A company hired you as a new portfolio manager, and the CEO asked you to propose a method to manage the organizational portfolio. What should you do first?

Assessing organizational readiness for change is important but cannot be done effectively until key stakeholders are identified, since their engagement and buy-in are central to that assessment.

Stakeholder identification must occur first because stakeholders provide the organizational context, strategic priorities, and constraints that inform every downstream activity. Without knowing who the key stakeholders are, any assessment, gap analysis, or vision definition would lack the organizational grounding and sponsorship needed to succeed.

Analyzing the gap between the current situation and strategic direction requires stakeholder input and context that must be gathered before this analysis can be meaningful.

Defining the portfolio vision is a later step that depends on stakeholder alignment and organizational understanding that have not yet been established.