How Do You Know If Your Sponsors Are Any Good?

Summary

Baney Young, Head of Sponsorship at Network Rail introduces and guides you through the ‘Sponsorship Governance Landscape’; a tool developed by Network Rail to help visualize the role of the sponsor and the skills required to sponsor different levels and types of project within the organization. Effective sponsors are fundamental to the success of major projects and yet few organizations have attempted to define what is required of a sponsor and the kinds of capability they need, in any real detail.

The Sponsorship Landscape does this. It directly links what is required of the sponsor and the skills associated with this to the organization’s governance model as well as providing a platform for sponsors to record their development.

Role confusion is regularly cited as an important source of both employee demotivation and poor performance. The Landscape helps address this, for the education and benefit of the sponsors themselves and also for others in the project team who are unsure of how exactly they should work with the sponsor.