They were so close. After months of research, the Marketing Tiger team had identified the perfect way for AI integration. They had done the due diligence, built the business case and secured the budget. In the last presentation to the CMO they imposed the vision of an AI-Native team that would push the boundaries of marketing and push top growth.
The CMO nodded and said: “Looks great. Keep me informed of the ROI”, and walked out of the room.
At the moment it felt like a victory. They had the green light. But six months later they were still stuck. Their AI integration was stuck. Only the people in the Tiger team were trained and they didn’t know what to do.
What went wrong? The CMO had given them her blessing. AI was a priority. She had sponsored the project.
The hard lesson, one that this team cost in both time and money, was that she was a passive sponsor. Their AI initiatives would hold until they understood the difference between that and active sponsorship.
I see both leaders giving passive sponsorship and teams that accept passive sponsorship every day, which kills AI efforts.
Most leadership sponsorship in companies are similar to what this CMO did. In my upcoming book about AI Integration, ‘Hyperadaptive’, I call this passive sponsorship. It is the equivalent of a monarch that gives a royal wave of a distant balcony.
Passive sponsorship is characterized by:
- Approve budgets: Signing the checks and assigning sources without follow-up.
- Request reports: Ask for updates about progress, KPIs and ROI, without asking the whole story.
- Delegating responsibility: The “how” hand over to the team and expecting results, without realizing that you have to play a continuous role.
- Avoid the weeds: In a strategic view of 30,000 feet, far from the messy reality of the implementation, without recognizing the problematic reality of the front lines.
It feels and looks like leadership, but it is closer to demolition. You finance a mission, but you refuse to help the troops on the ground by navigating the site. When the CMO left, she removed her active, committed authority, one of the most powerful tools of the team to cut organizational friction.
Diger Diger: Scaling AI starts with people, not technology
Leaders who succeed with AI go further than signing checks and follow their notes active. They become active sponsors and understand that their primary role after approval knew a path for the initiative.
This is what I do as a leader (and what you can ask your leaders to make that shift.
Step 1: By way of example with AI
The most important change is to use the AI tools yourself. When AI arrived for the first time, I was ready to have the next generation. But then I asked for a login, I looked at YouTube videos and spent two hours a week, tinkering.
It was humiliating. I was awkward and slow, but it was also enlightening. I immediately saw the benefits of AI (as well as its limitations). I quickly got off the bandwagon “We can replace all people with AI”. It’s just not there.
The future of leadership is not about managing a dashboard from KPIs – that is never about that. It’s about knowing and managing the possibilities of your team. You can’t coach a game that you don’t understand. By making your hands dirty with AI, you learn And Signaling your entire organization: “This is so important, I make it a priority to learn it yourself.”
Step 2: Exchange your gatekeeper hat for a crowbar
As a passive sponsor I saw my work as a gatekeeper of resources. My real task is to remove roadblocks, and I can’t do that if I sign a check and run away.
The stuck AI project was imprisoned in a classic cross-functional impasse between marketing, IT and governance. Everyone agreed that AI was a priority, but nobody was willing to delete access to roadblocks and to release the crash barriers.
If I was an active sponsor of that initiative, I may have stopped asking for status updates and I started hosting weekly 30-minute road block meetings, where the only agenda item is:
- “What prevents you from making progress today, and who in this room can repair it?”
Passive sponsors use their authority to say:
- “I will talk to the head and see if there is a solid reason for us not to allow the use of the AI tools in the Adobe -suite. I will contact you in two days.”
AI initiatives influence the entire organization. Without an active sponsor who uses their political capital to demolish silos and force cooperation, these initiatives die a slow death of a thousand departmental assortments.
Diger Diger: Is your marketing team AI-ready? 8 steps to strategic AI acceptance
Step 3: defend the results with AI as your career depends on it
Have you ever played the telephone game where a message whispered at one end of a line, will it be completely mutilated to the other? That is what happens to AI projects in a large organization.
The initial budget has been shortened, technical limitations reduce the scope and three people are drawn from the initiative. As a result, the ability of your AI initiatives to deliver the promised results is diluted and compromised. The ambitious project has become a shadow of his former self.
As an active sponsor it is your job to defend the results. You are the only person who has approved the original, uncompromising vision. This means:
- Attending the meetings that you think are too important.
- Question the necessary compromises.
- Everyone reminds everyone why you do this and how good looks.
The future of leadership is active
Switching from a passive to an active sponsor has changed the way I view my leading role. Delegating authority may be useful, but it is not what most organizations need.
Most marketing organizations need AI sponsors who are active participants, curious students and ruthless road removers. It comes down to a simple choice: are you going to approve the project or lead to success?
Dig deeper: AI Readiness Checklist: 7 important steps towards successful integration
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