Getting the Sponsor You Need

Rule 5 - Educate as well as inform

During the 20 plus years we have been involved in project management education and consulting, we are constantly amazed by the lack of project management education and support offered to senior business executives. However, on many occasions, we have been asked to present seminars and tutorials to very senior business people. In conducting these senior executive seminars, we have learnt a powerful insight.

The majority of senior business executives do not understand projects or project management!

As discussed by our group in many other papers, there are two distinct categories of work in all organisations.

The first is Process work. This work is "business as usual" and has the following attributes:

• it repeats;
• it has a short time-frame (usually measured in minutes);
• it is standardised, non-creative and structured;
• it is documented;
• it is easily measured;
• it minimizes variation between people undertaking the work; and<
• it operates within the status-quo.

This work is found in factories, offices, restaurants, airlines, construction, hospitals, banks and so on. We estimate that between 70 - 80% of all work belongs to this category.

The second category of work is Project work. It is the exact opposite of Process work. It is designed to change "business as usual" and has the following attributes:

• it is unique;
• it has a long time-frame (usually measured in months);
• it is non-standardised, creative and generally un-structured;
• it is difficult to document;
• it is not easily measured;
• it maximizes variation between people undertaking the work; and
• it changes the status-quo.

This work is found in all organisations but, in most organisations, is clustered in groups such as Marketing, Information Technology, Research, Policy and other specialist groups.  We estimate that, for most organisations, this work is around 20 - 30% of all effort in an organisation

In would be typical for your sponsor to have worked for many years in Process work - not - Project work cultures. As a result, he or she is simply ignorant of the dynamics of projects. More importantly, your sponsor is also ignorant of their roles and responsibilities as a project sponsor.

This insight explains much of the frustration that project managers experience with their sponsors.

For example, in a Process culture, it is an accepted belief that great leaders empower and delegate. Indeed, it is the nature of Process work that it operates in a machine-like and predictable fashion so the executive can generally leave the day-to-day operations to his or her people and focus on strategic issues. Given this, it would seem natural and normal for the same executives to also delegate many of the critical decisions for their projects to their project managers.

As a result, the behaviours described in Rules 1 and 2 are not the result of stupidity or bloody-mindedness, but rather, the result of ignorance.

Therefore, as a project manager, one of your key roles is one of educating your business stakeholders and sponsor on the nature of Project work.

For example, you are planning to present a complex project risk assessment report to your sponsor that shows that the sponsor's project (remember Rule 2). As we'll discuss later, you may make the assumption that the sponsor understands project risk assessment. However, it is a useful strategy to spend some time with your sponsor explaining the difference between business risk (which they should be aware of) and project risk before you show him or her the risk assessment. If you can't get time with your sponsor send him or her a small summary of what is project risk assessment[v].

Footnote

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