Death by Project Sponsorship, Part 2

 

In last week’s blog, I reviewed an organization where I was employed that was positively obsessed with the concept of project sponsorship, to the exclusion of developing its personnel or actually executing the work it had in-hand to the best of its ability. Instead, this organization doomed itself by focusing its primary resources on bringing in new work, with all else receiving short-shrift. The organizational pathologies that developed because of this skewed focus were fascinating to watch unfold, even though they caused the staff much unneeded pain and anguish.

My next serious gig was with a company that had the exact opposite issue: it really didn’t care much about project sponsorship, and that perspective gave rise to an entirely different set of organizational pathologies which were similarly fascinating to watch unfold. This phase of my employment was with a company that claimed status as a minority-owned, disadvantaged firm under Paragraph 8, subsection A of the U.S. Small Business Administration rule book, which pretty much required a certain percentage of the government’s procurement budget be sent to companies so classified. Rather than have to spend considerable resources anticipating requests for proposal (RFPs), bidding on them, and breathlessly awaiting the results of the procurement cycle, this company’s contracts were often rewarded with a minimum amount of fanfare or strife. Life at this end of the spectrum was a trip.

It was, as stated, a small company, and its owners tended to treat the employees like family. This was a very strange experience for me, having come from a beltway bandit corporate giant that only gave lip service (if that) to its perception of the value of any individual employee. These owners were really neat people, and the staff had a far, far more relaxed attitude as they performed their projects’ scope. At the beltway bandit, virtually every member of the staff was constantly aware, if not positively petrified, of the possibility of imminent layoff. At this 8a firm, virtually every member of the staff hardly gave that possibility a second thought. Though, at first, I was somewhat skeptical about the 8a’s ability to perform at an optimal level, I soon began to realize that even I could perform much better when I wasn’t spending so much time looking over my shoulder, fearing a manager sneaking up behind me with a pink slip in-hand.

Eventually, however, signs of trouble in paradise began to become apparent. My new company/family was particularly poor at projecting revenue, since that particular information stream is definitely outside the capabilities of either the general ledger, or even a project management information system for that work that was not already in-house and baselined. With the strategic management function running on auto-pilot, there was no real push to develop the information systems that could have enabled informed decision-making in that arena – meaning that the project sponsorship function was essentially atrophying away.

As the date for “graduating” from the 8a program approached, and the project work would cease simply walking in the front door, efforts were undertaken to get a handle on the project sponsorship capability. These efforts resulted in what I nicknamed as the “Messiah Complex,” where new vice presidents would be hired from outside the company in the (vain) hope that they would bring new business in. These new veeps would be given charge over significant chunks of the company, and set loose. When the new project work was late (or never) in coming, another new veep would be brought in .. but the old ones would not be released. It wasn’t long before the organization became impossibly top-heavy, even as the new project work remained elusive.

This company attempted an IPO, but was hopelessly in debt by the time the lawyers and accountants were ready to pull the trigger. It was purchased, like the beltway bandit, by a competitor, and, like the beltway bandit, was a shell of its former self.

So, given these two extreme cases, is there a method for identifying the appropriate level of management attention to the project sponsorship role? Absolutely!  The best approach is…

...look at that! Out of space again. I’ll have to take this up next week…