Enterprise Transformation Delivery Partnership
For enterprise executives, division leaders, and PMO directors guiding multi-million-dollar portfolios with 20 to 50 project leads and sponsors combined.
Bridge the Divide Between Strategy and Delivery: Align Your C-Suite, Project Sponsors, and Project Leads to Safeguard High-Stakes Portfolios.
A high-touch, six-month advisory partnership designed to synchronize leadership cadences, de-risk active corporate initiatives, and strengthen delivery capability across your internal teams.
Led by Dawn Mahan, PMP, founder of PMOtraining and creator of Projectland®.
For more than two decades, Dawn has helped enterprise leaders strengthen how they sponsor and deliver critical projects. She leads this partnership personally, bringing in carefully matched senior practitioners when additional expertise or capacity is needed.
Why High-Stakes Initiatives Stall
Even with capable people, sound plans, and good software, critical initiatives can stall in the messy reality of Projectland®. A common cause is Sponsor-Delivery Asynchrony: the disconnect among executives funding the strategy, sponsors accountable to those executives for delivering the intended business results, and project leads responsible for leading the day-to-day implementation work.
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When those groups are out of sync, tradeoff decisions wait, risks stay quiet, and manageable obstacles can grow into costly delays.
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When alignment breaks down, each group experiences a different part of the problem:
Executive Champions (The C-Suite)
Executive Champions (The C-Suite) operate at strategic altitude. They fund the vision and look for dependable returns, but their organizational altitude can make them intimidating. Without structured engagement channels, senior leaders remain insulated from ground reality until unaddressed roadblocks escalate into urgent board-level concerns.
Project Sponsors
Project Sponsors juggle dual realities. Many are functional or business operations leaders who remain responsible for daily performance while answering to senior leadership for project outcomes. Without practical guidance on the sponsor role, they may veer toward anxious micromanagement or total detachment. When sponsors do not engage at the right level, project leads struggle to get the decisions and backing they need.
Project Leads
Project Leads absorb friction quietly. Exceptional subject-matter experts placed in project leadership roles without formal project management training or tools often struggle with cross-functional politics, skip foundational alignment steps, and hesitate to bring bad news to senior leaders until manageable hurdles turn into public fires.
Stalled Tradeoffs
Critical tradeoffs stall in circular reviews. Conflicting departmental priorities pull teams in opposing directions while unaligned leaders avoid uncomfortable conversations. When priorities clash, adding bureaucratic reporting templates and more meetings does not resolve the root cause.
Resolving this breakdown requires synchronized alignment between the executives funding the investment, the sponsors directing the initiatives, and the project leads carrying out the day-to-day work.
“Regarding business case presentations with the CFO—he was an involved Sponsor and asked good questions to make us think. The good atmosphere led to creativity. It was a helpful, open conversation. It didn't feel like pitching for your life.”
— IT Leader, Global Life Sciences Company
The Parallel Alignment Track: Real-Time Operational Cohesion
We install parallel, synchronized advisory tracks that work simultaneously with accountable executive champions, sponsors, and internal project leads on live, active programs:
Track 1
Executive Champions (C-Suite)
receive an objective sounding board and candid visibility. Through private, monthly 30-minute one-on-one coaching sessions focused on their own leadership and sponsorship, top leaders gain a clearer view of the conditions affecting progress, where their involvement would help, and how to invite ground-floor transparency rather than defensive status updates.
Track 2
Project Sponsors (Accountable Leaders)
gain practical decision frameworks in focused working sessions to dismantle cross-functional bottlenecks, set realistic boundaries, and back their teams decisively without micromanaging.
Track 3
Project Leads
—including professional project managers and subject-matter experts assigned to lead initiatives—develop practical authority, a shared language, and behavioral tools to navigate stakeholder dynamics in Projectland®—surfacing risks early, framing tradeoffs constructively, and leading with composure under pressure.
Direct Application on Active Initiatives.
Zero academic homework. Zero hypothetical case studies. Together with your Project Success Advisory Council, we identify which internal standards to keep and where PMOtraining’s practical thinking tools can fill gaps. Your internal teams continue to own and run their projects; we supply the guidance, feedback, and tools to help them succeed.
“Working with Dawn’s team was a true pleasure. They helped us transform a disorganized group of individual initiatives into a cohesive project portfolio. Through this process we were able to deliver significant value to the organization. The team was always on time with its deliverables and brought our project in under budget. I would welcome the opportunity to work with them again.”
— Robert W. Kintzer, Jr., Director, Internal Audit Finance, Global Organization
How the Partnership Works: The 7-Part Alignment System
Critical initiatives need more than capable project leads. Leads need sponsors who make timely decisions, sponsors need a clear view of what their teams face, and executives need to know when their involvement can remove a barrier. This partnership supports all three levels on active work, so issues can surface, decisions are made at the right level, and everyone is aligned to deliver on desired outcomes.
The system supports 20 to 50 project leads and sponsors combined, as well as participating C-suite champions and advisory program leadership. Each part addresses a specific point where delivery can stall.
01
Project Lead Application Labs
Every Other Week
Project leads bring challenges from active initiatives into group working sessions. We coach them as they work through plans, emerging risks, stakeholder resistance, and tradeoffs. They leave better prepared to lead the work and bring clear decisions to their sponsors.
02
Sponsor Success Sessions
Every Other Week at First, Then Monthly
Sponsors establish how they will work with their project leads from the start: what decisions they own, when a lead should raise a concern, and how they will clear barriers across departments. They learn what to expect from their project leads, and how to engage appropriately. Sessions begin every other week to build that working rhythm, then move to monthly as it takes hold.
03
Deliverable Review and Practical Feedback
Between Sessions
Project leads submit relevant work from active initiatives, such as draft charters, kickoff decks, or stakeholder analysis matrices. We provide targeted feedback before the work goes to sponsors or other decision-makers. This helps prepare them to lead conversations with their sponsors, strengthen their recommendations, keep the project moving, and make better use of decision time with sponsors and executives.
04
Targeted Projectland® Office Hours
Dedicated Weekly Availability
Project leads and sponsors can book a private appointment on a first-come basis when a sensitive issue or difficult decision calls for individual guidance. By routing individual challenges into dedicated private slots, core group working labs remain crisp, fast-moving, and on schedule. Office hours put extra support where it is needed without adding an obligatory standing meeting to everyone’s calendar.
“I recently had a coaching call with Dawn, which started with a request for a sample GANTT chart. During our conversation, Dawn was able to unpack my initial request and determine my real need, which wasn’t a simple GANTT chart! She walked me through another project management challenge and coached me through a tool to effectively communicate to my Board how organizational changes would impact upcoming public-facing projects. I learned a lot in this 30-minute session, applied it immediately on the job, and felt energized to do so!”
— Greg Wilson, MS, CAP®, CFRE, Executive Leader
05
C-Suite Champion Sessions
Approximately Monthly
Participating C-suite champions have private, 30-minute one-on-one conversations focused on their leadership and sponsorship. They can examine what they are hearing, where their involvement would help, and how to invite candid updates from the people closest to the work. The short individual format accommodates demanding executive schedules.
06
Monthly Advisory Partnership Review
Monthly
The Project Success Advisory Council and advisory program leadership review the partnership as a whole. We examine what participants are applying, recurring challenges across initiatives, and progress toward the goals agreed at the start. As needed, we adjust the advisory support to address what the organization needs next.
07
Portfolio Capstone & Culture Event
Month 6
Executives, sponsors, project leads, and core team members come together virtually to review outcomes and progress, recognize contributions, and share lessons learned. This forum helps the organization retain what its people learned and share practices worth carrying forward, while leading the work themselves.
“PMOtraining has the best training and consulting support for those who really want to learn how to manage and deliver successful projects and results! Dawn and her team helped me create a project management structure for my team that has helped my team deliver consistent and excellent results on all of our project work. We are so grateful for their help in transforming how we approach and manage our projects! They are the best in the field!”
— Eileen Santos, MBA, Operations Director, Former IBM & Andersen Consultant
The Six-Month Rationale: Turning the Aircraft Carrier
Enterprise habits do not transform overnight. Aligning sponsors and project leads, embedding a practical shared language, and supporting professionals new to Projectland® takes deliberate, repeated application on live initiatives.
In Dawn’s experience across more than two decades of enterprise work, around six months is typically when an organization begins to feel the aircraft carrier turning in the right direction.
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Here is what that operational shift looks like:
Approachable C-Suite Champions:
Executive sponsors maintain clear visibility into active initiatives, fostering an environment where project leads surface operational challenges early rather than concealing problems.
Decisive Sponsor Support:
Sponsors embrace their role, back their leads decisively, and make timely, documented tradeoff decisions based on transparent operational data.
Transparent Ground Reality:
Cross-functional project leads do not mask emerging risks behind artificial green dashboard slides. Teams surface friction early, addressing manageable issues before they turn into visible emergencies.
Focused Team Bandwidth:
We help leadership identify redundant meetings and establish a clean status and decision cadence with the right participants, protecting the bandwidth of your highest-performing people.
Sustainable Internal Capability:
Because your own professionals lead and deliver the work, the capabilities, frameworks, and confidence developed during the engagement remain inside your organization long after our advisory concludes.
“Great project managers are like those amazing team players who set the standard of excellence for everyone and help make all their teammates better. They become the heartbeat of your organization. Dawn’s approach is living proof that those players aren’t just born, they are made. She’s done that for me twice in very different settings to great success. Her practical approach doesn’t just build project management capacity in your organization—it helps change your culture.”
Rich Negrin, Esq.
Former Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection and C-Suite Executive
“Working with Dawn was inspiring. She helped an entire IT team of Managers, Engineers, and Analysts move from almost zero project management structure to a trackable workflow by taking us to Projectland. She brought practical energy, clarity, and dedication to our daily delivery challenges.”
Thais Couto
Engineering Manager, Global IT Infrastructure
The Compounding Risk of Inaction
When executives, sponsors and project leads remain out of sync, the effects reach beyond a missed milestone:
Financial & Timeline Drag
Decisions that come too late can delay a rollout and the benefits it was meant to deliver. Extended contractor support and rework can add to the time and cost.
Burnout and the Loss of Project Leaders
When capable subject-matter experts spend months carrying cross-functional pressure without enough sponsor support, some burn out or decide to leave. Losing a lead in the middle of an initiative can be more disruptive than an ordinary vacancy: that person may be holding together decisions, dependencies, and relationships across several departments. Rebuilding that context takes time and can delay the work further.
The Bureaucracy Trap
When delivery slips, leaders may ask for more documentation, approvals, and status meetings to regain control. If the real bottleneck is unclear sponsorship or decisions that are not being made, the added reporting consumes capacity without clearing the roadblock.
Commercial Structure & Partnership Scope
This high-touch advisory engagement supports enterprise leadership teams and operating divisions guiding portfolios of 20 to 50 project leads and sponsors combined, alongside participating executive champions.
Engagement Model: Six-Month Advisory Partnership. Six months is our recommended timeframe for strengthening project foundations, aligning leadership, and embedding habits that last.
Monthly Advisory Retainer
$30,000
per month
Estimated Investment for the Full Six Months
$180,000
Portfolio-Level Investment: This engagement is designed to be funded and evaluated as a portfolio-level delivery investment, not as a training expense or the cost of filling one position. The monthly retainer supports 20 to 50 project leads and sponsors combined, plus participating C-suite champions, across multiple active initiatives. It extends the reach of the leaders accountable for the transformation while they remain focused on portfolio governance, business results, and executive-level decisions. Its value should be assessed against the business value at risk, the cost of delayed decisions and rework, and the lasting capability developed within your organization.
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Senior Advisory Delivery: Engagements are led directly by Dawn Mahan, PMP. When specialized expertise or added capacity are needed, we bring in carefully matched senior practitioner advisors. PMOtraining does not use billable junior staff.
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Rolling Partnership Intake: To maintain high-touch senior advisory attention, we work with a strictly limited number of client organizations concurrently. Partnerships launch on a rolling basis aligned with your strategic cycle or fiscal calendar.
Built-In Safeguards for Your Investment
Six months gives leaders time to align, apply new practices, and see whether those practices are taking hold. We know this is a significant commitment. These safeguards help both sides assess its value and adjust the work as it progresses:
01
Weeks 1–2: Validate the Business Case for This Advisory Partnership.
We examine your active transformation portfolio and test whether the expected value of this advisory work justifies its cost. If the projected return does not clearly support the investment, we adjust the approach or conclude the partnership rather than proceed on a weak business case.
02
Weeks 3–4: Agree on the Program Design.
With your Project Success Advisory Council, we shape the working sessions and advisory support around your people, active initiatives, and existing standards. We confirm together that the plan is practical before moving into the full working cadence.
03
Day 60 After Kickoff: Review Early Progress.
We examine what participants are applying, whether risk visibility and decision-making are improving, and how active roadblocks are being addressed.
04
Every Month: Review and Adjust.
The Project Success Advisory Council and program leadership continue to assess progress and refine the advisory support. The opportunity to change course does not end at day 60.
05
At Any Point: An Easy Exit.
Either party may end the partnership with two weeks written notice and no cancellation penalty. Your organization keeps all deliverables provided to date.
“Dawn's commitment to understanding our learning needs and desired outcomes was evident from the very start. What impressed me the most was Dawn's ability to stimulate interest and engagement among the executives.”
— Willetta Love, Associate Director of Project Management & Process Optimization