Why Good Leaders Still Struggle as Sponsors
In an earlier piece (Nº 1), I described what happens on a programme when sponsorship falls short: the sponsor who attends but doesn't carry the story, the decision that never gets made. If sponsorship matters this much, and most executives know it does, why is it so hard to get right?
In my experience, it is rarely a question of commitment. Most sponsors who struggle are capable leaders working inside a set-up that makes good sponsorship unlikely. Three things get in the way.
The role is undefined. Executives are asked to "sponsor" a programme, and nobody explains what that means in hours, decisions or behaviours. So each sponsor fills the role with their own assumption, which is often a monthly steering committee and a signature.
It is not in their objectives. A sponsor's own targets are usually about their business unit. The programme sits on top, competing with everything they are actually measured on. When time gets tight, it loses.
They are rewarded for launching. Approving a bold transformation is visible. Staying with it through the slow, messy middle is not. Attention follows recognition, and recognition comes early.
The fix starts at kick-off, with a conversation most programmes skip. Before the work begins, the delivery lead and the sponsor agree the sponsor's job in writing, the same way we agree scope:
- how much time the sponsor will give, and in what form
- which decisions sit with them, and how quickly they will make them
- how bad news reaches them, and what they will do when it does
- how the programme shows up in their own objectives
- what return to expect, and when
That last point matters more than it looks. Transformations rarely pay back within a sponsor's reporting cycle. If the only promise is a long-term one, the sponsor has nothing to show their own leadership in the meantime, and their attention drifts. Agreeing realistic results for the short, mid and long term changes that. It gives the sponsor something credible to report at each stage, and helps them manage expectations at their own level. How to define those returns is a subject in itself, and I will come back to it in a future piece.
It can feel awkward to ask an executive for all of this. Ask anyway. A sponsor who knows what is expected of them, and what they can expect in return, is far more likely to deliver.
AI programmes add one decision to that list, and it matters more than most. AI outputs are never right 100% of the time. Someone has to decide what level of error is acceptable for this use case: how often a wrong answer is tolerable, and what happens when one gets through. That is a business risk decision, and it belongs to the sponsor. When the sponsor doesn't make it, the technical team makes it by default, usually without the business context to make it well.
So if you are an executive asked to sponsor a transformation, start with one question before you say yes: what exactly are you signing up to do? If nobody can answer it, write the answer together.
Most sponsors don't fail the role. They are never told what it is.
I publish a new article on transformation, delivery and leadership every week here. For AI, subscribe to Decoded, my monthly newsletter where I decipher the news and what it means for leaders.
