In the navy, the Chief Steward’s job is to supervise the operations and maintenance of the galley and living quarters of both officers and crew while at sea. This is a great metaphor for our projects, because as soon as they’re ‘launched’ it’s the project sponsor’s job, on behalf of the ‘officers’ or executive team, to ensure that the project remains aligned to its business case while ensuring that the ‘crew’, or project team, has everything it needs to keep the ship afloat.

Unfortunately, most project stewards resemble characters out of The Love Boat or Carry on Cruising. Well-meaning and nice people, but often ill-equipped to deal with the job in hand and frequently resorting to inappropriate actions or behaviours.

Providing project stewardship means more than chairing meetings well and actively listening to what you’re told. It’s about being a role model for others to follow, caring wholeheartedly about what the project is trying to do and recognising the role of every member of the team in their successes. It’s about being clear on what’s important for the organisation, providing others with opportunities for development, keeping it simple, and adding a healthy dose of inspiration and humour when it’s needed most.

A sponsor must become a leader to provide effective stewardship of projects. Leadership isn’t a given just because ‘leader’ is included in your title or job description. Taking a leadership course won’t make you a leader either, I’m afraid. In one survey McKinsey estimated that US companies alone spend US$14 billion per year on leadership development, yet only 7 per cent of respondents felt their companies developed leaders effectively enough to generate improved results.

All too often, leadership is equated with achieving a particular position within the hierarchy, rather than becoming a role model for change for others. The certificate you got might look nice in a frame, but how many habits or behaviours have you changed since you received it? How have you kept in touch with the changing nature of project and operational delivery? How much more productive are you than before? How much more engaged is your team than they were before?

This is what it means to lead. To know when to step up and when to step in, and that includes future-proofing the organisation.

Leaders should exist at all levels and be nurtured by those who carry the scars of failure (see chapter 73). These stories and experiences are critical if we’re to develop the next generation of project sponsors who know how to do the job well. Apathy is just not an option.

The Ketchum Leadership Communication Monitor listed the top five attributes of leaders as follows:

1. Leading by example
2. Communicating in an open and transparent way
3. Admitting mistakes
4. Bringing out the best in others
5. Handling controversial issues or crises calmly and confidently.

If you’re looking for a leadership blueprint, this is a great place to start. Get feedback from your peers and direct reports on how you perform against these attributes and what you can do to improve, then work hard to do just that. You don’t need to go on a leadership retreat, you need to make some hard choices and change some habits.

These attributes will stand you in good stead when you take the reins of a project because (you may have noticed) projects — and the governance of them — don’t have a great reputation. In a recent survey undertaken by the Governance Institute of Australia, 73 per cent of its members said that governance is a drain on productivity! That’s like three-quarters of car manufacturers saying cars are bad for the environment! (They are, by the way.)

Don’t be one of these people. Governance should help, not hinder, a project and as the sponsor, your job is to demonstrate what great stewardship looks like and be on top of what’s happening, always.

What you need to avoid at all costs in your projects is blame — something we see a lot of. In Australia in 2016, there was a project to collect Census information online. For the most part, the project was well communicated, although practitioners like me were secretly hoping it had been tested properly to ensure personal data wouldn’t be lost. To cut a long story short, the system was hacked and personal data compromised. This was a hugely disappointing outcome for everyone involved.

What I wanted to hear from the Prime Minister and accountable steward of the project, Malcolm Turnbull, was that he was sorry. I wanted to hear that they’d got it wrong. They’d made mistakes in the governance, project management, supplier management and security aspects of the projects and would seek to rectify them quickly. That despite years of project failure in the public service, this was the project that would change everything, given how critical it is that public servants are seen acting in the best interests of the general public.

None of that happened. Instead he blamed the supplier, IBM. Who then blamed the government, and within a few hours the whole project had been reduced to a couple of kids acting tough and pushing each other around in a kindergarten.

As soon as the finger of blame is pointed you create factions and lose the ability to act effectively. You create a situation in which you can no longer proactively learn from failure, but instead just try to prove you were right and they were wrong.

The irony is that no one wins in this scenario and your role as steward is undermined. L. David Marquet comments in his book Turn the Ship Around!, ‘Focusing on errors is a debilitating approach when adopted as the objective’, while Seth Godin, in his excellent book Tribes, observes, ‘What people are afraid of isn’t fear, it’s blame’.

To avoid this failure, you need to fully understand the sponsor role that you’re being asked to undertake and to push back when you have too much on your plate already. Understand that it will take time you may not currently have and that there are many tough decisions to be made. Honesty and humility will be needed in spades in order to do this in the right way.

The sponsors I’ve met whose projects have failed did the opposite: they didn’t delegate work; they failed to make decisions at the right times. They saw the role as ‘just another thing to do’, rather than an opportunity to nurture, build, guide and direct. They felt they just needed to show their face at a meeting or register their name on the minutes — and bad-mouth their colleagues behind their backs.

Every project an organisation undertakes represents an opportunity to enhance the corporate culture. To try different things. To provide time for innovation. To run meetings how they’re supposed to be run and to be part of a high-performing, fun-loving team that’s talked about for years. It’s not the project manager’s responsibility to make sure you’re doing your job correctly — it’s yours.

So if you don’t know where to start, ask for help. Take a training course that focuses less on the process and methods and more on the behaviours and mindset required, that informs you about the different stages of projects and the key deliverables you should expect from each. A course that gives you a full rundown of what the project manager should be doing and how to distinguish the good from the bad, one that leaves you inspired to use a project as a vehicle for organisational good.

So in assuming the role of chief steward, this is your opportunity. Turn up, tune in and make sure you don’t drop out. The ongoing steadiness of the ship depends on you.