Getting the Sponsor You Need

Rule 6 - The level of help you get is inversely proportional to your delay in asking

In our discussions with senior business executives, we found one project manager behavior that annoyed them more than any other did. This was the tendency for project managers and other intermediate managers to avoid or slow down the escalation of "bad news". This typically results in the executive sponsor being placed in a re-active position of fixing up the mess rather than a pro-active position of taking action to avoid the mess in the first place.

In one of our clients, we were reviewing a high-profile and very expensive project being undertaken in an out-sourced relationship. Our client, the consulting company developing the software, had a project manager who had run into a personal problem with the project manager of the company for which the project was being developed. While the consultant project manager had documented the situation it had not be "flagged" as a critical issue. When we became involved, the breakdown of effective communication between the consulting project manager and the internal project manager had remained unresolved for 5 months! The consulting project manager was determined to resolve the problem by himself. In fact, our conclusion was that the personality conflict was un-resolvable. Worse, the project's deadlines had become compromised and the contract was for a fixed-price and fixed deadline.

We escalated the situation to the C.E.O. of the consulting company. He met with the C.E.O. of the client organisation and on the following day, a more experienced and reasonable person replaced the internal project manager. Over 4 months had been lost in the project before the executives became involved.

Great project managers ask for help and ask for it as soon as possible.

This is extremely important for those of you in larger and/or more bureaucratic organisations. You will probably find that there are "in-built" delays in any information (good or bad) getting to the top. Worse, the more levels that your report passes through, the higher the probability of "filtering" and "distortion". You all have had a laugh at the classic office circular where a message from the front-line people that an executive idea is "shit" gets altered by each level to where the C.E.O. is told that the company should invest in a fertilizer factory.

Should your project get into trouble, then you should do everything possible to get the message to the relevant executive as quickly as possible. Given the issues discussed throughout this paper, you may need to be creative in breaking through the organizational barriers that prevent you from getting to the "real sponsor".

In one project, we couldn't get an appointment with the true project sponsor for 6 weeks. However, we found out from his P.A. that he started work at 7.00 am each morning so that he could get some quiet time before the chaos of the day started. So, we simply "ambushed" him in the company parking area at 6.45 am. While he was initially annoyed with our behaviour, as soon as he was briefed quickly on the status of his project and the decision he had to make regarding the solution, he made the decision and was in his office, as normal, at 7.00 am. The project was saved and we had no trouble getting access to him from that point on.

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