By Ritvars Mētra, Founder of ReadinessCompassThe sponsor has done everything asked of them. They opened the kick-off, recorded a video, mentioned the programme in the quarterly town hall, and attend the steering committee most months.
The programme still cannot get two people released from operations, two functions have been disagreeing about master data ownership since May, and nobody believes the date will hold. None of those is a communications problem, and none of them will be solved by another video.
Visible support is necessary and not sufficient
McKinsey’s survey of 1,657 executives on transformation reports that successful transformations require visibly engaged senior leaders who communicate clearly — and that a vast majority of respondents said their companies had exactly that. The results nonetheless suggest that while C-level support is necessary, it is not by itself sufficient.
The same research found only 39 per cent saying their organisation had built broad ownership of the change effort, falling to 11 per cent where transformations failed. So the differentiator is not whether a senior leader is supportive. Nearly everyone’s is. It is what that support consists of.
What only a sponsor can do
| Usually asked for | What actually moves the programme |
|---|---|
| Open the kick-off | Release two named people from operations, over their manager’s objection |
| Record a video about the vision | Settle the cross-functional argument that has been open for six weeks |
| Attend the steering committee | Hold the readiness criteria when it becomes inconvenient to hold them |
| Send the launch email | Say publicly that the date may move if the business is not ready |
| Champion the benefits | Absorb the political cost of delivering bad news upward |
| Reinforce the message | Use the new process personally, where people can see it |
Every item in the right column is a decision with a cost to the sponsor. That is what distinguishes the two columns — the left is free, and things that are free do not signal anything.
The last row has direct evidence behind it. Homburg, Wieseke and Kühnl found in a multilevel analysis of technology adoption that when people observe their superiors using a system, their own willingness to adopt is strengthened. Observed use, not stated endorsement.
Ask for behaviours, not commitment
Most sponsors are willing. What they lack is a specific request. “We need your visible sponsorship” cannot be actioned on a Tuesday, so it is met with the thing that can be — an appearance.
Replace the abstraction with a standing list of four or five asks, each with a date and a named counterparty:
- “By 12 September, agree with the operations director that Anna and Tom are released two days a week until go-live.”
- “At the September steering committee, decide who owns customer master data. It has been open since May.”
- “In your next leadership meeting, say that the date will move if the readiness criteria are not met.”
- “Complete one requisition yourself in the new system before the November town hall, and mention that you did.”
These are checkable, which is the point. A sponsorship plan made of specific dated asks can be reported against; one made of adjectives cannot, and it is why sponsorship is so often described as strong right up until the moment something is needed.
The hardest ask, and the most valuable
The single most useful thing a sponsor can do is say, early and publicly, that the date will move if the organisation is not ready.
It costs them something real, which is why it works. It tells the programme that readiness evidence will be acted on rather than managed, and it tells the business that raising a problem is safe. Without it, everyone correctly infers that the date is fixed, readiness reporting becomes a formality, and problems are held quietly until they become facts.
A sponsor who cannot say it should say that instead — that the date is immovable for reasons outside their control, and the conversation is therefore about scope and mitigation. That is an honest position and a workable one. What does not work is leaving the question open, because the programme will then spend six months producing readiness evidence for a decision nobody intends to make.
None of which helps if the sponsor is simply not there. Absence has several distinct causes and they need different responses, so it is worth diagnosing which one you have before escalating.
More on what sponsors should expect and provide in the Change Readiness Hub, or read what a sponsor should expect from a readiness review.