A Plan to Enhance Executive Sponsorship
“All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result”
—Stephen Covey
This chapter describes a process (Figure 8.1) for integrating ideas and information gathered from prior chapters into an overall plan for developing or improving an executive sponsorship program. We strongly recommend performing an initial assessment of all five areas of the sponsorship framework (Figure 1.1) using the assessment tools from Chapters 3 through 6 and working with the executive team to obtain baseline metrics about an organization’s current state of sponsorship to support an integrated and holistic approach to planning improvements.
Although the book’s design supports choosing one or more components that need attention and dealing with them individually, this can be risky if implementation planning does not consider the support structures that must exist to sustain improvements implemented in isolation. For example, if sponsor roles, responsibilities, and expected behaviors have not previously been established and agreed upon, then creating a sponsor training program would be a futile exercise.
Building the Plan
The steps outlined below offer a systems approach to process improvement. The goal is to build support for the program incrementally with small focused victories, rather than trying to attain commitment to build and implement a large and unwieldy plan that cannot be responsive to local culture and the facts on the ground. A flexible implementation of agreed upon priorities will help build and sustain momentum for the process improvements necessary to successfully build an executive sponsorship program.
Figure 8.1 Process for building sponsorship improvement plan
The Plan—Step 1: Engage Senior Management
The key to successfully designing and implementing an improved executive sponsorship program is senior management engagement. Two kinds of engagement and commitment are required:
1. General support for the sponsorship improvement initiative—Senior management must understand the value of effective project management and executive sponsorship to the organization and be willing to commit the time and resources needed to implement improvements long enough to see results. Organizational change is hard, and an executive sponsorship initiative requires sustained commitment. While some near-term improvements might demonstrate value, it could be 9 months to a year or more before isolated successes can be recognized as positive trends that impact the project outcomes, so senior management needs to be willing to stay the course.
2. Explicit support for specific efforts to improve sponsorship—The general support referenced above gains agreement for the journey to improve sponsorship. Explicit support is about gaining agreement and commitment to the proposed steps to reach that goal. Explicit support will be facilitated by seeking incremental agreement to a series of modest improvements that will be selected and prioritized in consultation with the senior management team.
Achieving engagement and general commitment to the effort is the essential first step. Chapter 2 provided information about the value of sponsorship to help build a case for the necessary support. The two fundamental questions the senior management team should consider are:
• “Do we believe there is room for improvement in our strategic project performance?”
• “Do we believe an investment in better executive sponsorship would contribute to that improvement?”
If both answers are affirmative this should translate into the organizational will to initiate and support the sponsorship improvement effort. If either answer is no, the organization is not ready to support a sponsorship initiative.
Support for specific improvement efforts will be developed more slowly and be built over time. Senior management will be involved in the assessments described in Chapters 3 through 6 and the prioritization and planning for improvements. That participation should help build the necessary commitment for explicit improvement plans.
The Plan—Step 2: Assess Current State (Chapters 3–6)
In consultation with senior management, determine which assessment tools might provide the best insights into the current state of the organization. Perform the assessments and identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. Table 8.1 recaps the assessment tools shared in Chapters 3 through 6 and the corresponding material provides background for each assessment.
Assembling data from each assessment component in the framework (Figure 1.1) helps the sponsorship improvement team gauge initial organizational preparedness and establish a baseline for process improvement. Chapter 7, Figure 7.1 presents a visualization tool for these assessment data that is helpful for communication and monitoring ongoing improvements.
Table 8.1 Recap of sponsorship assessment tools
The Plan—Step 3: Identify and Prioritize Areas for Improvement
When analysis results are available, share the findings with senior management and identify and prioritize areas for improvement. While individual organizations may have unique constraints or challenges requiring special consideration, we recommend a holistic approach inform the prioritization process. Some process improvements have prerequisite infrastructure requirements and inter-relationships or interactions with other elements that must be considered as part of prioritization. The framework for assessing a sponsorship program also suggests a sequence for process improvement. For example, if an organization is assessed to have a low cultural readiness score and a low PM standards score, experience suggests that addressing and improving cultural readiness first will usually be most productive, putting in place the necessary cultural support for later standards enhancement. Table 8.2 identifies the recommended priorities for consideration in each of the assessment framework components.
Once all priority 1 items requiring attention have been addressed, Table 8.3 identifies the priority 2 items that would represent the next priorities for consideration.
When all priority 1 and priority 2 items have been addressed, Table 8.4 identifies the priority 3 items that would round out the foundation of an executive sponsorship program.
Table 8.2 Recommended first-priority gaps/weaknesses to address (if present)
Table 8.3 Recommended second-priority gaps/weaknesses to address (if present)
Table 8.4 Recommended third-priority gaps/weaknesses to address (if present)
After preliminary prioritization is complete, small logical groups of prioritized items can then move on to more detailed planning. Collections should be assembled with consideration for interdependencies and support structures. For example, if the need to improve change control processes were identified as a priority gap, developing and providing training to socialize and reinforce the new standard would be a strong candidate for the same effort.
The Plan—Step 4: Develop Plans to Address Priorities
Small collections of the prioritized items from Step 3 above are now fed iteratively into the planning process. Solutions appropriate to the organization’s context and maturity must be identified and plans formulated to address these priorities. As mentioned in Chapter 1, we believe the secret to successfully implementing a sponsorship improvement initiative, or any significant organizational change effort, is to plan for modest incremental improvements. The goal is to build a series of cohesive and actionable plans. Each plan should represent the minimum change necessary to address and support one or two of the identified priorities and be implementable in 2–4 months so that results are visible and momentum can be sustained. The most effective plans will include mechanisms for feedback and ongoing refinement and process improvement.
Sample Action Plan
Gap: Sponsor training needs improvement
1. Form an action team of executive sponsors, PMO staff, project managers, and training department personnel to perform this sponsor training program update
2. Determine and prioritize learning objectives/topics to be improved/added in this iteration
3. Review existing training courses for quality and applicability
4. Develop a list of training solutions to address identified topics
5. Review proposed solutions with senior management and gain buy-in and approval
6. Secure trainers, courses, methods of delivery
7. Conduct pilot training
8. Adjust training solutions and curriculum based on participant feedback
9. Implement and standardize training program
10. Report results to senior management team
11. Monitor participation (who attends) and participant feedback (were objectives met) and report results regularly until the program has been institutionalized and is stable
12. Modify performance criteria to incorporate training outcomes and assess if new practices or roles, responsibilities, and behaviors are being practiced.
Implementing a series of changes to address priority topics will move the organization toward the goal of improved executive sponsorship. Small steps show progress, build momentum, and allow for the occasional misstep without undermining confidence in the overall effort. A holistic approach for developing improvement plans helps the organization recognize and respond to the interconnectivity among the five components of the framework. Effective prioritization helps avoid weakness in one component undermining improvement efforts in another area.
Planning for Continuous Improvement
Once implementation of improvement plans begins, the material in Chapter 7 provides a tool to help visualize and monitor progress at an organizational level. At a more tactical level, there are several performance measures (Table 8.5) that can help confirm that the improvement plans are progressing and achieving their desired outcomes.
Refining executive sponsorship is a journey, not a destination. Ongoing monitoring of:
• Organizational culture
• Effectiveness and fit of local project management standards
• Continuing evolution of sponsor roles and responsibilities and patterns of behavior
• Effectiveness of training and mentoring programs
• Project outcomes
provides information about areas needing renewed focus and previous solutions that need further refinement. PMOs are often well situated to perform this monitoring and present the results to senior management, as well as taking the lead in ongoing improvement efforts.
Summary
Building improvement plans for each of the components of the framework need not be complicated, but it does require a thoughtful, co-ordinated effort and involvement from key stakeholders in the sponsorship program. Chapter 7 explores the creation of the organization preparedness diagram to aid in developing a holistic approach to prioritizing the areas that need attention first and provides a mechanism for ongoing progress monitoring as improvement plans are implemented.
Table 8.5 Measures of progress toward achieving framework goals
1. What benefit(s) are there to using a systems approach for determining a holistic improvement plan for the sponsorship program?
2. What benefits are there to having a holistic view of the sponsorship program?
3. What challenges can you imagine encountering when trying to establish an executive sponsorship improvement program? How might they be addressed?
Considerations
Project Management Office
The PMO benefits by leading and managing the sponsorship program improvement plans. There is an opportunity to build relationships with senior management team members by providing coaching and improved standardized processes and tools1 that assist them in performing their sponsor roles more effectively. The PMO also benefits from more effective sponsors by producing more successful projects with fewer issues. PMO staff can offer insight into the inter-relationships among the different focus areas and will likely have a more pragmatic view of the current state of organizational preparedness. PMO recommendations about the sequence of action plan implementation can be valuable input to the management team.
Project Manager
Project managers and the organization both benefit from project manager participation in gap identification and improvement teams. This provides project managers an opportunity to converse with executives about their needs and demonstrate leadership and problem-solving skills. Project managers play a key part in educating executives about the sponsorship role and the competencies necessary to be a great sponsor. In return, project managers benefit from increased chances of being assigned a skilled sponsor that better meets project needs.2
1. Vicki James, Ron Rosenhead, and Peter Taylor, P. 2013. Strategies for Project Sponsorship, (Tysons Corner, VA: Management Concepts), p. 164.
2. James, Rosenhead, and Taylor, 2013. p. 160.