Executive Sponsorhip – Pushing a Boulder Up a Hill

March 9, 2020 — David Miller

Why You Need An Executive Sponsor

Have you ever tried to initiate a large organizational change without the backing of management?  I’ve done it and let me tell you: I sometimes felt like Sisyphus pushing that boulder uphill only to have it roll right back down at the end of the day.  Progress can be made, but it can take a long time and never accomplish the full potential of the change.  You need someone who can more easily move that boulder and keep it moving up. Someone who can take your well thought out plan, secure the dollars needed to make your plan a reality, and help lead the charge.  You need an executive.

A good executive sponsor becomes your champion, building support with the other executives on why this change is necessary and good along with why the dollars should be spent.  They also put their name on project communications to the rest of the company, which helps build clout behind the project.  Your executive sponsor is committed to making this change happen and will do what they can to remove roadblocks, be them political, financial, or organizational.

Build Your Case and Gain Support

What can classify as a large organizational change?  It could be anything: a new mobile platform, a graphic work design tool, an outage management system, or the implementation of the Utility Network.  You build out the business case and plan.  You understand the value that this change will bring to your organization.  But ultimately, you are changing how people work and/or what tools they are using.  You can try slowly building support from the frontline people who will be impacted the most, but this can take an extremely long time and there is no guarantee for success.  This type of support is tenuous at best because one or two missteps can heavily set you back…like a boulder rolling back over you.  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include those end users.  You need their input, buy-in, and support for any change to be truly successful but you can’t solely rely on them.  You need a mix of their support along with a sponsor’s support.

Find the Right Executive Sponsor

Finding a sponsor can be easy (i.e. the sponsor is the one who came up with the idea in the first place) or hard (i.e. no sponsor is aware of the project nor fully understand the benefits).  The best route to take is to find a sponsor (or even sponsors) that your project best fits.  For example:

  • A new outage management system should have an executive sponsor in Operations
  • A new graphic work design tool should be sponsored by Engineering.
  • A new work management system would probably have sponsors from both Engineering, Operations, and potentially Finance and IT.

If you’re in the “really hard to find” boat, you’ll have to essentially sell your project to a sponsor or sponsors on why it is beneficial to the company and to them.  Ideally, this selling occurs before you develop the business justification because those sponsors can help you craft that to ensure it gets approved.  Just know that more sponsors mean more people to keep happy and informed.

How to Win an Executive Sponsor

How do you sell a sponsor on your project?  By appealing to what their ideas and visions are for their area of responsibility.  If the Operations Vice President is very concerned about the outage statistics, then explain to them how a new outage management system can improve those statistics.  If the Engineering executive is constantly talking about how inefficient the design processes are, elaborate on how an integrated graphic work design tool can streamline the design process and reduce the overall time it takes to get a job to the field.  Strongly aligning your project to help your sponsor achieve their goals is a surefire way to win their support.

Keeping the Executive Sponsor Engaged

Once you have a sponsor on board, you need to work with them on telling (and selling) the story of your project.  They need to know the important details, but they don’t need to know every minute task of the project.  From there, you keep them informed on how the project is going via status reports.  I recommend monthly status reports for the sponsor as they do not need to see the week to week progress (unless it’s a short project or they request it).

When the project hits critical mass such as a major milestone or an organizational change management point, having the executive sponsor send out a message on your project’s behalf can have amazing results.  It reinforces the legitimacy of what you are trying to accomplish and the fact that it is backed by executive management.  This message could be what impacted stakeholders will be seeing, a reminder of what is going on, or the fact the project has successfully completed!  Periodic sponsor communications to the company can help keep the project on track and in people’s minds.

If you try keeping major projects on track without an executive sponsor, you will very much feel like Sisyphus pushing that boulder: in constant pain and not making any progress.  Do yourself a favor:  find that sponsor.  Train that sponsor.  Nurture that sponsor.  They will be one of your greatest allies in making your project successful.

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David Miller

Principal Consultant Team Lead

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