As a major European investment management company with well over £200bn of assets under management, there's a lot at stake at M&G. Effective sponsor engagement is essential to successful project management and the Head of Learning & Development felt that they needed some help. CITI was called in to work with their project managers to improve their skill base.
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 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 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 and therefore the timely identification of issues and improved 'political collaboration'.
More projects are now more successful at M&G than used to be the case allowing the sponsors to concentrate more effort on managing the business.
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