Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         1180 words

I recently attended a presentation on enterprise portfolio management or project management offices in Victorian local government. It seems to be the latest idea that has caught the attention of CEO’s in their search for solutions to problems they can see.

I must have been working in local government for too long. I have seen management by objectives, evidence-based decision making (or decision-based evidence making as I like to more accurately describe it), total quality management, reengineering, and more recently, lean and high performance teams. It is as though we look out our window and see someone doing something that looks like what we think we should be doing and we just copy them.

In two of the long reads (here and here) the shortcomings of copying the private sector are dissected by Peter Drucker and Henry Mintzberg. Continue reading →