In Strategies for Project Sponsorship, Ron Rosenhead, Peter Taylor and Vicki James describe several characters that you may come across when working with project sponsors.
I’m looking at the remaining 4 types of sponsors that you could encounter on your projects.
They are:
- The sponsor who gets involved too late
- The untrained sponsor
- The sponsor who is part of a committee of sponsors
- The saboteur or just plain bad sponsor.
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
The sponsor who gets involved too late
Ideally, you want a sponsor who is involved from the beginning. If your sponsor is involved too late, they will be asking questions about things that they should really understand already. Or, if you have had the same sponsor since the beginning, they could suddenly decide to show an interest in what you’ve been doing after having not demonstrated any signs of caring about the project up to this point. It’s disruptive to have someone suddenly crawling all over your project desperate to be involved after you’ve got used to working without them.
Solution:
While this is an annoying situation, it is actually good news! You’ve finally got some executive sponsorship for your project, so embrace it. Share information with your sponsor. Get them involved in handling complicated issues or making decisions on risks.
The untrained sponsor
This type of sponsor hasn’t got much experience of working on project. They request changes that don’t fit with the project’s objectives. They ask you to get involved in business as usual work. They ask for reports that don’t add any value or help them make decisions. As a result, the project team start to get confused about what this project is actually for. It’s destabilising to have constant, inappropriate changes or to be asked to do work that doesn’t move the project forward. They (and other stakeholders) may question the benefits of the project and if you aren’t careful, there is a risk that the project gets cancelled.
Solution:
You need to educate the sponsor. This can be tough, especially if your sponsor is experienced in every other area except sponsorship. You can recommend that changes not be approved. Spend time with your sponsor making sure they understand the project benefits and how the work of the team contributes to achieving them.
The sponsor who is part of a committee of sponsors
Argh! If you are working with more than one sponsor, be prepared for chaos to reign. Who, exactly, is in charge? You’ll spend your time reporting to multiple people, providing information updates constantly, in different formats, and refereeing the different groups in the hope that someone with take control.
Solution:
You have to take control. Talk to all your sponsors and get them to understand that having so many managers is complicated and disruptive to the project. Get clarity on who you should be reporting to, and stick to that.
The saboteur or just plain bad sponsor
This person does exactly the opposite of what you need from them. For example, they frequently change their mind and go back on decisions. They may even refuse to accept project deliverables. In fact, they are just generally antagonistic and they challenge you at every step. It’s demoralising to have all your actions challenged, and you’ll struggle to protect your team from this negative behaviour. Their actions may rub off on you and the project team, so it’s important to address this as soon as you can.
Solution:
There is always a reason for contrary behaviour. Maybe the sponsor doesn’t know what is expected of them. Maybe they are so worried that the project will fail that they are meddling where they shouldn’t. Maybe they aren’t that bothered about the project and genuinely don’t care about the decisions that are being made. Once you have established the reason for the behaviour you can work out the best approach to tackle it.