Why active sponsorship is the only way to make AI work

They were so close. After months of research, the marketing tiger team had identified the perfect path forward for AI integration. They had done the due diligence, built the business case and secured the budget. In the final presentation to the CMO, they laid out the vision of an AI-native team that would push the boundaries of marketing and drive top-line growth.

The CMO nodded and said, “Looks great. Keep me posted on the ROI,” and walked out of the room. 

In the moment, it felt like a win. They had the green light. But six months later, they were still stuck. Their AI integration was stalled. Only the people on the tiger team had been trained and they didn’t know what to do next.

What went wrong? The CMO had given them her blessing. AI was a priority. She’d sponsored the project.

The hard lesson, one that cost this team in both time and money, was that she was a passive sponsor. Their AI initiatives would stall until they understood the difference between that and active sponsorship.

I see both leaders giving passive sponsorship and teams accepting passive sponsorship daily, which kills AI efforts.

The comfort of passive sponsorship

Most leadership sponsorships in corporations look like what this CMO did. In my upcoming book on AI integration, “Hyperadaptive,” I call this passive sponsorship. It’s the equivalent of a monarch giving a royal wave from a distant balcony.

Passive sponsorship is characterized by:

• Approving budgets: Signing the checks and allocating resources without follow-up.
• Requesting reports: Asking for updates on progress, KPIs and ROI, without asking for the whole story.
• Delegating responsibility: Handing off the “how” to the team and expecting results, without realizing you have an ongoing role to play.
• Avoiding the weeds: Remaining at a strategic 30,000-foot view, far from the messy reality of implementation, without acknowledging the problematic reality of the front lines.

It feels and looks like leadership, but it is closer to abdication. You’re funding a mission but refusing to help the troops on the ground navigate the terrain. When the CMO left, she removed her active, engaged authority, one of the team’s most potent tools for cutting through organizational friction.

Dig deeper: Scaling AI starts with people, not technology

Become an active sponsor for AI instead

Leaders who succeed with AI go beyond signing checks and actively monitor their endorsements. They become active sponsors, understanding that their primary role after approval is clearing a path for the initiative. 

Here’s what I do as a leader (and what you can ask your leaders to do) to make that shift.

Step 1: Lead by example with AI

The most significant change is to use the AI tools myself. When AI first arrived, I was ready to let the next generation have at it. But then I asked for a login, watched YouTube videos and spent two hours a week, tinkering.

It was humbling. I was clumsy and slow, but it was also illuminating. I immediately saw AI’s benefits (as well as its limitations). I quickly got off the “we can replace all humans with AI” bandwagon. It just isn’t there — yet.

The future of leadership isn’t about managing a dashboard of KPIs—it’s never been about that. It’s about knowing and managing your team’s capabilities. You can’t coach a game you don’t understand. By getting your hands dirty with AI, you’re learning and signaling to your entire organization, “This is so important, I am making it a priority to learn it myself.”

Step 2: Trade your gatekeeper hat for a crowbar

As a passive sponsor, I saw my job as a gatekeeper of resources. My real job is to remove roadblocks, and I can’t do that if I sign a check and walk away.

The stalled AI project got caught in a classic cross-functional standoff between marketing, IT and governance. Everyone agreed AI was a priority, but no one was willing to clear access roadblocks and loosen the guardrails.

If I were an active sponsor of that initiative, I might have stopped asking for status updates and started hosting weekly 30-minute roadblock meetings, where the only agenda item is: 

• “What is stopping you from moving forward today, and who in this room can fix it?”

Passive sponsors use their authority to say:

• “I will talk to the head of IT and see if there is any solid reason for us to disallow use of the AI tools embedded in the Adobe Suite. I’ll get back to you in two days.”

AI initiatives affect the entire organization. Without an active sponsor using their political capital to demolish silos and force collaboration, these initiatives die a slow death of a thousand departmental cuts.

Dig deeper: Is your marketing team AI-ready? 8 steps to strategic AI adoption

Step 3: Defend outcomes with AI like your career depends on it

Have you ever played the telephone game where a message whispered at one end of a line comes out completely mangled at the other? That’s what happens to AI projects inside a large organization. 

The initial budget is downsized, technical limitations reduce the scope and three people are pulled off the initiative. As a result, your AI initiatives’ ability to deliver the promised outcomes is diluted and compromised. The ambitious project has become a shadow of its former self.

As an active sponsor, your job is to champion the outcomes. You are the one person who has approved the original, uncompromised vision. This means:

• Attending the meetings you think you’re too important for.
• Questioning the necessary compromises.
• Constantly reminding everyone why you are doing this and what good looks like.

The future of leadership is active

Switching from a passive to an active sponsor has changed how I view my leadership role. Delegating authority may be convenient, but it isn’t what most organizations need. 

Most marketing organizations need AI sponsors who are active participants, curious learners and relentless roadblock removers. It comes down to a simple choice: will you approve the project or lead it to success?

Dig deeper: AI readiness checklist: 7 key steps to a successful integration