IBF Editorial Team
Lack of executive engagement is one of the most common explanations for why S&OP processes struggle.
Executives do not attend consistently. They delegate the meeting. They appear distracted. Decisions get postponed. The process loses momentum.
The instinct is often to conclude that leadership does not understand S&OP or does not support it strongly enough.
Sometimes that is true. But there is a more challenging perspective worth considering: executive disengagement may be a symptom of how the meeting itself is designed.
The question is straightforward:
The Executive S&OP meeting may not be giving executives a compelling reason to participate.
If the meeting is dominated by KPI reviews, spreadsheets, historical reporting, operational detail, or issues that should have been resolved beforehand, executive disengagement should not be surprising.
Executives have limited time. They are more likely to attend what they find valuable – especially meetings where their judgment and authority are needed to make a meaningful business decision.
That changes the question from:
How do we get executives to attend S&OP?
to:
How do we design Executive S&OP so their attendance creates value?
That distinction becomes the organizing idea for how Executive S&OP should work.
Executive S&OP Is a Business Meeting, Not a Supply Chain Meeting
Supply chain often facilitates S&OP. But Executive S&OP should not become a supply chain meeting.
It should function as a business decision forum that brings together the relevant functions to make enterprise trade-offs.
Demand and supply planning, manufacturing, commercial leadership, finance, and the P&L owner may have different priorities at any given point.
Inventory may be the supply chain priority. Manufacturing may be focused on reliability, safety, capacity, or capital projects. Commercial teams may be pursuing growth, pricing, or market share. Finance may be focused on cash flow or margin.
Those priorities are not always aligned – and that is exactly why Executive S&OP exists.
The meeting should provide an integrated view of the business rather than a supply chain report-out.
Supply chain may assemble the information, coordinate the process, and facilitate the meeting. But the other functions need a meaningful speaking role and shared ownership of the decisions.
A useful principle is simple: supply chain facilitates Executive S&OP; the business owns the outcome.
Do the Alignment Before Executives Enter the Room
Executive S&OP should not be the first time the functions discover that they disagree.
If manufacturing and supply chain have conflicting views, those disagreements should be worked through in the appropriate demand, supply, S&OE, pre-S&OP, or consensus processes whenever possible.
What reaches the executive forum should be the issues that genuinely require executive judgment, authority, or cross-functional trade-offs.
That means the pre-work should answer questions such as:
- What is happening?
- Why is it happening?
- What are the available alternatives?
- What are the operational and financial implications?
- What does the cross-functional team recommend?
- What specifically requires executive authority?
Executives should not spend their time watching functions debate assumptions that could have been reconciled beforehand.
The objective is:
The rule is simple: align before the meeting. Decide during the meeting.
That also means executives should know the important decision points in advance.
Surprising an executive with a major decision in the room rarely improves the quality of that decision.
Instead, socialize the issue beforehand. Provide the relevant information. Give leaders time to ask questions and understand the trade-offs.
Then use Executive S&OP to make the decision and establish accountability.
Give Executives Something to Decide
One test is especially useful when evaluating an Executive S&OP meeting:
What decision do we need executives to make?
The challenge is blunt: if the answer is ‘none,’ question why executive attendance is required.
That does not mean every monthly cycle will contain the same type or magnitude of decision. It means the executive forum should have a clear purpose beyond routine reporting.
The meeting earns its value when leadership judgment or authority is needed.
Examples might include:
- Whether to build inventory ahead of expected demand
- How to allocate constrained capacity
- Whether to accept a service risk to protect cash
- Which market or customer opportunity deserves priority
- Whether additional capital or resources are justified
- How the organization should respond to a major change in demand
- Which business scenario the company should plan against
The decision should be identified before the meeting begins.
Executives should know that they are expected to weigh in on it.
That expectation is central to executive engagement: make the meeting relevant to the executive’s actual role.
Executives attend what requires executive judgment.
Decide, Don’t Model
One of the strongest operating principles is also one of the most memorable: do not open a spreadsheet and start modeling during Executive S&OP.
The operating phrase is: ‘Decide, don’t model.’ The analysis should already have been completed.
Executive S&OP should receive the output of the analysis – it should not become the place where the analysis is performed.
That means replacing pages of raw data with a small number of clearly framed alternatives.
For many executive decisions, three scenarios can provide enough range without creating unnecessary complexity:
- Pessimistic case
- Base case
- Optimistic case
Each should show the consequences that matter to the business.
- Revenue
- Margin
- Cash flow
- Service
- Inventory
- Capacity
- Risk
The executive’s role, in this framework, is not to build the scenario.
It is to evaluate the trade-offs, challenge the assumptions, and choose the direction.
AI and advanced analytics may increasingly help planning teams build these scenarios faster and more accurately. But that does not change the purpose of the executive meeting.
Whether the analysis is created by planners, advanced planning systems, or AI agents, the principle remains:
The principle remains: do the modeling before the meeting. Use the meeting to decide.
Focus Executive Attention on Exceptions
A strong management-by-exception approach to KPIs can also protect executive attention: leaders do not need a detailed explanation of every metric that is performing normally.
A practical approach is to keep the full KPI dashboard available – often in the appendix – while using executive discussion time for the items that need attention.
That typically means focusing on:
- Metrics outside tolerance
- Material deteriorating trends
- Risks requiring leadership attention
- Strategic initiatives that need sponsorship
- Decisions that cannot be resolved elsewhere
If forecast accuracy is on target and stable, there may be little reason to spend executive time discussing it. If a metric has materially improved because of an important initiative, that success may still deserve recognition – but it should not turn the meeting into a routine report-out.
If forecast accuracy has deteriorated sharply and a cross-functional intervention is required, it becomes relevant to the executive conversation.
The same principle applies to inventory, OTIF, service, working capital, or any other metric.
The executive question is not merely:
What is the number?
It is:
Why has it changed, what are we doing about it, and what do you need from leadership?
Reporting what happened is not enough.
The meeting should create action.
The Two-Minute Inventory Decision
A real example illustrates how presentation design can dramatically affect decision quality.
In one Executive S&OP discussion, a team needed leadership to consider an inventory target.
The original presentation contained substantial text and a detailed chart. Much of the information did not directly clarify the decision, and the underlying company details were intentionally obscured when the example was later shared publicly.
The central issue was difficult to see.
The information was then reframed into a simple historical trend showing inventory levels over several periods alongside the proposed level and the executive target.
The picture changed immediately.
The proposed plan would have produced the highest inventory level shown in the history of the business.
The executive target, by contrast, still allowed more inventory than the organization had carried in several recent periods.
Once the information was reframed, the executive decision reportedly took roughly two minutes.
The organization ultimately pursued the lower target and achieved it.
The lesson is not that executives need less information.
The lesson from the example is that executives do not necessarily need more information; they need better-structured information.
A complicated analysis can obscure the decision. A clear trend, comparison, and set of consequences can make the answer much easier to see.
Executive Engagement Starts Before the Meeting
The Executive S&OP meeting itself is only one part of executive engagement.
Planning leaders should communicate with their executive sponsors before the meeting rather than treating executive engagement as something that begins when the calendar invite starts.
That means:
- Identifying the decision point early
- Sharing the relevant information
- Explaining the recommended direction
- Understanding what questions the executive is likely to ask
- Ensuring the executive knows what role they are expected to play
- Allowing time for other executives to consider the issue
This pre-engagement helps avoid two common problems.
First, leaders are less likely to feel blindsided.
Second, they arrive ready to decide rather than trying to understand the entire issue from scratch.
Accountability also needs periodic reinforcement.
As organizations restructure and people change roles, participants may no longer understand who is responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed.
Revisiting a RACI or DACI as roles change can help supply chain, manufacturing, finance, commercial
teams, and leadership remain clear on who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.
If participants do not understand which decisions belong to them, it should not be surprising when decisions do not get made.
What If the Executive Won’t Decide?
Not every leader naturally embraces decision ownership, and the process needs to account for that reality.
Some may be reluctant to take risk. Others may expect the team to make the recommendation and simply want to approve it.
The response is not to remove the decision from the executive. It is to frame the choice more clearly and make the trade-offs easier to evaluate.
Instead of presenting an open-ended problem, present alternatives.
- Option A: Higher inventory and stronger service protection
- Option B: Lower inventory and greater service risk
- Option C: A balanced case with defined trigger points
Explain the cost and benefit of each.
Provide the cross-functional recommendation.
Then ask the executive to choose, challenge, or approve a direction.
This structure can help reluctant decision-makers engage because they are reacting to credible alternatives rather than starting from a blank page.
The goal is not to manufacture executive involvement.
It is to provide the clarity required for responsible leadership.
Capture the Questions You Cannot Answer
Executive questions should be difficult.
A good Executive S&OP process should encourage leaders to challenge assumptions and test the analysis.
Teams will not always have every answer in the room.
What should be avoided is improvising an answer when the team does not actually know.
A better response is to acknowledge the gap, capture the question, assign ownership, and return with the answer.
One practical approach is to maintain a running list of unresolved executive questions with:
- The question
- Why it could not be answered
- The responsible owner
- The required analysis
- The due date
The next Executive S&OP can begin by closing those unresolved items.
This reinforces accountability while allowing the current meeting to continue rather than turning into an unplanned analysis session.
Sometimes the Right Decision Is Not to Hold Executive S&OP Yet
A more contrarian point is that organizations should not rush to hold Executive S&OP simply because the framework says they should.
If the underlying information is not credible enough to support sound decisions, it may be better to fix that foundation first than institutionalize an executive meeting built on data no one trusts.
In one acquired operation, the organization lacked the forecasting, service, and performance information necessary to support meaningful executive decisions.
Rather than force Executive S&OP into place immediately, the organization first built the required planning and measurement capabilities.
The work included establishing forecasting, forecast-accuracy measurement, OTIF measurement, and related planning discipline before launching the executive forum.
Over time, inventory was reportedly cut significantly and OTIF reached approximately 98% before the organization moved forward with Executive S&OP.
This does not mean organizations need perfect data before they can practice S&OP.
The point is that the information needs to be credible enough for the decisions executives are being asked to make.
If the organization cannot yet answer basic questions about demand, service, inventory, or performance, the first S&OP decision may need to be:
What information capability must we fix before we can make better business decisions?
A Simple Test for Every Executive S&OP
Taken together, five questions provide a useful test before the next executive review.
1. What decision requires executive authority?
Ask whether a meaningful decision actually requires executive authority. If not, reconsider what executive time is needed.
2. Has the analysis already been completed?
Bring scenarios, trade-offs, and recommendations into the room rather than conducting the core modeling live.
3. Are the alternatives and consequences clear?
Show the trade-offs in terms executives understand: cash, margin, service, growth, risk, and strategic priorities.
4. Have the relevant executives been prepared?
Socialize major decisions in advance so executives have time to understand the issue and arrive prepared to challenge or decide.
5. Are we discussing only what requires executive attention?
Use the meeting for exceptions, risks, trade-offs, and decisions – not a routine recital of every KPI.
These questions do not eliminate every S&OP challenge.
But they dramatically increase the likelihood that executive participation will create value.
Looking Ahead
Executive engagement remains essential to S&OP and IBP. But planning organizations should not treat that engagement as something they are automatically entitled to receive.
The process has to earn it.
Executives are more likely to engage when the meeting addresses issues requiring their authority, presents information clearly, and allows them to make decisions that affect the business.
That is a stronger standard than simply asking leaders to show up.
The best Executive S&OP meetings do not ask leaders to watch the planning process happen.
They bring executives the result of that process:
- A clearly framed business issue.
- A small number of credible alternatives.
- The consequences of each choice.
- And a decision that needs to be made.
That is where Executive S&OP becomes more than another recurring meeting.
It becomes a business decision forum.
Go deeper: Watch What Today’s Executives Expect from S&OP for the full discussion on executive engagement, scenario preparation, decision-making, and how to make Executive S&OP more valuable to leadership.
To learn more about upcoming IBF conferences, training programs, and leadership forums, including opportunities to continue these discussions, visit the IBF Forecasting and Planning Conference schedule.
Editor’s Note
This article is based on the IBF webinar ‘What Today’s Executives Expect from S&OP,’ presented by Justin Lanyon, Global Supply Chain Director at Arkema Inc., on September 9, 2026.
Justin is a regular speaker at IBF conferences and leadership forums, where he shares practitioner perspectives drawn from more than two decades of experience across manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, and business leadership.
He currently oversees a global, multi-business supply chain with more than 40 production locations and approximately €3 billion in annual turnover. The article has been edited and organized to highlight the most broadly applicable practitioner insights and lessons from the session while preserving Justin’s experience-based point of view.