Thinkers360

Change Management - Sponsorship is one of the Most Important Elements in any Change Journey

Aug



After delivering change, transformation, business and process improvement projects for over thirty years, it is difficult not to accept that one of the most important elements in change project success is effective and proactive sponsorship. In fact, without effective and proactive sponsorship, the project will eventually fail. The three key elements are: ‘Say’, ‘Support’ and ‘Sustain’!

Say: Sponsorship starts with providing vocal support for the change. The ‘Say’ is the foundation and is all about communicating the business case for the change to all affected stakeholders. Communication is key to change success and an extremely important first step:

Support: Having built the foundation of communication, ‘Support’ builds on the ‘Say’, and it is in this element that the Sponsor starts to actively and overtly support the change.

Sustain: ‘Support’ is much more important than ‘Say’, but ‘Sustain’ is critical for the organisation to deliver value and achieve the strategic goals. This is without doubt the biggest challenge in any change journey, gaining employee adoption of the new way of working.

By Peter F Gallagher

Keywords: Leadership, Change Management, Business Strategy

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