jen briggs

Several years ago I researched the idea of Co-CEO’s. In most of my literature review, the extent of the co-relationship was a partnership between the CEO and COO. These two people were partners and often the yin to the others yang. The great partnerships were grown from strong relationships between the two people. They knew where their leadership could be applied most effectively in the business. One was often more of an outside, consumer-facing force providing the face of the organization and focusing on the marketplace. The other is more focused on how the business operates. In small ways, it was a move away from the singular commander to more shared leadership, but there was still a clear observance of the top-down driven organization. The CEO was often celebrated, sending a message to people that there is a locus of control – even if that control is benevolent, it can turn to a parental organization creating unique issues.

Recently, I’ve been exposed to the lesser used idea of the Chief Executive Office. It is the traditional CEO role shared by two and occasionally three people. It isn’t too dissimilar from the CEO/COO partnership except that it is more fluid and sends a strong signal to people that power is held differently. We are in a time where the breakdown of the traditional, industrial age managerial tactics are over; for example, control vs. trust or putting the employees at the kid’s table while the adults (management) works on strategy.

Initiatives like training supervisors to be more participative are good but marginal to the potential impact of rewiring the DNA of a company. Command and control, while efficient, is becoming ineffective in our modern, highly-connected society with innovation cycles quickly eclipsing old product design timelines. Yes, the organization left waiting for decisions to be micromanaged from the top will be left behind because they can’t keep up. But, organizations being instigated, trusted, inspired, and role modeled from the top to be thinkers, informed influencers, and responsible owners will be faster.

The formatting of the design for the CEO Office is primarily determined based on the people occupying the office. There may be a person who takes the lead on setting the agenda, but for the most part, two or three people can toggle their distinctive capabilities and capacities to meet the needs of the organization. Also, the agenda-setting may be toggled based on a particular phase in a business cycle. Let’s take, for example, the application of this idea to sales and marketing. This customer focus is often tied to the outside-leaning person, but in this model, the best leader is associated with what that business or group needs. There will be a time where sales and marketing need to create systems that prepare the function to scale and grow. While at other times sales and marketing are focusing on innovation and new product commercialization. Innovation vs. processes-systems work often call for different forms of leadership and perspective, and by matching the needs of the group to the broader skill set of the leader, the function can get what they need.

Companies are smart to have engaged boards who are actively managing the performance of the CEO. This CEO Office management provides an opportunity for a board to have a better view of the organization through not just one leadership lens, but two. The role of conflict is an important one, and a great CEO partnership will not simply be yes-people to each other, but they will engage in healthy inquiry and conflict for the purpose of pushing the edge of the company into constant improvement. This being said, co-leaders must have excellent emotional intelligence and be great at resolving conflict. Don’t you want this in any CEO? This model ensures espoused personal philosophies are actualized every day.

Accountability

The argument against this is usually accountability. People often reject matrix reporting or leader-swaps because it can be confusing on where the responsibility and accountability lies. Having two managers can result in conflicting priorities. Certainly, these may be true. However, I think these issues are not one of who sits in the CEO seat or a matrix structure, but of other central matters including leadership skill, planning, strategy execution, values, and mission building. We often plug people into roles and demand they create the system as they go. Some may call this entrepreneurial, but many feel the experience leads to a cumbersome and a sometimes confusing work-world. This traditional, now corporately habitual, hierarchical system is attached to the CEO more than it is attached to what the business needs to be excellent. The more open model builds a system and then creates freedom within the purpose and needs of the company so people can focus primarily on the marketplace and value creation. On the individual accountability front, in multi-stakeholder driven organizations, people tend to naturally hold themselves accountable to a broad agenda and resolve conflicting priorities through debate and conversation. This is a non-linear arrangement and has the potential and capacity to be more effective at the core when done well.

One-neck-to-choke

Similarly, the case against a Co-CEO arrangement is typically the one-neck-to-choke idea. People want to know who’s “really” in charge. Who will be the one where ultimate responsibility will be held. Where is the apex of the organization? Whom do we look to? These questions seem like they would have practical answers, but an underperforming organization is rarely about one person. If it is about one person, the question about organizational design and talent strategy needs to .be questioned. In high performing organizations responsibility is held by each person. Underperformance issues need to addressed with the Board of Directors and when hearing the voice of a sing CEO, is missing a vital part of the picture. However, if a company wants to be autocratic and directive so they can use blame as a business tactic, one CEO is a far better option.

Pace

Pace is also a question and is usually a reason why companies are low on collaboration. Leaders in organizations that need to be fast and efficient get concerned that decisions requiring collaboration or approval by two people or more people will be slower. However, similar to the concept above, if every decision needs to be run by a single CEO, I would question the effectiveness of power distribution and decision making. In any company, regardless of CEO, Co-CEO, or CEO Office, if every decision is approved at the top, it will slow the company down. On both sides of these extremes – overly collaborative or overly centralized, there is a risk to pace. Great leadership teams find the smart distribution of decision making that allows for better decision generation with greater insights, and they are not reliant on one person. The most significant decisions – innovation strategy, commercialization, capital structure, big-budget allocation, etc. are best done with broader insights, and in many companies also debated and ratified at the board level. The key to pace is go-slow-to-go-fast, and have the organizational muscle to master the art of getting the right work done well. Easily said, difficult to do. In this case, the minds of two leaders are likely better than one.

The case against a business system designed around a single job

The above sentence seems crazy when you read it. Why would any company build an organizational design around one person? But, that is the signal sent with a single person apex organization. For any of us who have worked on executive succession or recruiting, we know the unicorn effect is strong with the CEO role. One superficial run at stakeholder mapping for the CEO role will show that different constituents expect different things from the position. Then, from the human capability perspective, it is nearly impossible to find it all in one candidate. There are always gives-and-takes and trade-offs in the selection process. There won’t be one great person. It might just be more feasible to find two great people.

Why not just be flat?

Let’s not conflate the ideas between leadership and management. In ambitious companies in high growth or competitive marketplaces, it is essential to have vision. There are marketplace maneuvers and distinctive approaches that need to be lead through the organization. Leaders in open organizations are busy instigating and harvesting the best of the best ideas. Organizations are always at risk for ossifying, and leaders keep pushing boundaries for thinking, quality, and value contribution and creation. Leaders in the modern, open organization are turning old concepts like manage, lead, and structure from a single person activity to gerunds like managing, leading, and structuring that are done by everyone. They are building critical thinkers, creating constant communication and dialog, facilitating high-impact information exchanges, and making sure the business is a learning organizaiton. This is servant leadership and it is very active and constant. It is alive, growing, and evolving.

If a company is trying to lean toward being more open, purpose-centered, strategic, and innovative, the idea of an autocratic role is simply an outdated concept. The style of a CEO in a purpose-driven, values-centered company is critical. They must be a servant of the business purpose, the employees, the daily business needs, and the marketplace. This is a hard charge to be certain. They must be able to be directive, but cooperative. Humble, yet confident. Open, yet decisive. Their style will be the role model for all of the people in the firm regardless of any values statement. The CEO in any format is the lived example that influences the employees most.

What about the unicorns?

If there were a singular unicorn CEO, I would say it is likely the founder of the firm. Founders of successful firms during the darling stages of the business are unicorns. However, as firms grow they will either be limited by the capability at the top or that person’s capacity to share leadership with others. It is the leadership team that makes the impact, not merely the founder. Leaning on a celebrity CEO puts the business at risk for continuity and reliance on a cult-of-personality for long term business sustainability. At some point, a business needs to transition. Some consultants refer to this as becoming “professionally managed”. Indeed, companies need a strong platform for growth, but the modern version of professional management will be leaders who use a strong legacy of success and a constant reminder of the energy of creation and work to continually design the organization to try to meet the future needs of the consumer. The new version of professional management releases the ability of people inside the company to make significant contributions in the context of the values, purpose, and mission of the company.

Making it work

A Chief Executive Office is able to debate and coalesce around issues. If the partnership is well constructed, these people will have opposing views, different skills, and different approaches (think DISC or Kolbe). Their affective, conative, and cognitive approaches will diverge and be complimentary. If there is a big gap in opinions for a direction, this is a red flag for a matter that should have board engagement – and this should be a good thing. A critical piece to making this work is that their core human values and passion for the company will be the same. They will have values for inclusion, openness, self-worth, lack of ego, value for human dignity, ambition, and passion for the customer and what the product will bring to the world. In the practical sense, people who report to this office will have a clear point of reporting that may intentionally toggle, but they will also have leadership resources who can lean in and give sponsorship to particular needs at different times. I have had the opportunity to be in multiple matrix reporting situations and have had great experiences and poor experiences. My great experience was one where not only the two people were aligned, but our organization was aligned. I had great coaching from two amazing people – a truly wonderful experience. In my poor experience, my two managers acted more like competitors and at times, I inadvertently became triangulated. The key here is that we are human and we will always need to work on being our best together.

In any leadership situation, a high performing team will know their swim lanes, divisions of responsibility, and highest impact that can come from planned overlap. It’s great to map these out. Rather than thinking of this as a stale organizational structure, think of it as an act of organizational structuring. In more traditional organizations, the map comes from functional divisions and is reasonably static. In most companies, this tradition also leads to the silo effect and unnecessary divisiveness leading to competition for resources. This is a critical point for employees who may be concerned about frequent change – rather than having silo’s that can be mistaken for stability, the organization is going to be more elastic and responsive hopefully making it more stable by being prepared for market volatility. A fast organization should be prepared to outpace and lead the competition. That said, no leader can guarantee growth or stability. Business leadership is indeed a craft and an art.

A Co-CEO/CEO Office needs to be hired as a respected partnership arrangement, and the two or three people will work on their relationship for the benefit of the company at all times. But, this is no different from what strong executive teams do. One of the significant benefits this arrangement allows is a loud signal to the marketplace and employees about what this company cares about and how it is distinctively different from the competition. The two must perceive each other as different, but equal and mutual respect is at the center of a successful arrangement.

The most critical reason why the co-CEO or CEO Office has merit is that it will require a company to be more deliberate and conscious of how it runs. It will support being purpose driven vs. relying on habitual organizational constructs that deny us the opportunity to be critical thinkers. It will require a board to consider the power structures and to design decision systems that drive value. It will force transparency, and this is a good thing. It will challenge the status quo, and this is the new requirement for the modern business. This idea isn’t for everyone, only the disruptive and progressive. It won’t be easy, but it might just be more effective.