Why We Need These Three Steps
Each sponsor (usually a senior department manager) uses their own lexicon to describe similar ideas.
Vocabulary is misinterpreted and causes each camp to go off on philosophical and strategy tangents.
Even if there’d been alignment at some point, who can remember? No records were kept. Every conversation starts from scratch.
Project Manager Step 1: Identify what we mean when we use terms A, B and C
As Project Manager, you’ve listened to different sponsors, refereed shouting matches, and conducted one-on-one interviews. Your discovery? Sponsors are more aligned than they perceive.
You do not attempt to hash out vocabulary when conducting your next sponsor meeting. Experience and common sense say that doesn’t work. Emotional intelligence says that sponsors nursing wounds from conference-room brawls, and email napalm have few energy reserves left for the project.
Instead, project manager, retire to your cubicle and create a visual, one-page working model that telegraphs alignment. It shows how the new, common lexicon incorporates the siloed versions.
Bring it to the next sponsors meeting. Hand it out as folks stream into the venue. Silence will envelope the room as all brains absorb the alignment document. The progress that already existed, though not clearly articulated, is in front of them. Deep breaths all around: We haven’t been wasting our time.
Without saying a word, you’ve started the most productive conversation to date among your project sponsors.
Project Manager Step 2: Agree on common definitions
After everyone’s finished reading the alignment document ask, “What do you notice?” Discoveries made when answering that question will further refine alignment. You, project manager, will update the document and email within an hour after the meeting.
Between meetings, share your and sponsor actions by email.
At subsequent sponsor meetings, updates represent documented agreements; This is an iterative blueprint for the project’s North Star.
Project Manager Step 3: Sign off and pass the baton
Continue to facilitate and document sponsor agreements until shared vocabulary becomes standard and consistent among all project sponsors.
Sponsors are now ready to pass the baton to the project’s engine-building team. How? See The Right Team = Project Steam.
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