A Longitudinal Examination of How Champions Influence Others to Support Their Projects

The image of the project champion fighting corporate inertia, rallying support, and leading a project to success makes for a great story, but that story may not reveal the true nature of the champion's role. All those oft-told tales about champions fail to provide hard evidence of the techniques that champions use, the activities they perform, and the effects that champions have on project success.
Stephen K. Markham addresses this knowledge gap in a study that examines how champions influence other people and what effects champions have on projects and the people those projects involve. The study uses responses from 53 champions of innovation projects in four large firms as well as team members from those projects. Rather than look at the champions' work on project tasks, the study focuses on the influence champions have on other people to support their projects.
The results of the study only partially support the idea that champions affect projects by influencing people. In the four firms studied, champions use cooperative rather than confrontative tactics to influence other people. However, the champions' choice of influence tactics does not affect the level of compliance or the willingness to participate in the project that those people demonstrate. On the other hand, the champions appear to have a strong influence on their target's behavior if the champions enjoy positive personal relationships with those people.
In general, the tactics used by the champions do not seem to play an important role in the projects studied. From the perspective of the team members, the results of this study do not support the notion that champions make a positive contribution to project performance. However, the champions in this study consistently hold a more positive view of the project than those of the team members.