When Sponsors Win, Everyone Wins

Andrea Brockmeier is the Director of Project Management at Watermark Learning. She has 20+ years of experience in project management practice and training.

  Stakeholder Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Project managers sometimes find themselves having to sell the idea of sponsorship to the very people who should be owning the project. Here are three things you can do to promote healthy sponsorship in organizations where the role is not yet embraced as central to project success.

Of all the things that threaten project success, poor or non-existent sponsorship is at or near the top of the list. No sponsor? No project. 

Unfortunately, project managers often sometimes find themselves having to sell the idea of sponsorship to the very people who should be owning the project! Fortunately, there are things project managers can do to promote healthy sponsorship in organizations where the role is not yet embraced as central to project success.

Here are three keys for increasing chances for sponsorship success in your organization:

1. Show small successes.
You’d probably like to see huge, sweeping change in this area, but let’s be realistic.  If sponsorship is one of your project management opportunity areas, you will probably need to take baby steps in this area. In fact, create an experiment that you can use to slowly, organically grow the idea of sponsorship in your organization.  

First, identify projects that suffered from lack of or poor sponsorship. Without pointing fingers or blaming, be prepared to show…

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