Bill Canady took over a decentralized conglomerate where business-unit presidents ignored corporate strategy. He created an internal role called the "prophet" to translate vision into concrete actions through training and coaching, replacing slow external consultants with an execution catalyst embedded in the organization.
I thought today we would take time to talk about the team that leads the business, and the one we're going to focus on is the profit. The first company I was hired to run by a private equity firm that had purchased it was a conglomerate of decentralized businesses sprawled out over diverse markets— medical, technical, and industrial. In theory, 80/20 guided the entire conglomerate. In practice, business unit presidents generally went about their own way. Now, at first, I brought in outside consultants and trainers to drill us on 80/20 and related processes and practices and put that into a bundle for our business. They were good consultants and competent trainers, but they were making painfully slow progress. So what did we need? We needed a prophet. Well, it's a term that we coined to find the prophet of the company. This prophet translates the vision into actions, typically through training, coaching, and mentoring others throughout the organization.
