Chapter News

_{Photo by Margarida Afonso on Unsplash}

We nailed the project kickoff. The slide deck focused and crisp, the problem statement is sharp, and everyone leaves with a rare confident feeling this one may be different. This project might actually go smoothly.

Then the sponsor turns to the project manager and says, as if he is king sending a knight on a quest: “Hark, valiant PM. Take this charter forthwith. Vanquish the dragons of scope and schedule, and return unto me… value.

And, oh yeah, tell me how things are going from time to time in case I’m asked any questions in the executive meetings.”

Alas you should have known better, you’ve been here before. You know that you will not hear from your sponsor again unless something goes terribly wrong or asks you for status update out of the blue having spontaneously remembered the project exists during a random meeting.

Every year, we see the usual lists of why projects fail: communication issues, unclear goals, scope creep, resource constraints, inexistent risk management. All are real problem with severe consequences.

But here is the uncomfortable truth.

In my experience, “bad sponsorship” rarely makes the list, even when it’s the root cause. We label it as a “stakeholder alignment” or “governance” problem. The root cause is too senior to challenge so we call it anything that sounds technical enough to avoid saying the quiet part out loud.

PMI’s data frames the issue:

• 26% of organizations report that the primary cause of failed projects is inadequate sponsor support (PMI, 2018).
• And we make it worse by how we assign as sponsors with little training and vague expectations (PMI, 2025).

I’ve been a sponsor, so I know how quickly we just settle into a sense of quiet confidence that the project will implement itself, especially if we have a good project manager leading the team. But sponsorship is just an authorizer role at the start and a background role fort rest of the project. It is a continuous leadership job where engaged sponsors are consistently associated with better outcomes. (PMI, 2014)

If you greenlit the project, you are not just connected to it, you are accountable for whether it becomes value or just produces noise. That is the standard, but it is also an opportunity. This is not about blaming sponsors, it’s about making the role stronger, clearer, and more effective for everyone involved.

What project managers need from sponsors (and what sponsors often think they’re providing)

Let’s define the sponsor plainly, using PMBOK language.

“A person or group who provides resources and support for the project, program, or portfolio and is accountable for enabling success.” (PMI, 2017)

It is a short and simple definition. Sponsors interpret “provides resources” only as funding, “support” as “If it gets really bad, call me.”

But true sponsorship is not just providing a safety net. It’s a side-by-side partnership, like Batman and Robin, Han Solo and Chewbacca, or Shrek and Donkey, different roles, same mission.

• The project manager leads execution and delivery.
• The sponsor leads enterprise alignment, priority tradeoffs, and organizational permission. (PMI, 2017)
• Together, they protect value, not just timelines.

In practice, project managers need sponsors who do four very specific things, consistently:

• Make timely decisions. Most major projects do not fail because teams cannot work. They fail because decisions arrive late, after the window has closed.
• Provide priority clarity. If everything is a top priority, nothing is. The sponsor is the one person who can say, “This is the hill.”
• Provide air cover. Especially important when facing resistance from other senior and executive managers. When the sponsor is silent, resistance wins by default.
• Proactively advocate for the project. Organizations move toward what leaders visibly support and reinforce, not what they quietly approve. (PMI, 2017)

If you are a sponsor and you believe you are supporting the team, but decisions are late, conflicts linger, and unexpected issues continually pop-up, the team is not getting effective sponsorship.

Why sponsorship breaks down (even with good people), and why it reflects on the sponsor

Most sponsorship breakdowns are not caused by bad intent. They are caused by predictable constraints, and PMI calls three of them out clearly: overextension, communication breakdown, and lack of sponsor skills development. (PMI, 2014)

Constraint 1: Overextension

Sponsors are busy making their role “episodic.” They show up for key appearances the kickoff, a steering committee meeting, but usually a sporadic urgent email when something caught on fire. From the project manager’s perspective, they experience that as delayed decisions and the sensation they were left to fend for themselves.

No, the issue is not that sponsors do not care. The issue is that when sponsorship becomes part-time, risk builds.

Constraint 2: Communication breakdown

Many sponsors get plenty of updates and still get surprised. Oftentimes, this means that the communication practices were built for reporting, not alignment. A Status Update or report is not the same as guidance. The project can still be green, yet still be drifting, especially if the real blockers are organizational: cross-functional friction, competing priorities, non-sponsor executives using their influence and authority, etc.

PMI’s research showed that 47% of project managers say that sponsors communicate effectively while 92% of executive sponsors say they do. (PMI, 2014)

Meetings or status reports should not end with, “Thanks for the update.” Instead, they should end with clear decisions made, tradeoffs approved (if applicable), and barriers removed. Otherwise, you are not sponsoring the project, you are just watching it.

Constraint 3: Sponsor development is woefully underbuilt

Many organizations assign sponsors without training them on “how” to sponsor. Sponsorship is treated as a title, instead of a discipline. The role requires development of specific skills and behaviors including creating the right environment for project success, prioritizing accessibility to the project team particularly when problems arise, and obtaining buy-in among their peers.

When you do not build sponsor capability, you get sponsors who mean well, but do not know what “good” actually looks like in the role.

Sponsors: Good or bad, the project is yours

If you greenlit it, it reflects on you.

In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin (2015) said,

“On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader.”

In project terms, sponsors are accountable for everything that happens in the project. They are responsible for initiating and approving key aspects of the project; they also own the business case, define success criteria, make go or no-go calls; and remain accountable for the overall quality, value, and benefits of the project.

Ownership is what turns sponsorship into leadership.

Sponsor as cheerleader, advocate, evangelist

Sponsors must have belief.

A sponsor must sell the why and explain the value that the project will bring the organization better than anyone, even the project manager. Moreover, they must sustain stakeholder commitment, especially when organization’s attention inevitably drifts to something else.

Sponsors who communicate value, recognize progress, and stay visibly engaged create energy, and energy creates momentum. Sponsors who disappear create a vacuum, and vacuums get filled, usually by everything that’s counterproductive.

The Sponsor Effect on Project Success

The role of project sponsor in the success of a project is clear and cannot be understated.

Prosci reports that projects with extremely effective sponsors are far more likely to meet objectives than those with extremely ineffective sponsors. (PROSCI, 2023)

According to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession: Executive Sponsor Engagement (Oct. 2014), there are five key actions effective executive sponsors must take:

1. Advocate for the project
2. Actively participate in governance
3. Align the project with strategy
4. Remove obstacles and resolve issues
5. Communicate the project’s value and importance

The same report shows that when executive sponsors frequently take all five actions, 75% of projects meet goals and business intent, compared to 59% when none of the five actions are taken frequently (PMI, 2014).

Translate that into practical terms for project managers:

• When the sponsor is passive, the project manager inherits risk but not the authority to do anything about it.
• When the sponsor is visible, decisions happen faster, conflicts resolve sooner, and the system stops treating the project like an optional side quest.

An effective, engaged sponsor is the leverage a project and, thus, the project manager needs to succeed.

The Sponsor Operating System

If you want better sponsorship outcomes, stop treating sponsorship as personality-driven. Treat it as a system.

Effective sponsorship requires:

• Active engagement across the lifecycle, from initiation through closing, not only kickoff.
• Strategic champion behavior, including serving as a voice for the project and ensuring it receives appropriate organizational priority. (SPONSOR GUIDE, n.d.)
• Roadblock removal for issues beyond the project manager’s authority, with the sponsor acting as the escalation path. (PMI, 2017)
• Clear communication that produces guidance and decisions, not just status reporting. (PMI, 2014)
• Visible leadership, including willingness to invest time and energy, and to treat the outcomes as personally consequential. (PMI, 2025)
• Maximum ownership by the sponsor, including accountability for value and benefits, even after the project concludes. (PMI, 2017)

The Sponsor Operating System

1. Define value and success
   Sponsors should identify desired outcomes, validate the business case, define success criteria, and ensure the project delivers intended value.
2. Set decision rights and escalation rules
   Agree up front on what requires sponsor input, what can be delegated, and how quickly decisions must be made. Sponsors are expected to make timely go or no-go decisions and respond when issues exceed the project manager’s authority. (PMI, 2017)
3. Drive stakeholder alignment
   Build consensus on acceptance criteria ensuring the project stays aligned to strategic objectives. Sponsors sustain senior stakeholder commitment and resolve conflicts at the level where real authority sits.
4. Protect resources and priorities
   Sponsors must protect resources and guard against quiet de-prioritization of their project. Sponsors are also responsible making the tough decision of stopping or suspending projects when viability changes, rather than letting teams burn time on work that no longer has a path toward success.
5. Maintain visibility and reinforcement
   Sponsors should stay plugged in to the project team and understand team dynamics to validate whether reporting reflects reality. They should work with the project manager to protect the team from distractions or resistant senior/executive stakeholders. This is not micromanagement. It is leadership presence.

If we’re going to raise the standard of sponsorship, we have to move from criticism to capability, which is exactly what this operating system is designed to do.

Lifecycle visibility

Sponsors often show up hardest at kickoff and lightest in the middle, which is exactly backward!

Strong sponsorship runs through the full lifecycle:

Initiation	Provide a clear mandate and authority level for the project manager, validate the business case, ensure the initiation document accurately sells the project, and make the first go or no-go call.
Planning	Confirm plans are realistic, protect the team from committing to impossible expectations, review early risk and decision lists, and stay accessible for escalations.
Execution | Monitoring and Controlling	Evaluate progress against objectives, remove roadblocks, reinforce adherence to change control, facilitate conflict resolution, and celebrate key milestones to sustain momentum.
Closing	Participate in post-project evaluation, ensure handoff supports benefits realization, foster lessons learned without blame, and provide final sign-off.

This is what “present in all phases” looks like in reality. (PMI, 2017)

The Role of Project Managers in facilitating Effective Sponsorship

Project managers, have a role in this too. PMs should engage in f consistent coaching and negotiation with their sponsors throughout the project lifecycle. “Managing up” is not complaining, it is leadership. It is one of the most practical forms of project leadership we have.

Before you accept the assignment, ask questions that force clarity:

• Why are we doing this project?
• What problem are we solving?
• What strategic goal does it support?
• Are we fully prepared to resource this?
• What constitutes success? (PMI, 2025)

PMI’s sponsorship guidance explicitly frames “negotiating with your sponsor” as working through the pressures and assumptions around a proposed project to reach an agreement that is acceptable, even if the discussion is uncomfortable. (PMI, 2025)

By not establishing sponsorship expectations early, you end up managing the gap later, usually under high pressure.

M.O.R.E. as a light shared language

One reason sponsorship gets messy is that sponsors and project managers sometimes speak different dialects altogether. One is talking delivery. The other is thinking outcomes. M.O.R.E. helps bridge that gap.

PMI defines M.O.R.E. (PMI, 2025) as:

• Manage Perceptions: Stakeholders must perceive sufficient value relative to the investment.
• Own Project Success beyond Project Management Success: Take accountability for tangible and perceived value, not only execution.
• Relentlessly Reassess Project Parameters: Reassess value continuously and adjust plans as conditions change.
• Expand Perspective: Connect the project to broader business goals and real-world impact.

When used, M.O.R.E. becomes a means of establishing a shared understanding. It keeps the sponsor focused on value, keeps the project manager anchored to outcomes, and gives both sides a way to ask the hard question without drama

Conclusion

Causes of sponsorship failures are usually predictable: overload, miscommunication, unclear expectations, and weak role development. (PMI, 2014) If the causes of failure are predictable, the so are the solutions. True sponsorship is visible ownership + advocacy.

Sponsors do not just fund projects. They fund clarity, decision speed, priority protection, and belief, which is why sponsorship is one of the highest-leverage leadership roles in modern organizations. (PMI, 2014)

We keep complaining when sponsors struggle, but we rarely train them on how to sponsor. So that is not a people problem. Instead, it is a gap in the system and it’s where we are going next.

 

Works Cited

_{PMI (2014). Executive Sponsor Engagement: Top Driver of Project and Program Success.}

_{https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/executive-sponsor-engagement.pdf}

 

_{Project Management Institute. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide). 6th ed., Project Management Institute, 2017.}

 

_{Project Management Institute. Sponsorship Reimagined: The Missing Link to M.O.R.E. Project Success. Presentation, Sept. 2025.}

 

_{Prosci. “Best Practices in Change Management.” Prosci, 26 May 2023. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.}

_{https://www.prosci.com/blog/change-management-best-practices}

 

_{Willink, Jocko, and Leif Babin. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. St. Martin’s Press, 2015.}

 

_{“Project Sponsor Research: The Vital Role of an Executive Project Sponsor and How to Play It.” (Internal source document), n.d.}