Lean Transformation: Agile Transformation Cadence Model Meeting 3: Sponsor and Stakeholder Update

When running larger transformations it can often be necessary to have specific update sessions for other stakeholders of the change such as line managers, executives, as well as key stakeholders from partner departments within the organization such as marketing, or product development.
You also need to keep your primary sponsor up to date/to enlist his or her help in making sure that the transformation is progressing. In our experience a good primary sponsor is a director or VP level executive who has director responsibility over a set of change recipients. It is also a good idea for the ultimate owner of the consternation to be someone at the executive level.
Where possible, try to streamline how many needs you have and see if you can run a consolidated stakeholder and sponsorship update, that way all interested members can collaborate on the same information. The politics and or structure of many organizations make this difficult to do, and it may be necessary to have a dedicated review session for primary sponsors, and a separate one for other interested stakeholders. This will mean that synchronization of information across meetings will be required, which is challenging.

One topic you want to continually revisit as part of these updates is the overall direction of the transformation being executed, specifically whether minor changes or a major pivot is required to keep the transformation successful.

The transformation canvas can be annotated with colored tags to indicate which portions of the transformation contain correct, partially correct or completely incorrect assumptions. This can serve is a very useful source of discussion during a stakeholder and/or sponsor review.

Another point of discussion during the interview sessions, is discussing any items that are acting as blockers or impediments to the transformation. We want to do everything we can to encourage sponsors and stakeholders to take ownership of removing these impediments.

The Validated Change Kanban is an excellent source of information to go over any blocking items and other impediments facing the transformation. We have had good success running a standup style conversation in front of the Kanban to help facilitate this kind of conversation. We've also used photos and/or soft copies of the Validated Change Kanban in certain situations.