So You Want To Be A Sponsor…

Your leadership team has finally recognized your passion and breadth of knowledge and is considering you the right person to lead your company’s digital transformation project as a sponsor. Whether you’ve been asking for years to take on this responsibility or been ‘voluntold’ to lead, being a project sponsor is a potentially high-risk, high-reward proposition that often leads to personal growth, recognition, and career advancement. How do you make sure you’re the person for the job?

InSource has written previously about the impact of involved sponsors, and our experience working with customers across industries indicates organizations are broadly embracing the role of sponsorship for medium- and large-scale projects. Of course, selecting the right sponsor is crucial, and as your organization embarks on any new project, make sure each potential sponsor asks themselves the following:

1. Will you make the time? Note that we didn’t say “have the time” because, by definition, the people best suited for project sponsorship are those with the least available time. Many projects end up with a “sponsor in name only” because the sponsor’s involvement starts and ends with their appearance at a quarterly project review. While sponsors shouldn’t be expected to spend hours each week on a particular project, their continued support and visibility are crucial, especially in the early and late stages, where priorities are set and eventually revisited as budgets and timelines get tight. You can also consider if the sponsor understands the importance of the initiative and can be expected to prioritize appropriately.
2. Do your department objectives and personal goals align with the project objectives? This is a frequently overlooked question, especially when assigning sponsors for projects with a large IT component, such as implementing an ERP, MES, or Smart Factory platform. Strategic alignment is crucial. If the documented objectives of a project are to increase resiliency/availably of tools, decrease total cost of ownership, or reduce cyber risk, those are great projects for a CIO or other IT-focused sponsor. If the objectives are increasing production output, reducing manual labor, or modernizing business processes, consider a sponsor from that business area or unit. Don’t forget your sponsor still has a day job that will continue after the project ends, and they have a boss with their priorities, objectives, and budgets.
3. Do you know the vision, believe in it, and can you communicate it? With day-to-day decisions being handled by project managers and functional leaders, the sponsor is typically left with larger strategic or cross-functional problems, where one outcome must be prioritized at the cost of budget, timeline, or competing priorities. The sponsor must make those decisions in service of the project vision, and that relentless focus must be trickled down to the full team to ensure their decisions also reflect the full intent and purpose of the project. Strategic direction is vital. Of course, this assumes there is a vision and even a roadmap, which isn’t always the case. InSource frequently works with newly appointed sponsors or transformation leads to help them develop digital roadmaps that help lay out both the vision and the steps required to realize that vision.
4. Can you get buy-in? In a poorly run project, the project manager is responsible for leading constant update calls, hounding individuals to meet deadlines, and escalating delays so the project sponsor can “crackdown” on underperforming team members. In a well-run project, team members understand the vision, prioritize their project work, and are incentivized (either with financial or personal recognition) to complete high-quality work on schedule. This is most often achieved when team members know and respect the project sponsor and want to deliver on behalf of that sponsor. Like a good manager, the sponsor is responsible for morale, culture, and leadership. Looking beyond the team, the sponsor must also be able to advocate for and defend the project to steering committees, key stakeholders, and the purse-string holders within the organization. 

How an organization selects, develops, supports, and recognizes Digital Transformation Project Sponsors is a major cultural factor influencing whether their transformation initiatives will succeed or fail. If you need help selecting sponsors, providing sponsors with mentoring and support, or defining a roadmap or vision, please contact us to discuss our project leadership or coaching services.