritize the most important projects within the strategy, and consistently deliver projects on time, on budget, and within identified quality standards. Charting success is not easy. 80% of all projects fail for three main reasons. 1. 80% of projects fail [...]

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What Businesses Can Learn About Innovation … a comment about the numbers

Portfolio Planning September 3, 2009

I read Stephen Shapiro‘s excellent blog on innovation and wanted to pull over one of his blogs and my comments with a chance to expand them here. This post brings together 2 topics that are powerful when coupled, but too often stand apart and at odds:  numbers and stories. Innumeracy, numerical illiteracy, stands in the [...]

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The VC’s missing formula: human capital discounted cash flow

Portfolio Planning August 5, 2009

What valuation models measure human capital ability to meet financial and strategic business goals? What formulas are used to measure human capital contribution to profits? What are the human capital risk factors you justify when you build your financial statements and projections?  Accounting’s assignment of assets and liabilities and financial management’s current or pro forma [...]

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The devil in the details – the strategic plan

Portfolio Planning June 22, 2009

While with the FBI working in the Director’s Office of Strategic Planning I began to realize there are many approaches to build a strategic plan.  I wanted a plan that could go into operation and provide performance management measures.  I also wanted a repeatable process that was understood, committed to, and provided ownership.  Over time, [...]

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Statistically, your strategy will fail

Portfolio Planning May 14, 2009

I recently ran across a statistics book and began to think about similarities to strategic planning. Statistics:  a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data.  It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data. Until this week, I had not thought statistics had as much in [...]

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How goals help us fail

Portfolio Planning March 30, 2009

March 15th I read an article in Boston’s Sunday Globe Ideas section on how goals have a dangerous side. The article called Why Setting Goals Can Backfire jumped-started my thoughts on goals. The past two weeks I have spent time thinking and scribbling notes all over this article. I thought I’d share some. [the .pdf [...]

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