Enlist Sponsors at Every Level with a Sponsorship Spine

Change depends on the effectiveness of those providing the consequences – the sponsors of the change. But sponsorship is a cascading process and a “black hole” anywhere along the line will stop the change process below it. That’s why it’s essential to build a Sponsorship Spine from the bottom up. You can’t really appoint sponsors. You start by targeting the people who will need to change. Then look through their eyes one level up to the person they trust who can provide them with effective communication and meaningful consequences. That’s their sponsor. Now do it again. Look up from that sponsor to the next level up, to the person who can provide effective communication and meaningful consequences. In this way, companies can create an unbroken chain, with every level from the frontline to the C-suite clear about their roles and ready to engage. Each sponsor in the spine needs to be trained, coached and familiar with their roles.

It’s critical that companies continually monitor the health of a Sponsorship Spine. People quickly revert to other priorities or stop taking a change initiative seriously. That creates black holes. When sponsors are proving ineffective, they should be coached or, if necessary, replaced.

One of the first applications of the Sponsorship Spine is a systematic Change Cascade. At each level of the organization, starting with the most senior people, management holds meetings to explain how leaders reached their decisions and to ask for input in areas where it is needed. The sponsor at each level leads the meeting, explains the change and requests feedback. Because this is done throughout the organization, it is important to ensure that everybody is touched-and that everybody hears about it from the person who matters to them most: the person with the standing to be their sponsor, typically their direct supervisor. The Change Cascade is the complete opposite of what typically happens when companies introduce a change effort: everybody in the organization tunes in for a video conference in which the CEO spells out far-reaching change plans, and when they turn to their supervisor to ask for clarification, the answer comes back: “I don’t know. I just heard it at the same time as you did.”

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