For many years the topic of project success consistently revolves around “having executive support” I’ve heard many managers and executives state that the reason their projects was failed because they lack executive support. To discuss this in a definition of what executive support is and why it is crucial to the program or project success short-term and long-term should be identified. In my opinion, there are five facets of executive support/sponsorship, these will examined in more detail in this article. The initial aspect that many leaders view as the most critical is funding or “capital). Next, is the support of the executive team to provide access of necessary resources dedicated for the duration of the project. Third, the commitment from senior leader or executive sponsors to communicate their belief, confidence, and necessity of the project to all levels of stakeholders. Fourth, executive sponsors, and stakeholder’s involvement in the creation of, and execution of the change management plan. Finally, and in my opinion the most critical of all characteristics of executive support is the interest and involvement of executive leadership in gaining understanding of the value of your project to the organization.

To begin, let’s dive into the aspects of Executive Support in their order of importance to the project’s success beginning with gaining and keeping the interest of executive leaders and nurturing them along the path to understanding a proposed project’s need and value. This is the most important as well as the most challenging aspect to achieve. There are many obstacles to achieving this important goal. For instance, the length of time executives can spend to truly understand and gain profound knowledge of a project and it’s potential. Another obstacle, particularly with non-technical executives is the understanding of the physical asset management programs and their value to the top and bottom line. One of the best approaches to gaining attention of executives is to show not only financial value, but cultural value that will be created collaboratively as a result of your project.
An example of a collaborative approach to creating interest is to assess your program holistically and determine who the stakeholders are external to your department and communicating to them the potential value they can gain prior to addressing executive leadership. For instance, if your goal is to optimize asset performance through defect elimination, it will involve several functional areas of the organization, such as production, engineering, maintenance, and supply chain. (In your organization there may be others).
Another way to gain interest of executive leaders is to schedule time to educate them and potentially display what the value looks like. As they say, “a picture is worth 1000 words”. Using this approach, you must be mindful of the amount of time you’re requesting of your executives and the depth of information you can share with limited time.
One caveat when communicating with executive leaders is to be very careful to not “overstate” a payback, or to prematurely disclose estimated or budgetary costs to execute the project that have not been properly vetted. Doing so prior to gaining understanding and interest in the value of your project will create unnecessary challenges in securing the finances needed.

Let us assume that you have gained the interest of the executives in your project and they want to discuss next steps. Initially, you will most likely be asked to produce a high-level project plan complete with schedule, resources needed, and costs associated to complete the project. Exercise of gathering data to quantify the issues the project is intended to address must begin. The topic of project management is not the focus of this article and I will leave it for a different discussion.
During the process of finalizing your proposal a project manager must be prepared for multiple revisions to the projects financial estimates. This is typically driven by your targeted executive sponsors, and can be quite onerous. An important thing to remember while going through this process with your executive sponsor is that they are well-equipped to help you gain financial support for the project given their level of experience and relationships with their peers.
Preferred methods of calculating payback can vary from organization to organization. One suggestion I will propose is that you begin with the calculations at the highest level of financial strategy and disaggregate them back to the components your project will directly affect. For instance, working with your financial team to determine what your fixed asset turnover ratio is currently. (FATR = Gross Sales/PPE (Plant, Property, and Equipment)) In other words, how many assets does your organization need to produce products to satisfy company sales?
The explanation of PPE is:
• Property, plant and equipment (also called tangible fixed assets) is a class of assets which have physical existence, which are held for a company’s internal use and which are expected to generate economic benefits for the company over more than one year.
There are hardly any businesses that do not require physical assets such as land, building, computers, vehicles, furniture, etc. Some require more physical assets and some require less. Industries or businesses requiring more fixed assets are called capital intensive, such as an oil refinery, a milk processing plant, etc. Those requiring less fixed assets but more labor are called labor intensive, such as an accounting firm, an event arrangement company, a bank, etc.
Expenditure incurred on purchase or construction of property, plant and equipment is called capital expenditure. Such an expenditure is capitalized which means that it is recorded on the balance sheet and written off as expense over the useful life of the fixed asset through a process called depreciation. This reduces the asset’s carrying amount on balance sheet.
Cost is explained as:
• Fixed assets are recognized by a company when it gains control over economic benefits generated from the assets. All fixed assets are recognized at their historical cost which is the reliable estimate of all costs that are necessary to bring it to its intended use. The capitalized cost of a fixed asset has different components depending on the class of asset:
o Cost of land includes: purchase price, transaction fees i.e. all legal fees, commissions, registration fees, etc. related to the purchase of land, cost of demolishing old buildings, etc.
o Cost of buildings includes: architect’s fee, building permit fee, construction contract price, excavation cost, etc.
o Cost leasehold improvement include: refurbishing, interior improvements, modifications, etc.
o Cost of plant: purchase price, labor cost, inspection cost, test run cost (less any profit on test run), etc.
Source: http://accountingexplained.com/financial/non-current-assets/property-plant-equipment
Using this understanding of these accounting terms and how your project can impact their variables over a specific time frame will make the chore of gaining executive support for funding much more productive.

Next, let’s assume that there is support from your executive team in the form of understanding of the value, and quantifiable data to demonstrate financial viability for the project with the funding to back it. What is the next aspect needed to show there is truly support from your executives? At this juncture, many project managers would express that dedication of resources is the logical next step. However, prior to dedicating resources to a project there must be involvement of the creation and implementation of a change management plan that is driven by executive sponsors through stakeholders to the recipients of the project benefits. This is often overlooked as a critical piece of executive support, this is the point where project impact organizational culture, and as the saying goes “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Without defined and committed executive support for the change to the organizations processes and culture there is no amount of money or resources that can make up for this lack of executive support.
An effective way to gain this aspect of support from your executive sponsors is to request a cross functional collaborative workshop be held with executive sponsors and senior level stakeholders in attendance. The goal of this workshop is to create a change management strategy and a responsibility matrix that includes which of your executive sponsors and stakeholders will take an active part in the change management process. Without role clarity and responsibilities mapped out for senior level leaders, it is very unlikely that the change management needs of your project will consistently stay at the top of their priorities given the hectic nature of their day.

Having defined change management plan and those responsible for driving the change to the organization makes the selection of project resources more effective and efficient. This is primarily due to the fact that your executive sponsors and stakeholders have a deep understanding of the project goals can help select the appropriate people to assist in the successful execution.
This brings us to the topic of dedicated project resources. As mentioned earlier, if your senior leaders, executive sponsors, and stakeholders understand the goals of the project in terms of timing, financial goals, and culture change, you will be in a much better position to have those leaders provide you with the resources needed and are comfortable with performing on the project with a high level of buy-in, and involvement to be successful. It will also allow you and your stakeholders to identify the need for external resources such as contractors, or consultants, thereby also maintaining buy-in to support the fiscal demands of the project.

This brings me to the final requirement of your executive leaders to show there is support for your project. This requirement is your executive leaders and stakeholders commitment to communicating the value, and necessity of your project to the organization. “Communication is key”, as they say, what communication from your executive sponsors and stakeholders is much more than passively discussing it amongst their teams, it means creating awareness through public communication channels such as the company intranet, newsletters, bulletin board postings, and of course sections of team meetings dedicated to communicating project goals and progress. How to create a communication plan is outside the scope of this document.

A few of these necessary characteristics of executive sponsorship are very well known, however, many times they are promised by executives without a deeper understanding of what their support truly entails. To be successful you must not only attain these five characteristics initially but as the project lead or manager you must consistently and constantly remind your executives of these needs and support them in supplying you with their influence over the organization, allowing you and your project to be successful. I would also suggest that you create a dashboard that allows you to measure these five necessary pieces of the executive support puzzle and share the data with your executive sponsors and stakeholders to help them understand how, when, and where they can offer the best support. It also your responsibility to advise them on what is needed from them in an ongoing basis. Approaching executive support in this manner also identifies organizational roadblocks, and challenges that must be addressed and overcome in order for the organization to move forward and become more productive as a result of these projects.

One final point, giving consideration that this article was written with Physical Asset Management / Facilities as the point of focus, these aspects of Executive Support are not limited to it. The most obvious difference being what metrics are used to illustrate the value add to your organization.