The Portfolio Executives

When I look back at what motivated me to become a Portfolio Executive I can see that it was a combination of three things. 1)  disillusionment with the relentless focus on resource utilisation at the expense of all else within major corporations (2) a desire to focus on work that would have a positive impact on humankind and (3) to be able to spend more time ‘giving back’ to society.

In order to get started I talked with a number of people who I respected, including Charles McLachlan. I took at week out and spent time reflecting on my options, and I began to build a plan as to how I would make this work.

More or less the day I set up my limited company, I had a telephone call from a former colleague/client asking if I could help. That organisation became my first significant client within the next four weeks – and still is my largest customer 20 months later.

I have learnt that there is a constant need to be willing to step back and ask if we are heading in the right direction. The global pandemic has been challenging for everyone – but so far we have not been knocked off course.

At the moment we are quite busy, and have some interesting and challenging clients. So far we have been successful by listening carefully to client challenges, being quick to respond and delivering great work. We knew we needed to be flexible – but we have been challenged to become even more flexible than we expected.

As I consider my hopes moving forward, we would like to see increasing consistency across the kinds of client work that we are able to undertake – which would make it easier to grow the business.