Leadership Coaching at SAFe Portfolio Level?

My friend received a coaching engagement to coach executives and Leaders for the Portfolio layer of the organization.

The organization is applying the SAFe framework. 

I requested him to explain me further about his strategy to support the leaders at that highest layer.

He shared a few bullet points .... but there are many more, but to start to with at a high level...these are few steps to watch for.

Leaders at the portfolio level are extremely crucial to the organization. Leaders demonstrate a broader and deeper Lean-Agile mindset to drive the organizational changes. Lean-Agile Leaders also play a critical role in creating an environment that fosters trust and transparency with customer value generation.

Companies today are immersed in a system of eternal change.

“Disrupt before you become disrupted,” is the mantra that sounds appropriate in every industry and sector today.

As a leader, they have an opportunity to direct or redirect their organization to develop into acutely focused on the customers and the market.

Questions to be proposed, Do we detect that the lean leaders are performing their duty in the organization adequately? How can we enable them?

SAFe highlights and prescribes what Lean leaders can do to revolutionize the business.

We can consistently coach the leaders to guide the organizational business transformation if we are discovering those leaders are not enforcing certain actions.

1) Leaders define the strategy of the business. They associate with the industry and chalk out the organizational strategy. Where an organization should move the next couple of years and why?

Those strategic themes are so dominant, it will be employed at every level of the business to generate value for the customer.

The strategic theme described by the leaders is distinct, differentiated business goals that convey aspects of strategic intent from the enterprise to the portfolio and next levels.

2) Leaders have to ensure that they collaborate and come out with strategic theme which will align with diverse stakeholders and numerous levels ( Enterprise Executives, Portfolio and Program level stakeholders). These strategic themes are the key differentiators that drive the future state of a portfolio.

3) Leaders define portfolio vision. A portfolio vision evolves from the strategic theme. The vision has to be persuasive as it will impact solutions, partners, key activities, customer segments, and revenue streams, and other portfolio business model components. Portfolio Vision is a description of the future state of a portfolio’s Value Streams and Solutions and describes how they will cooperate to achieve the portfolio’s objectives and the broader aim of the Enterprise.

4) Leaders Communicate portfolio vision, which is both practical and inspirational, clearly articulating why the future state is something worth carrying out. Understanding the longer-term view helps Agile Teams, Agile Release Trains, and Solution Trains make better-informed choices about the development of functionality in both the short and long run.

5) Leaders have the fundamental responsibility for ensuring the strategic direction of the portfolio maps to the strategic themes and enterprise strategy. This demands a clear understanding and communication of the portfolio vision.

6) Leaders define value stream budgets, which provide the investment and allocation of people required to accomplish the strategic intent.

Leaders ask the powerful question to establish the budget.

• Do the current investments in value streams reflect the changes to the business context? 
• Are the current value streams the right one? 
• Should we start a new value stream or end an existing one? 
• Do the Guardrails provide the proper guidance for investments? Are we spending the appropriate amounts on existing and new products and services? Do we have a sufficient level of funding for operations, infrastructure, maintenance, and support activities?

7) Strategic themes developed by the leaders have an influence on the vision and backlogs for development at every level. A leader will present these themes at every level and at every crucial occasion. This is a critical tool for communicating the strategy to the entire portfolio, producing a simple, memorable message that influences everyone engaged in solution delivery.

8) Leaders will write the goal of applying OKRs for strategic themes is to define and track their progress through concrete, specific, and measurable actions.

9) Leaders frequently present this longer-term view and business context during the Program Increment (PI) Planning event. These leaders can inspire and align the teams, increasing their engagement and fostering their creativity to produce the finest results.

10) Leaders develop the Business Model Canvas/portfolio canvas. The portfolio canvas defines the value streams that are included in a SAFe portfolio, the value propositions and the solutions they deliver, the customers they serve, the budgets allocated to each value stream, and other key activities and events required to achieve the portfolio vision. 

11) Leaders with the help of team members form the current state of the portfolio canvas. The develop and envision the future state, which helps define the vision for the portfolio. The difference between the current and future states represents the gap which is translated into the vision to attain the future state.

12) The creation of the vision is not a once-and-done exercise. As new information is learned about the evolving set of portfolio solutions, Leaders periodically review and update the canvas and the vision. Other triggers include the introduction of new solutions, mergers and acquisitions, the market rhythms of the portfolio defined in the portfolio Roadmap, and other strategic changes that may affect the portfolio’s value streams or solutions.

13) Lean - Agile Leaders recognize the challenge and opportunity their value streams provide. They make them as independent as possible, while simultaneously interconnecting and coordinating them with the enterprise’s larger purpose.

14) Leaders ensure Lean budget are in place, funds and nurture a set of development value streams, which delivers one or more business solutions. The lean budgeting process can considerably simplify financial governance, empower decentralized decision-making, and step up the flow of value through the enterprise. Leaders ensure exercise of the Participatory Budgeting when required, this is a technique for solving this challenge while ensuring that value streams receive the necessary funding.

15) Leaders have a primary business and technical responsibility for governance, compliance, and return on investment (ROI) for a Solution developed by the teams. Leaders ensure each value stream provides an identifiable and measurable flow of value to a customer. Some value streams produce revenue or end-user value directly(e.g. market share or solution usage). Other value streams, or elements of a value stream, are creating emergent new offerings.

16) Leaders remain available, during implementation, on a pull basis to share responsibility until the teams have attained a sufficient understanding of the work, actively break silos, address impediments etc.

17) Leaders support their teams as they embrace the Lean-Agile mindset by providing training, by providing coaching, and by being a model for others to follow.

My friend will search for the occurrences of all these activities(True North) and wherever he discovers improvement steps, he will coach the leaders.

Resource: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/