Landing an executive sponsor

Before you begin to deliver wide-scale initiatives, you must identify and secure an executive sponsor. An executive sponsor is a single individual who will be providing top-down support for your program. Over the next several pages, I will share how to identify an executive sponsor, what makes a great sponsor, who else needs to support you, and finally, how to bring the entire company along on the journey.

To gather support, the most effective place to start is from the top down in your organization. Ideally, you should seek to obtain full support from the entire C-suite. However, you do need at least one (ideally at least two) C-suite member(s) who will serve as your executive sponsor(s). Executive sponsors differ from other executives in that they will be more hands-on in your overall data governance work and should help you navigate gaining support across the organization, including obtaining funding. If you are new to your organization, executive...