Hello forum,
My name is Ferhat, I am from Istanbul and I run a small PMO function in a mid-sized manufacturing company with about 1,400 employees. We have had the PMO for two years now and technically we are doing fine. Projects are more structured, reporting is consistent, escalations get to the right people.
But here is my problem: leadership is satisfied with us but they do not really engage with us. They receive our reports, they nod, they move on. We are seen as an administrative layer that keeps things tidy rather then a function that shapes decisions.
I have read a lot about how PMOs should become strategic partners, but most of that advice assumes leadership already wants that. What do you do when they are content with you being operational? How do you create appetite for something they are not asking for, without coming across as a department trying to expand its own territory?
I tried proposing a portfolio review session at the executive level last quarter and the response was polite but lukewarm. I think they liked the idea but did not see why they needed to sit in a room for it when they already get the dashboard.
Any experience with this? Would appreciate honest reflections, not just theory.
Ferhat
Your question made me actually go and check rather than assume. I looked through recent leadership presentations and meeting notes from the last month. Some of our data is in there, referenced in one portfolio review. But it is being used selectively. The information that supports decisions already made gets cited. The risks we flagged that pointed in a different direction do not seem to have travelled at all.
So we have visibility, in a limited sense. We do not yet have influence. Not sure if that is a PMO maturity problem or a relationship problem or both.
Ferhat, this is a situation I recognise and I think more common than people admit.
A question: when leadership makes portfolio decisions, are they doing it without the PMO's data, or are they using your reports without making it obvious? Sometimes a PMO is more embedded than it feels from the inside. Worth checking before assuming they are not engaging.
Also, what does "not asking for it" look like in practice? Are they ignoring your reports, or are they happy to receive them but never initiating a conversation themselves? Those are quite different situations and probably need different responses. What does a typical interaction look like when they do reach out to you?
Ferhat, the question raised in the previous reply is worth sitting with. In my experience the most common version of this is that the PMO is being used but not credited. Leadership is reading the reports, extracting the signals, and making decisions partially informed by your data, just without telling you.
That said, there is a version of what you describe where the problem is different: the PMO is producing information nobody specifically asked for, delivered in a format that fits the PMO's logic rather than the decision-maker's. Monthly portfolio reports are a classic example. Useful as an archive, not useful at the moment of a decision.
One thing worth trying: find out what decisions leadership will make in the next 90 days and ask yourself whether your current reporting directly informs any of them. If the answer is no, that is probably where to start.