A city government's CIO wants to launch an AI-supported permitting review pilot. The CIO has funding and enthusiasm but no support from the department heads who will actually change how staff review applications. Six months in, the pilot has stalled because department directors keep deprioritizing it against other work. What should the CIO do first to restart momentum?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Think of it like this: funding and enthusiasm from one person at the top doesn't move an organization — the people who actually run the daily work do. You need the department directors themselves to visibly back the initiative and hand-pick champions on their own teams, turning your excitement into their ownership.
Full Explanation
The pilot has stalled because the CIO has funding and personal enthusiasm but not genuine buy-in from the department directors who actually control staff priorities. Securing their visible commitment, and having them name respected champions within their own teams, converts top-down sponsorship into durable ownership at the level where the change actually happens day to day. Increasing the pilot's budget to add vendor analytics features misdiagnoses the problem as a capability gap, when the real issue is leadership alignment — more dashboards will not make a director prioritize work they don't yet believe in. Mandating a fixed rollout date without any discussion of why the initiative matters forces short-term compliance, but without real buy-in that tends to produce resentment and superficial participation rather than sustained momentum. Moving the pilot to a more enthusiastic department avoids the underlying sponsorship problem instead of solving it — it leaves the original department's resistance unaddressed and does nothing to build the enterprise-wide alignment the initiative eventually needs to scale. The operational check: before restarting, get each director's public, specific commitment and a named champion in writing, then track whether staff actually reprioritize their week around the pilot.