Much like the coach of an athlete, great sponsorship is less splashy than being the star. But like the coach working with an athlete to activate talent on the team, a great sponsor serves off the radar.
The best have a quiet effectiveness that establishes trust and confidence in the team.
Experience has shown us that having a well-matched sponsor is the unsung resource that can make the difference between a successful effort – or becoming one of the 70% of projects that miss the mark.
Considering sponsoring a project team for 2022? To be successful, there are a handful of important roles you must be prepared for. Here are the seven most important we use with our coaching clients to prepare them for success:
- Interpreter & Connector – Every project needs a sponsor that can connect the role of the completed project to the organization’s larger mission and values. I’d assert that many, many of the project “fails” never really had a chance, simply because the firm at large failed to grasp their significance. By making the project relevant to the firm at large, it makes accessing resources possible.
- Ice Breaker of Resistance – Successful projects need a go-to resource who can help to create the positive conflict needed to resolve resistance. Most often this does not involve a power confrontation, but simply someone who can bring together the right people around the right question to create a solution.
- Air Cover Creator – Many times a team needs some time to solve a particular problem or get data about a thorny customer issue. At these times the sponsor needs to be able to “make some space” to allow the team time to get the work done. A respected voice goes a long way toward securing the working space for the group.
- Talent Scout & Recruiter – One of the biggest fallacies is that we can assemble a large group of part-time resources to achieve stretch results. We’ve seen this enough to know that the day job always wins. A great sponsor will be able to get top talent on the team by actively participating in the identification, sourcing and recruitment of both internal and external resources.
- Pocket Veto Overcomer – In cross-functional work, a common issue is that one of the functional leaders in the firm slows or stops the progress on a project by inadvertently slowing key work products. The most common cause of this is the functions senior leader simply has not been able to get to the leadership sessions where the priorities are clarified and established. In this case, once again the active sponsor is key.
- Mentor & Coach – It is a big ask to have one of your more talented team members step forward to be the on the ground leader of one of your efforts. It is easy for sponsors to slide 1:1’s and updates down their to-do list in the heat of business as usual. Top-tier sponsors provide non-cancellable short windows for updates and coaching that keep the team leader in the loop – and most importantly – supported.
- Chair of the Mini BOD – Lastly, this role is to chair the internal committee of senior leaders that are “touched” by the project. A sponsor needs to recruit and make available a “board of directors” that meets regularly to execute key cross-functional decisions regarding budget, talent and access to resources. Key to this is the gravitas to have everyone at the table and the team leader ready to go with board-quality materials.
Being the task force leader is a unique role that functional leadership only partially prepares people for. If you find yourself in the sponsor role for a project of significance and would like to accelerate your evolution into an outstanding sponsor – led team, we have developed an assessment tool and coaching that can take months out of your learning cycle.
To explore what this looks like, please use this link to put a 20-minute call on the books.
I would like to hear about your experiences, both good and bad, regarding senior sponsors for innovation programs.
Related Posts…
