Navigating the complexities of Policy Portfolio Management
Strategic Policy Portfolio Reviews can help your team navigate complexity, align with shifting government agendas, and maximise policy impact.
We have blogged before about Policy Portfolios and how teams must manage them with care and constant attention. In this post, we look at how teams can do just that.
Why should policy teams actively manage their policy portfolio?
Navigating and optimising policy portfolios can often feel like an uphill battle. As the leader of a policy team, the challenges you face are complex and constantly in flux.
The political landscape shifts, societal needs and attitudes change, and economic factors fluctuate. These dynamics make it essential to continually reassess and realign your policy interventions to ensure they remain effective and impactful.
The Problem: Complexity and Change
For Policy Teams, managing a policy portfolio is like orchestrating a symphony of diverse and often competing voices. The complexity of addressing society’s most pressing issues while remaining aligned with government agendas can make it seem impossible.
Political transitions add another layer of complexity, requiring quick pivots to new priorities. The constant juggling act can make it challenging to see the bigger picture and ensure that every initiative is pulling in the same direction.
We have distilled the main challenges to be:
Alignment with Government agendas
Political transitions, whether they are seismic shifts like a new Government or smaller changes like ministerial reshuffles, require policy teams to quickly align their work to new priorities. This alignment is crucial for the relevance and success of policy initiatives but can be difficult to achieve without a clear strategy.
Identifying and mitigating risks
Policy portfolios are fraught with potential risks. Are you too focused on short-term solutions? Are you throwing good money after bad on projects that simply aren’t delivering?
Identifying these risks early and developing strategies to mitigate them is essential to prevent derailment of policy objectives.
Maximising policy impact
Ensuring that each policy initiative within the portfolio is performing optimally requires continuous evaluation and adjustment. This involves understanding current initiatives’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as exploring new policy levers and opportunities.
Responding to contextual changes
The political, economic, social, and environmental context in which policies operate is in constant flux. Policy teams must remain vigilant and adaptable to these changes to ensure their policies’ continued relevance and effectiveness.
Sequencing and dependencies
One of the more subtle yet critical challenges in managing a policy portfolio is ensuring that initiatives are appropriately sequenced and that their dependencies are well understood and managed.
Policy interventions often do not exist in isolation; the success of one initiative can be highly dependent on the progress of others. Misalignment in the sequencing of policies can lead to inefficiencies, wasted resources, or even the failure of initiatives altogether.
“Sessions like these help policy teams think outside of their policy areas, understand the complexity of the portfolio and where it fits within the wider system.
Having deep conversations about what kind of policy levers the portfolio holds, could be a great catalyst to empower teams to consider new ways of approaching a policy challenge.”
The Solution: Policy Portfolio Reviews
While the challenges are significant, they are not insurmountable. Regular Policy Portfolio Reviews can provide the structured approach to navigate these complexities.
By systematically assessing, analysing, and aligning your policy interventions regularly, you can ensure they remain effective and impactful in the face of change.
Assess: Articulate your policy goals and the policy levers you currently have in place to achieve them.
Analyse: Evaluate your current policy portfolio in detail, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, while mapping dependencies and sequencing to understand how different initiatives interact.
Align: Develop actionable strategies to maximise strengths, mitigate risks, and ensure alignment with political priorities. This could involve in-depth evaluations of existing policy initiatives and detailed exploration of new policy ones.
In summary
The complex and emergent nature of public policy requires strategic and adaptable handling.
By regularly reviewing and adjusting your policy interventions, you can tackle the challenges head-on and ensure that they remain relevant and impactful.
If you're ready to take control of your policy portfolio, our expert team is here to help.
Contact us to discuss how we can support your efforts in maximising policy impact and minimising risks!
“As a team leader I would like to carry out this portfolio review every 6 months to ensure my portfolio of work remains fit for purpose, reflective of the changing context and effectively mitigates risk. Thank you!”
