In this issue we look at the subject of executive sponsorship and what the major pitfalls are for leaders. There are four areas where leaders fail to provide the chnage sponsorship to ensure successful change.

• Not gaining alignment with peers in the organisation
• Too much cnange
• Not understanding your role as sponsor
• Lack of knowledge/skills

Not gaining alignment

The first area is not having sufficient alignment across the organisation. Research suggests this is one of the top 3 failings of executive sponsorship of change. Many times, we see projects running with no sponsor group, or a group that rairly meets and provides limited support. Sponsorship is more than support.

The sponsor group must be the holders of the vision, the people who are unblocking barriers to achieveing the change and communicating the change with genuine commitment and enthusiasm.

If they don't meet regularly, how are they going to demonstrate their commitment to the change, especially to the project team? The cosultancy firm, McKinsey, have a philosophy of not doing more work than their sponsor. Put in one day a month, then the consultant puts in one day! Installing this rule might just help with the next failure.

We use a simple diagnostic tool to analyse the effectiveness of the sponsor group and help them refocus their efforts. Click here to download a copy.

Toooooo Much change

There is a law of diminishing return for sponsors, the more changes the less effective their involvement. The more chnage, the less time they have available and then alignment breaks down. The leader has less time to focus on ensuring communication is taking place. Less is more!

we see this most starckly with the Health Service in the UK. Change fatigue has set in - the Government keep pile on more and more change and each are in their own right good things, but they ability to change is diminshing through simply too much.

It can be useful to energise an organisation to change and creating a sense of urgency, even crisis can spur the team on - too much and the change will fail.

Not Understanding the Role

Many leaders are simply not aware of their role in sponsoring change. It is easy to equate support with sponsorship. Yes, you have to support the project team, but sponsorship requires a great deal more: Leaders have to "walk the talk" through:

1. Active participation and being visible both to the project team and those impacted by the change.
2. Great communication throughout the organisation
3. Reward those that are exhibiting the behaviours/actions expected of the change.

Lack of Knowledge/Skills

It is easy for project teams to assume that their project sponsor knows what to do, that they need little support from the project lead/team.

So what sort of support? Often leaders need coaching on a wide range of aspects. Drafting communications, reminding of the affects of change and the need to signal that old way has ended and the new way is to start. Most leaders wlecome this help.

I hope that these thoughts will help you through either current or future changes. We run a number of public and in-house training on change management. Click here for more details