Improve Sponsor Engagement at M and G
As a major European investment company with over £200bn of assets under management, there’s a lot at stake at M&G across every area of the company’s operations, and they needed to improve sponsor engagement. Effective sponsor engagement is essential to successful project management and the Head of Learning & Development felt they needed assistance in this area.
Projects are now more successful at M&G allowing the sponsors to concentrate on managing the business with a focus on driving value for investors and shareholders alike.
The first phase of our work with M&G consisted of workshops with the project managers where they were invited to discuss progress of their various initiatives and to identify specific challenges they faced. Their view was critiqued by colleagues (facilitated by CITI) specifically to identify areas of tension between the project manager and the sponsor.
Following the workshops, specific potential solutions were then generated and incorporated into a ‘stakeholder plan’ for each of the projects. Additionally, the Head of Learning & Development created and managed ‘delegate stakeholder plans’ resulting in very different support options for the delegates, depending on their needs.
Project managers now proactively engage with key stakeholders – usually their project sponsor and other operational managers. As a result, there has been a significant improvement in the nature of the partnership relationships, leading to the timely identification of issues and improved ‘political collaboration’ and improve sponsor engagement.
