Defining Senior Management Support in the Context of Your Supply Chain Projects

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A recent article over on Supply Chain Digest asked a very good question — what is senior management support for supply chain projects. We all know that no project can succeed without senior management support, but what precisely does that mean? According to the author, two types of support are necessary:

  • support from the supply chain executive for projects in her organization and
  • support from each executive whose division is impacted by a cross-functional initiative.

But that still doesn’t define what, precisely senior management support is. The question is, can it be defined? Especially when the needs of every project are different?

I think it can, if you take it on a project-by-project basis and take the advice of Gene Tyndall and define a “Project Charter” for every project. If this charter identifies the executive sponsor, specifies the objectives, defines the success requirements — and what is required from the sponsor, and specifies the steering committee, then, if the sponsor(s) agree(s) to it, then you just might have what you need to achieve project success.