sponsor

As the scope of your projects expands, you’ll need to engage teams, not just individuals, from around the world to accomplish your goals. Last weekend I was reminded about the challenging role that leaders who play an interface function between the global leadership team and their organizations. Two consultants from the Organization for Applied Research [...]

Kimberly Wiefling had an article on Projects@Work (www.projectsatwork.com) giving us a taste of some hard-learned lessons when dealing with project sponsors.
I’ve always loved Kimberly’s sense of humor and highly recommend just about anything she’s written. This is a great example of education a la entertainment. Check out her book too, I own it and can [...]

The applause was thundering as the magician completed his performance. Proman A. Jecgert had hired the magician to help celebrate the completion of what would come to be called Phase One. The party included all participants across the organization. The grove in the trees was a perfect setting, and the sun shone [...]

The escalation process worked! As work on the program drifted past the scheduled completion date, Proman sensed the pressure coming from across the organization. Managers wanted their engineers back to work on product development, not on solving broad reaching technical issues. But the impasse was real. Development could not continue (or [...]

Proman A. Jecgert put the phone back in its cradle.  It was a distressing call.  The caller was very frustrated and negative about what was going on.  “The place is in a mess,” she said.  “People are doing their own thing, and managers aren’t stepping in to guide the development process or make crucial decisions.  [...]

Three people took a break from the project startup meeting and went for a walk.  Stubbing a toe upon something along the trail, one person picked up and discovered a tarnished lamp.  As he rubbed the lamp, a puff of smoke emerged and formed into a huge genie.  “Well, hello there,” said the genie.  “I [...]

Project Sponsors, does this sound familiar?  You’ve got a great team, and you’ve pointed them in the right direction on a new project.  They work really hard, but what they come up with isn’t what you had in mind.
Project Managers, does this sound familiar?  Your project sponsor passes along some high level guidance to your [...]

The payment is project failure.  The investment is effective project sponsorship.  Successful project managers invest in managing their sponsors: they avoid becoming victim to bad situations by proactively eliciting the support they need.
Examples abound about how project managers manage upwards. 

Technorati Tags: action, building-executive-support, communication, Leadership, project-management, project-sponsorship, sponsor

(Posted on behalf of Michele Jackman, PM Consultant extraordinaire) I recently gave a UCSC presentation on the “art and science” of making SENSIBLE decisions under pressure. The greatest challenge is not the rational/analytical process. That’s the easy part.

Technorati Tags: Bottleneck, decisions, Leadership, Risk, sponsor