Executive Sponsor: The Key to Driving Strategy and Execution
In this single‑speaker presentation Bill Canady defines the executive sponsor as the “inside anchor” of an 80/20 execution transformation—a proxy for the CEO who pulls information up from the operating floor, enforces cadence, and holds the organization accountable. He explains why every organization, regardless of size, needs a single, high‑credibility sponsor (often a CFO, COO, or senior FP&A/strategy leader) and outlines the traits that make a sponsor effective: decisiveness, respect, courage, discipline, data fluency, and deep empathy. Canady maps the pull‑push loop that connects the CEO (vision setter), the executive sponsor (information conduit and enforcer), external consultants (push of frameworks and coaching), operators (day‑to‑day execution), and “prophets” (trainers). He details the sponsor’s day‑to‑day duties—maintaining calendars, tracking KPI scorecards, reporting up, escalating resistance, and ensuring the 100‑day cadence is met. Real‑world case studies illustrate both failure (mid‑market distributor losing visibility and missing budget deadlines) and success (industrial manufacturer achieving +400 bps EBITDA, –21 % SKUs, +9 % OTIF in 12 months) when the sponsor functioned well. The talk concludes with governance advice: appoint exactly one sponsor, embed them in a special project team, align them tightly with consultants, make the role a condition of employment, and back the sponsor publicly while monitoring KPI‑driven progress.
Chapters
Hello everyone. Bill Canady here again with you. Let's go through the role of the executive sponsor, who I like to call is the inside anchor of the 80/20 execution. This is the unsung hero role in a company, the internal role that really makes it happen. If you think about how it works, you've got the CEO sitting at the top of the circle. On one side, looking inside the company, you've got all this activity going on. Depending on the size of your company, it could just be you and a few folks. Or it could be a large global operation. We've worked with all different types and it really works the same regardless. If it's you and 10 people, then you are the executive sponsor. If it's you and 10,000 people, you're absolutely going to need an executive sponsor. So the executive sponsor a lot of times will be the person on the CEO staff. It has to be someone with a certain amount of gravitas and who's going to speak for the CEO. They're going to be the proxy or empowered with the CEO. When they're standing there in these meetings, it's like the CEO is standing there. And this is really important. Because as the CEO, as the leader, you need to know exactly what's going on. And this role is how you do it. It's how you can clone yourself and go everywhere with it and be in all the places at the same time. So it's the internal force multiplier of the 80/20 transformation point. And like I say, it doesn't have to be the CEO, but if you're small, it can be you. It can also be your CFO or your COO. It really depends. On the personality of whoever you appoint for. So let's assume for the sake of this, it's not the CEO, it's not you, it's someone else. The characteristics that you're looking for is someone who's really good at pulling that information up, really good at showing up, being part of the meetings, being a coach, being someone that listens and a little bit of a cheerleader with them at the same time, demanding that they've got to go get it done. They don't have to be an expert in the process. They really have to be an expert in human psychology and It has to be someone that you trust, someone that you believe will go out there and represent you and the leadership team. I've used someone on my staff in the past. I've also uplifted someone out of the internal of the organization, someone who's a high potential or a high pop. A lot of times I like picking someone who's good with numbers, like an FP&A person, a strategy person, someone that's good with data and details and the numbers with it, because that's really what they're gonna be doing. They're gonna put together some reports. They're gonna put together some activity tracking sheets. But it's really keeping you and the leadership team informed with it. So it's a pull mechanism, not push. The pushing is gonna come from the consultant. It's gonna come from people like ourselves, people, oh, these execution partners with you who are working to push that information in. Recognize outside folks you work with just don't have the same power. They don't have the juice. They can't make anyone do anything. All they can do is suggest, push, prod, help, control with it, and they will work. As your outside voice. So your executive sponsor is your inside voice coming around to you. The consultants are the outside voice. You want to be careful that neither group comes across as tattletaling. It needs to be an open and caring and deeply supportive relationship, but it is an honest relationship and what's happening needs to be addressed with honesty. So the executive sponsor is a pull. They pull from the bottom up to it. They sit at the intersection. Between the CEO and the team doing the do, if you will. The action and the impact they have is material. I've seen that when you don't have a good one, what happens is the CEO goes dark. You don't actually understand what's happening. You're waiting for people to tell you things. Now, you should be going out there, as we talked before, about doing town halls, walking the floor, seeing how it's going, checking in. But if you're going to be running the company, it's really hard to be in all of those things. And you don't need to be the expert with it, but you do have to know what's going on. This is the key piece of it. So I laid this out here. What is the pull-push loop? We just talked a little bit about it. The CEO, that is the one who's pulling everything through. It all comes up to it. You're the visionary. You set the goal. You know exactly where you're going. You know what good looks like. The team is delivering the strategy to go do it. The operators are out running the business. And you've got your team down below. We call those folks prophets. They find the profit and they also know how to get the profit, like someone who can see the future a little bit and is being the spokesman. For the team. It's meant to be a little bit of a fun piece on it, but I like calling it that. The executive sponsor, they anchor inside the organization. They are the one that people are coming to when they can't talk to you. And they're acting as the torque. They're that power that gets it all the way up there. And the consultants and the prophet, they're pushing the frameworks or training everyone. They're making sure people know how to do their jobs, but they're the execution folks. So the responsibilities of the executive sponsor. Very clear. Be the CEO's enforcer. Now, don't take that to be an aggressive role. Take that to mean that they are the proxy. They're speaking for the CEO. Whatever it is that you as a CEO want, that's what that person is going to be out there doing. What I found in order to get this through, in order to make this kind of change, you got to make it a condition of employment. We have to find out how to get together as a team, but we are going there. And this becomes really important. We'll talk about it more in different trainings. CEO sets the vision. The executive sponsor enforces it. They make sure the strategy is real for the leader. So they're out, they travel a lot if they can. If not, they can do it over Zoom or Teams or whatever your video conferencing is, but they're just engaged. And they're making sure that if anyone's dragging their feet, then they're pushing. You gotta stay on time. We're gonna get through this in 100 days. It's plenty of time, but it goes by fast. If you have other things going, say it's the heart of your budget and it takes you 30 days to go do your budget. Well, this is us a third of the time. You have to be able to do both at it, and you should be able to do both at it. These will provide your numbers. It's not additional work. It's just getting clarity around it. You can do it. When decisions stall, the executive sponsor, main job, let's get it back going. And sometimes that's through a combination of talking with the consultants, working with the profits, working with the operating team, and for certain, talking to you, the leader of the company with it. And then when resistance emerges, They use their ability, their empathy, their depth, their understanding to get through that. It is really a critical role. They also tend to be the keeper of the calendar. They'll be the one who's making sure that things are being scheduled, that it's getting there in time, that they know what's expected and when it's expected on it. And they make, they may not be working on the strategy. They may not be working actually on simplification or segmentation, but they are holding people accountable to that calendar. Then, yes, you got that. You can download this. It's hooked right to this training and you'll be able to go through this form yourself, but they're an amplifier of the consultant. So the consultant and the executive sponsor work really closely, almost in tandem. As I said, as a consultant, there's really no power, no juice. It's really a role that people, you know, come to get information. But most internal people really don't care about consultants. They care about the people they report to, the people they work with. And that's how it should be. It's the team, it's the ownership that your company's gonna have that breathes life into this. What we try to do is give you the clarity of the path, show you the tools and how to train it. It's the execution happening inside the business where the magic's at. And then they protect the cadence. It is easy to get behind. As I mentioned earlier, things like budget, things like holidays. If it's important to you, you'll stay on cadence. Your coach will help you do that. They'll do that by both the scorecard that we're all working off of and finding a plan to get you there in time because This isn't about taking a lot of time. It's about getting you and your business positioned for what your ultimate goals are, for what your ultimate return is. Speed is critical here. You need someone who's keeping you all on cadence. They're a truth sayer, truth teller to the CEO. They're the one who shines a bright light through what's happening, what's going on. They bring everything to life for you. Now, when it fails, we were working with a mid-market distributor, about $1.2 billion. Great company, a lot of terrific things going on, but they're busy. Had some acquisitions happening. They were putting in new ERP systems over. They had a lot of distractions, things they needed to run the business. We launched the 80/20 process. It went well. The data was getting through it just fine and people were understanding what it was, but the CEO did not pick a measurable goal. They didn't understand what was happening and the executive sponsor wasn't really keeping them clued in. So as the leader, it's easy to get distracted. You're in this role for a reason, and it's hard sometimes to hear others tell you maybe you need to do it a little bit different. But you've brought folks in like ourselves because clearly you're not happy with what's happening. If you were, you would've never called us. So you need to listen to your team, hold them accountable, and when they're telling you something isn't working right or they're coming in late, it's a sign. You have to go figure out what that is. We can help you figure that out. Your executive sponsor can help you figure it out. We were just working on one where it was time for the budget. They had an off-cycle budget. It was a fiscal year and they took that month off to get ready. It set them back substantially. Now the issue is the board was expecting that it was gonna be done. They could see the numbers so they could start actioning around those numbers. It delayed it by a month. At the end of the day, it all worked out, but it was a tense few weeks while people got back on track. Depending on who your owners are, you can pick whatever schedule you want. If you're in private equity, You probably got some dates you need to hit. Now, when it works, it's pretty magical. Another example, industrial manufacturer. The CEO declared a bold public goal that they were going to raise their EBITDA by 20% in 18 months, period, full stop. You know what? That's exactly what they did. They took their COO as their executive sponsor. Great guy, very engaged in the business, understood his role, understood manufacturing, lean operations, all the things that go with it. And got engaged, made a great pipeline back to the CEO with the team, was a mentor, was a guide, all the things that you want to see. We taught them the 80/20 process, which is pretty straightforward. And they brought their experience and made a huge difference with it. So when it works, it's really powerful. You can take and have a big impact. And the key to making it work is, again, the CEO has to partner with the executive sponsor, has to partner with the team and partner with the outside folks, the consultants at the same time, and brings it all together at the top there. So they have a pull coming in from the executive sponsor and a push coming back from the consultants. And, and it gets really, really big. The result they got, 400 bps of EBITDA in 12 months. Now that's 400 bps. Now a bps is a basis point and it takes 100 bps to make 1 percentage. If you're at 10 percentage EBITDA, 10 points of EBITDA today, You go up by 4, you have 14%. So it's a 40% increase on that. That's what good teamwork, good leadership, good execution looks like. In addition, their SKU count drops. So SKUs are stock keeping units. They dropped by 21%. So it sounds amazing to sell less products and make more money. That's exactly what they did. They understood what their key customers want. They got rid of the distractions. They focused on that. Customers are happy. Employees are happy. Everyone's making more money. At the same time, their on-time delivery or their OTIF, on time and full, that means everything goes out when it should, rose by 9%. So lots of great things. Key traits of a great executive sponsor and why it matters. There's nothing surprising here. It's the obvious. Be decisive. Have someone that is respected, respects others, treats people with dignity and respect, understands what they're doing. They're a real part of the company and they're out there. They're both listening and learning. They're able to weave that through and really help keep people accountable. People want to win. It's people working together to get out there. That COO was operationally fluent, understood what the company needed, understood how to make that happen. And then we supplied the tools. It doesn't always have to be that way. But when it is, it makes a big difference. 2 other ones, unsung, is courageous. And by courageous, that's willing to really tell you, the CEO, what's going on. Sometimes it's hard to hear. We get used to people telling us what we want. Don't fall into that trap. You need good information. You need to know what's happening. You need to take action. That COO, in this case, that executive sponsor, went in there and had the chops to make that happen. And they're disciplined. You can read discipline a lot of different ways. For me, it's around a couple of pieces. It's being organized. It's getting up and making it happen even when you're tired. If you're going to hit your goals, if you're going to double that EBITDA, or you're going to exit it at some point in the future, if you're going to make it So that you can have more time for yourself. You have to go and make it happen. You cannot coast your way through this. So the CEO's non-negotiable role in all this— that's set the goal, you own it, let's go make it happen— it's making execution mandatory. You're going to find people who talk a really good game. Your job is to make sure they're actually out there doing it. And it's simple to do. Get your metrics, your KPIs, your key performance indicators, and track people to it. If you find you're wrong on them, Don't despair, adjust them, but don't adjust them because people are being lazy or not doing them. Adjust them because they're either too low or too high. And you'll get a sense for that. You know your business, you know what's happening. If you're new, you'll learn it, but talk to folks. It'll become obvious why it has to happen. Back your sponsor publicly and in private. But if you find your sponsor's not the right fit, sometimes you have to make a change. But generally the issue is if you can get the right one, get the proverbial love connection. It is multiplying the impact on the business. You can go a lot faster with it. This I put together here, it shows how it flows. Basically, you've got the CEO at the top and they are the consultants pulling that information and pushing it up to the CEO. So this is your outside loop. This can be your most insightful loop because folks, if you've got a good consultant, they're going to tell you exactly what's going on, but they don't have the juice to change it. They have the ability. to guide, to coach, but ultimately the folks work for you, work for the company. All they can do is suggest with it. Your executive sponsor goes both up and down. They are telling you what's going on and they're taking your guidance. And then the consultants, of course, are working with the executive sponsor to train them on the process, get them where they understand what's going on. It's not to make the executive sponsor an expert. It does happen sometimes if they enjoy it. They may like doing this sort of thing, but it is to make sure they understand what they're looking at. And then it's the operators. Those are the people that run the day-to-day business. The prophets, that's the trainers. That's the people going to be implementing it. They're the one that goes find the prophet, as in money. And they also bring the commandments, as in this is what we're going to go do. And that's based right off of what your needs are. So consultants are pushing up and the executive sponsor are pulling up and it makes a nice virtuous loop for you. So you know what's happening. Just as a reminder, you set the goal. You have to decide where the team's going. You have to pick it. And that's generally based on feedback you're getting from your board. Maybe you're the owner, maybe you're the founder, maybe you have other outside owners, but it's all of that coming together to define the destination. It's your team. It's those operators, the presidents, the VPs, which are deciding the strategy. In other words, how we're going to achieve your goal. Now, why is that important? If they don't believe it, they're not going to do it at the first Sign of trouble, they will tell you, believe me, it may not say it right to your face, but they will remind you this is your strategy, not theirs. If you want people to execute on something, make sure they own it. They have input. It makes a huge, huge difference. The executive sponsor, that's the anchor for the execution. That's your proxy. That's the person out there who is pulling the information up to the top and making sure your thoughts, your ideas, what you want to accomplish is going out there. It has to be about what you want with it. And that what you want has to be grounded in reality. They're going to accelerate the process a ton. Without it, you got to be in a whole lot more places than you can probably be in. The executive sponsor is critical. One other piece. Sometimes I'm asked, should I have more than one? I would tell you absolutely no. It seems obvious and it seems like a good idea to have more than one, but honestly, what you want here is one throat to choke you. As a CEO, you need someplace to go that you can get the truth that's happening out there. And if you've got multiple people, no matter how aligned they are, no matter how great they are, no matter how much they're collaborating, they're going to be sharing different things with different people. You're going to get groups on different paces, and it's going to be hard to not only control your message but to get everyone going. So make sure you go, go with one. Avoid matrixes. Avoid doing it yourself. As we've talked before about this in this video, is your time needs to be Setting the goal, working with the team out there, selling your message, selling that vision that the entire team has really brought together. This person's job is to be the connection from you all the way to the bottom of the organization. They need to work with the consultants. They need to work with the principals. They need to work with the operators. They need to work with the profits, right? They need to be engaged with it. They need to be on one hand being very thoughtful and engaging and helping people. On the other hand, Pulling them along, making sure they're getting there, holding them accounting, looking, holding them accountable, looking at the data, ensuring that the project is making progress and you're hitting the dates with it. So it's very critical that you have that. I also get asked a lot of times, should the CEO do it? Should it be somebody who's not on the team? Again, I would say no. I think you can take someone from the middle of the organization, some high potential, someone that's got a lot of bandwidth, a lot of Ability to look at data and get along with people. It's got to have that ability to convince. So it doesn't have to be on your team, but as soon, as soon as you appoint them, put them on your team, even if it's a special project. But there's a lot of things that you can do with the executive sponsor around strategy and really bringing them into the organization. But this is the primary project here. This is what you're betting your future on. You are betting that if you follow this, you're going to get what you need. You're going to be able to take and turn the company around if that's what it needs. You're going to make more money. We all need that. And most likely you're going to look at exiting at some point, which may mean selling it, may mean stepping back. It may be transitioning, whatever it means to you. This is the key role that's going to help you with it. They're going to work closely with the consultants. They're going to work closely with everyone on the inside, make sure they're dedicated to it. Make sure it's one person. I know it may feel awkward. I get asked a lot of times, I've already got presidents. I've already got other folks doing it. Doesn't matter. Pick that one person. You'll never regret having it with it. At the end of the day, when you look at— this is what you're trying to get to. You want all the cylinders in the engine of the company firing at the same time. You've created a wonderful organization. It's got you and this team where it needs to go. You need to give it that juice, that horsepower to get to the next level. Make sure you're dedicated to it. This is not just another flavor of the day. This is you looking at your organization, understanding what's happening, and being able to make informed decisions. It's not some fly-by-night thing. It's just you looking at your data and having a thoughtful, controlled approach to it. Having the right team supporting you, both on the outside, working with us and our coaches, our account managers, and on the inside, having your executive sponsor in there is absolutely imperative. So it's exciting. We're so excited to be working with you. Thank you for watching this video. Lots more to come.
