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Hi everyone. It's Ricardo Vargas here. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. One of the biggest reasons for failure in projects is that they are not related to technical aspects. They are not related to the budget. They are not related to deadlines. They are related to the project sponsorship, to the project sponsor. And do you know, one of the things that amazed me most is that people truly believed at the beginning of the project that, you know, I have a very, very senior sponsor, and then all my problems are sorted out. And then, in the middle of the project, you realize that you have only a sponsor on paper, that you probably met your sponsor twice during the project, and that the sponsor has no idea what is happening with your project. The sponsor is just, you know, a rubber stamp on, for example, the project initiation documents. And honestly, if you are in this case, there is a big chance that you will have a very turbulent process to deliver your project and why? What is the reason why we have a sponsor? The sponsor is a senior executive who is able to untangle the challenges you may face. So, the project sponsor helps you give clarity and senior sponsorship to your project, for example, by sorting out problems with other areas, sorting out complex problems with suppliers, etc. If you do not have this kind of old brother, you know to in some ways protect you against the challenges of the project, you will fly a solo flight and this will make your project far more fragile. There is a book that I just love from my beloved friend Alfonso Lucero, and it's called Project Sponsorship. I would suggest that all of you read this book. And it talks about the role of the sponsorship and how critical it is for you to be a sponsor in your project if you, as a sponsor, are listening to this podcast; this is a very strategic role to be able to sponsor a project because you are responsible for the big challenges of your project, because most of the time, these big, huge challenges that your project may face during execution, you do not have the empowerment and you do not have the position to solve them. Most of the time, you will need to rely on the sponsor. This is why, in my professional life, every time I had changes in the sponsorship of my project, my project started to face risks. It does not matter. It does not matter how well you are doing. One of the biggest risks in every single project is the change of sponsorship because new sponsors come with a new mindset and new behaviors. And of course, you may ask me, Ricardo, but you know, I don't control the sponsor. The company decided, for example, that my sponsor left the company, and I had a replacement that became my sponsor. So, how do I do? So my advice to all of you, it's map these risks on your risk register. And second, keep track of early warning signals of this type of behavior. So you need to track. So it's if you're trying to reach out to a sponsor and the sponsor does not answer. If you see a different behavior on the sponsor. These are all yellow to orange flags for your project. And if you see that you need to shift your project to deliver the most you can, the more you can deliver in a shorter time. Because remember your biggest, I would, protection against volatility is speed. Okay. Because if you have a project that takes ten years, you have a volatility that is dramatic. But if your project takes only, you know, three months, your volatility is much lower. So think about slicing your project into smaller pieces and delivering because you will face risks. And I don't want to be negative; I'm just being brutally realistic with all of you. So if you are facing this and, for example, if you're working for the federal government, for example, in the US, with the change in the president and the leadership, this is in some ways a yellow flag to you, because probably the new government has different priorities and your project is in the middle of this turbulence. Maybe you will find even more support for what you are doing. But in general, we see volatility and turbulent times. Think about that and I wish you a wonderful week and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
