Given that somewhere between 30-50% of the success of any transformational change program depends on maintaining visible, active Sponsorship throughout the duration of the program, it is no surprise that if your Sponsorship is not what it needs to be, your entire change may be at risk.
Sponsorship is the most critical success factor in ensuring a fast and successful implementation of any type of business change {Tweet This}. But once you’ve identified all your Sponsors through the process of Key Role Mapping, how do you go about managing them? One of the greatest challenges of implementing large-scale, complex change is that very often you will be confronted with multiple Sponsors who each bring their own visions, political agendas, and "Frames of Reference," to the change.
Sponsorship is the most critical success factor in ensuring a fast and successful implementation of transformational change. Sponsors must do more than just make sure the project gets launched, or authorize funding for an initiative. Sponsors must be active beyond project launch. In fact, quality Sponsorship is determined by both action and position.
Sponsors are the key drivers of transformational change. What they say, what they do, and what they reinforce on a daily basis determines 50-70% of the likelihood of achieving value realization for the transformation. So, what do you do when they are the ones who are reluctant to change?
Step into almost any organization on the planet and we bet you will hear the same buzzwords flying around. Whether they are on a scenic, motivational poster hanging on the wall or being overused by people during a meeting, these terms are usually jargon laden phrases that are often related to whatever management trend happens to be going on at the moment. “I’ll champion that” and “We like to empower our employees” are just a few examples of phrases we’ve heard this past week alone.
Nothing is as important to project success as Sponsorship. Nothing. But, unfortunately, securing lasting, active Sponsors is one of the biggest hurdles faced by Change Agents during any organizational change. In order to help you secure Sponsors for your next project, we’ve put together a list of the top 5 Sponsor-related myths-- and a reality check to go with each one.
Getting all Sponsors to express, model and reinforce their commitment to your change is the single most important factor in getting a business change implemented at speed. What is the best way to do that? By developing Sponsor contracts for every Sponsor whose commitment is critical to the project’s success.
One of the key principles in the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) is, “You can expect the most resistance from those people who have the greatest vested interest in keeping things the same.” More often than not, these people are your middle to upper level managers. The reasoning is quite simple; Senior Managers, Directors and VP’s were hired, and are successful at their jobs, because they fit into the organization’s current culture. So what is their motivation to change their own behavior?
Generating Sponsorship is just one element of IMA’s proprietary Change Management Methodology, Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM). But, (and we cannot emphasize this enough), it is the most important factor in ensuring a fast and successful implementation. So, what exactly is Sponsorship? And why is it so important to implementation success?
Most organizational change fails to deliver the intended value realization. Don’t believe us? Just take a look at a few of these statistics:
