Rebalance your work portfolio towards business goals
Rebalance towards strategic goals using Flight Levels
Why rebalance your work portfolio?
When your strategy is crystal clear but you’re not convinced the work matches your ambitions, rebalancing your work portfolio injects focus and snaps execution back in line with your goals.
To achieve your personal financial goals it is important to rebalance your investments if they have deviated away from your target asset allocation.
This financial practice can be applied to your work portfolio. What is your companies mix of work tied to strategy compared to running your day-to-day business for example? Has it deviated away from your expectations? This article contains four steps to help you think through and identify potential gaps between in-process work and strategy, and how to rebalance towards your goals.
How to rebalance your work portfolio
To ensure your area and/or company is focused on the right strategic goals at the right time:
Identify coordination work In-Process (Flight Level 2)
Visualize Strategy and Priority, then connect to the work (Flight Level 3)
Perform a gap analysis between In-Process work and Strategy. If you are not satisfied, update your Start Policy with Stop Starting, Start Finishing
Rebalance your work portfolio towards strategy
You may have to create new strategic efforts while finishing what you have started
Start strategic efforts when capacity is available
The below animation visualizes the 4 steps above.
Flight Levels is an innovative approach to visualize the gap between strategy and the work being executed on.
Rebalancing your work portfolio works best on a Flight Level 2 (FL2) system connected to a Flight Level 3 (FL3) system. This enables you to baseline, measure and trend your work portfolio mix. For example, determine the percentage of coordination work connected to strategy, and trend this over time.
Flight Level 1 teams can use the same 4 steps above by replacing "strategy" with "Flight Level 2".
How often should you rebalance
Based on calendar events
Review measures in an existing meeting cadence and rebalance accordingly
After a strategy refresh occurs
Rebalance work portfolio towards the updated Flight Level 3
Based on thresholds
When the percentage of work connected to strategy deviates outside of thresholds
e.g., teams might be delivering nonstop (high throughput) and are happy, yet senior leaders still feel uneasy—because the work isn’t actually advancing the strategy
Growth areas may have a higher percentage of work connected to strategy
Sustain areas may have a lower percentage of work connected to strategy
Hybrid
Based on calendar events and thresholds
When is the last time you rebalanced your work portfolio?
To learn more about Flight Levels:
Attend one of my upcoming Flight Levels Introduction (FLIN) trainings
Listen to real world experiences from last years Flight Levels Day - Edition 05 conference which includes my talk
Attend this year’s Flight Levels Day - Edition 06 conference on May 7th 2026