Roger McCarty: The interaction between a project team and a sponsor is essential to the success of the project. As we learned during the engagement letter process, it is critical to set expectations, to under-promise and over-deliver, to create satisfaction with the company sponsor and the project stakeholders. It may also be necessary to encourage the sponsor to modify the original project description to recognize the deliverables proposed by the team that have greater impact and value creation than the original tasks provided in the project description. But how will these interactions occur between the company sponsor and the project team?

Interactions occur across the spectrum. At one extreme are the interactions where the sponsor is articulate, precise, and forthcoming, while at the other extreme, the sponsor is evasive, and their instructions vague, imprecise, and shifting, and the interaction chaotic. As you may have to cope with some or all of these situations, let's look at a case study of a project team who needed to manage across this spectrum. Let's call this case "Working Virtually with a Distant Sponsor." You can find the text of this case in Chapters 1 through 3 of the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ, published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Our project team is made up of two brothers, their families, and their friends. One brother was Jared, and while the case does not mention his brother's name, let's call him Mahonri Moriancumr or Mahonri for short. This team of people lived in a very chaotic situation, and they were not getting any significant direction as to what they needed to be doing. While the local government in Babel was building a tower to heaven, a more general heavenly government leader confounded the languages of the people, or in essence, caused that none of the workers could understand each other (see Ether Chapter 1, Verse 33). While this may not seem all that uncommon for workers to have poor communication, in this case, their actual languages were changed, so they were really at a loss to communicate. To make matters worse, the project sponsor was missing, and the team did not know what to do and were not being given any instructions.

Note that Mahonri did not wait around to see what would happen next. He proactively contacted the project sponsor with his needs. When he saw the situation changing, Jared approached Mahonri with an idea (let's look at Ether 1:34-35).

Finally, the brothers decided that just being able to communicate was not enough. They wanted to make greater impact and create more value, so they made one more request of the project sponsor to modify the deliverables of their project (found in verses 38 and 39). Now we see that Mahonri did not even wait to see if the project sponsor would change their venue. He went and proactively told the sponsor where they wanted to move their project team to, and they were not squeamish about asking for the place "most choice in all the earth." Up to this point, the project team felt they were doing all the work and that the vague and chaotic project was an impossible and fearful burden. But with the latest request, the project sponsor finally focused his attention on the team. He said he had been busy with people building towers and some pretty serious infractions of company policies, but was now available to concentrate on this team.

Now we see in verses 40 to 43, the sponsor began to give very direct and specific instructions that the team could use to complete the new deliverables that they and the sponsor had agreed to. The team was really excited to have the sponsor working so closely and to even have him plan to visit them during the project. At this point, the team put together their action register and Gantt chart to really implement the project plan to meet the deliverables. One example of some tasks from their work plan can be found in Ether Chapter 2, Verses 2 & 3.

As the team moved forward, they continued to meet weekly with the sponsor to get further direction and overcome obstacles like the water they came to in verse 6. But when they came to a notion they didn't know what to do, so they camped on the beach for four years. Now this seems like a long time for the team to sit around and do nothing, but they had emailed the sponsor, and the sponsor had not responded, so they were just waiting around for the sponsor to respond. But the email had gone to the sponsor's spam filter, and he didn't even know the team was waiting on him. When the project sponsor found out the team had done nothing for four years while they waited to hear from him, he was not happy (see Ether Chapter 2, Verse 14 for a short version of the job performance review that Mahonri, the sponsor liaison for the team, received). I've had some pretty uncomfortable job performance reviews, but I have never been criticized for three hours. Well, this got the team going again, and now they got specific instructions on how to build eight barges to take the team to the promised land on the other side of the ocean and complete the deliverables of the project.

But as they implemented the plan to build the barges, they found two flaws in the plan. They knew they could not fix the flaws themselves. They really needed the project sponsor to fix the problem this time, so they asked for help (see Ether Chapter 2, Verse 18 and 19). The sponsor jumped right on the breathing problem and gave Mahonri immediate and very specific answer in a in verse 20. With that specific instructions, they fixed the barges, but they still did not have light. And because they did not want to be in the dark for 344 days, which was the number of days the Gantt chart said it would take them to cross the ocean, Mahonri asked again about the light. The sponsor did not have an answer other than to say that the team could not do it themselves, and the sponsor would have to provide the answer. But what did the team want him to do?

Now your teams may also reach a point where you cannot meet your deliverables without the help of the sponsor, but the sponsor does not know what to do to help you. As a team, you will need to come up with options of how the sponsor can help you and petition the sponsor to give you the help you need. The project team in our case collaborated and probably had a brainstorming session to come up with possible approaches to put light into the barges. They quickly eliminated ideas like windows or fire because the sponsor had said those would not work. Finally, Mahonri went to a mountain and moulton's out of rock 16 small stones, and they were white and clear, even as transparent as glass, and he took them up to the mountain to the project sponsor. Mahonri was appropriately respectful of the sponsor as he made his request, as found in Ether Chapter 3, Verse 4, and to his amazement, the project sponsor did put forth his finger and touch the stones, and they shone.

The project sponsor was very pleased with Mahonri and the project team for their faithfulness and diligence in completing the project up to this point and their ingenuity that they had used in coming up with a solution for the light problem. Because of the great work Mahonri had done throughout the project, the project sponsor took Mahonri under his wing and became a mentor to him. He eventually offered him a full-time job as prophet to this group of people. This became the start of a long and successful career for Mahonri.

Jared and their project team members, Mahonri and Jared, and the team had to manage through the full spectrum: a sponsor interaction from chaos to times of extended silence, to partial answers, to specific and precise instructions. You will also need to manage many forms of sponsor interactions throughout your projects and careers. You may want to go back and ponder this case study throughout your life to see the many ways you can manage those interactions. If you would like to read the teacher notes for this case study, you can read how the case turned out in Ether Chapter 6. We will finish the case study with the sponsor interaction table, which is also available in the class materials.