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Bridging Strategy and Execution at Peoples Health
Bridging Strategy and Execution at Peoples Health
Business Need
Peoples Health, a leading Medicare Advantage organization in its market, was pursuing the industry's highest quality recognition standard, tied to customer satisfaction, care outcomes, and significant financial incentives.
With more than 100 high-visibility strategic initiatives underway and strict regulatory timelines to meet, the organization needed a more effective way to align leaders, manage capacity, and track delivery. I was brought in to help build a consultative Project Management Office (PMO) approach that would give executives, vice presidents, and functional leaders greater visibility, coordination, and practical support.
Key Challenges
Capacity constraints: Directors and managers were balancing strategic initiatives with daily operations, making it difficult to manage timelines, approvals, dependencies, and cross-functional coordination.
Adoption and standardization: Despite training more than 80 employees on the project management tool, adoption remained limited. The organization also lacked enterprise-wide visibility into the scope, complexity, business value, and strategic alignment of its 100+ active projects.
PMO maturity: The newly established PMO lacked dedicated resources and an established operating model, requiring a scalable, user-centered approach.
Approach
I helped build the PMO from the ground up using a people-first, iterative approach centered on people, processes, and tools.
People: Engaged 30 directors, managers, and team members to understand operational realities, identify challenges, and shape PMO support around their needs.
Process: Provided hands-on coaching throughout the project lifecycle, helping leaders adopt practical project management practices while building trust and demonstrating value.
Tools: Partnered with the Education & Training team to address adoption challenges and led usability testing with seven pilot users, informing improvements to both standalone and enterprise versions of the tool.
Results
Contributed to $10 million in additional revenue by supporting the organization's achievement of its highest quality recognition standard.
Enabled strategic program delivery on time, within scope, and within budget.
Improved enterprise-wide visibility across 100+ initiatives through a centralized project inventory, analysis, and performance tracking.
Validated a user-centered PMO model balancing governance, collaboration, and practical support.
Developed three tool prototypes to identify workflow blockers, non-value-added activities, and process improvement opportunities.
Expanded PMO capabilities by supporting the hiring and mentoring of project coordinators in user-focused project management practices.
Key Takeaway
This work demonstrated how collaborative leadership, practical project management frameworks, and a people-first approach can strengthen enterprise alignment and help organizations deliver strategic priorities with measurable results.
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