IST-Align Sponsors & Leaders

Who are sponsors and leaders?

Sponsors:

• Are typically a senior executive or high-ranking individual who has formal authority to authorize and fund the change initiative.
• Are responsible for providing strategic direction and ensuring alignment with university goals.
• Monitor progress and ensure accountability and results. milestones.
• Ongoing involvement may be strategic and less frequent.
• Often external to the project team but holds ultimate accountability for its success.

Leaders:

• Can exist at various levels of the organization and is responsible for guiding and motivating people through the change process.
• May include department heads, team managers, or project-specific change leaders.
• Communicate the vision and purpose of the change and support employees emotionally and operationally through the transition.
• Model desired behaviors to inspire adoption of the change.
• Are consistently visible throughout the change process and interact regularly with employees to drive day-to-day adoption and ensure alignment with the initiative’s goals.
• Leaders are often embedded within the project or its affected areas, acting as hands-on facilitators for the change.

Example

Imagine if the university were to adopt a new HR management system:

• The sponsor could be the university’s Chief HR Officer, responsible for securing funding and advocating for the project at the executive level.
• The leader might be the HR Director or departmental managers who work with their teams to understand the change, adopt new workflows, and address resistance.

Adoption Curve: Innovators are the first to embrace change, often seeing it as a challenge or opportunity. Sponsors and leaders are often innovators who understand the strategic importance of the change.  It’s crucial to engage innovators who can drive the vision, lead the change, and inspire others. These individuals help set the foundation for successful adoption by promoting the benefits of the innovation and demonstrating a willingness to take risks.

Managing Transitions: At this stage, stakeholders may be in the Ending phase, where they are letting go of old ways and feeling uncertain about the future. They may feel uncertain or skeptical about the change and question how the change aligns with their own goals or concerns about potential disruptions. Resistance could arise due to fear of losing control or a sense of security in familiar structures.

Potential Resistance:

• Uncertainty: Stakeholders may resist due to a lack of clear understanding of the change.
• Fear of Negative Impacts: They may worry about how the change will affect their roles, departments, or business outcomes.
• Lack of Trust in Leadership: If leadership hasn’t demonstrated commitment in the past, there may be mistrust in their ability to execute the change.

Strategies for Overcoming Resistance: 

• Help sponsors acknowledge the losses stakeholders may feel and address their concerns.
• Provide detailed information about the long-term benefits of the change…and repeat…and repeat again…
• Emphasize leadership commitment through visible sponsorship and regular communication.
• Hold one-on-one or small group meetings to address specific concerns early.

Key Actions

• Defining and sharing the Vision: Develop a clear, compelling vision for the change that reflects long-term organizational benefits. This vision should articulate the positive impact the change will have across all levels of the organization, with consideration for the variety of populations, environments, experiences, and intersections within the organization, from individual employees to entire departments.
  • Pro Tip: Beware of the tendency to describe the end state in terms of product or completed deliverable. The product (scope & budget) is project focused.  Remember, for change management the focus is on people. What are the new behaviors, new processes, new ways of thinking that are desired.
• Aligning Benefits: Highlight the intended benefits of the change at multiple levels (organizational, departmental, individual), ensuring that the messaging speaks to how the change improves performance, efficiency, or overall organizational success.
• Clarifying Leadership Roles: Assign specific roles and responsibilities to sponsors and leaders at every level, ensuring that each leader understands their critical role in driving the change forward. Leaders must act as visible champions and consistently reinforce the vision to the broader organization.
• Creating Accountability: Establish clear metrics for leadership engagement and success. This includes creating a system to track and measure leadership commitment to the initiative and overall progress, ensuring that leaders are held accountable for achieving the desired outcomes.

Communication Opportunity

Develop a key message and talking points that convey the end state vision and benefits. This will be used before, during and after change so this is time well spent.

• Short, <7 words encapsulating the vision and the why
• Talking points: 1-3 points with short summary of the top benefits

Outcomes

• Strong Leadership Commitment: Leaders visibly support the change, demonstrating their commitment through regular engagement and communication.
• Unified Executive Messaging: Executive leaders deliver consistent and aligned messages about the change, emphasizing its importance to the organization’s success.
• Clear Leadership Roles in the Change Initiative: Every leader knows their role, with well-defined responsibilities in championing the change and driving it forward.

Roles and Scalability

Project Size	Key Communications	Outcomes	Change Manager Role	Change Leader Role
Small	Identify and engage sponsor and leaders. Develop brief vision statement on the basic project goals.	Quick alignment on basic goals, ensuring immediate buy-in.	Facilitate short, targeted meetings with relevant sponsors and ensure alignment on basic project outcomes.	Support the Change Manager by reinforcing the project’s importance and ensuring that key sponsors are engaged.
Medium	Engage a broader group of cross-functional leaders. Develop a more detailed vision and alignment on both short- and long-term benefits.	Broader leadership support, enabling smooth project initiation.	Act as a liaison between departments, facilitating discussions to achieve consensus on project objectives.	Oversee broader sponsor alignment, ensuring that sponsor understands their role and responsibilities in the larger context of organizational goal.
Large	Establish a leadership coalition of senior executives and department heads. Create a comprehensive vision with detailed goals, timelines, and success metrics.	Strong executive-level sponsorship, ensuring strategic alignment and resource allocation.	Coordinate high-level sponsor meetings, ensuring executive alignment and that sponsor is actively engaged and held accountable.	Lead executive-level discussions to align sponsor with the strategic vision, ensuring that resources are committed and that the change is driven from the top.

Training

LinkedIn Learning Path: 

• The six questions leaders must ask before implementing change 
• Managing and leading through multiple changes
• Change vision 
• Change management roles
• Everyone has a role to play

Tools/Resources

Sample communication to engage sponsors and leaders 

Pro Tip: Use the key message and talking points as your reference guide. Make sure to include them in all communications. When responding to questions, try to answer while steering the conversation back to the key message, repeating the key message. [Persuasive speakers often employ this technique.]

Checklist

• Do you have the right level of sponsorship?
• Vision of desired end state[new behaviors, new mindset] is in written form.
• Key message is in written form.
• Talking points are in written form.
• Definition of success is in written form. [What it looks like and how it is measured.]
• Does the sponsor agree with what is written above? [final say]
• Do the project sponsor and change leader align?