It can be a lonely place as CEO or CCO. For small businesses, a single person might still be expected to know all staff, all customers, and have a good view of operations. For large corporates, the CEO has a dedicated in-house strategic support function to lean on, to test new ideas with before socialising them with the C-Suite or Board. But for the majority of Irish businesses in the middle, the CEO or CCO can neither be expected to know every aspect of their business, nor have they a dedicated team to discreetly turn to.
A well-oiled C-Suite certainly helps – but they rarely have the specialisms, time or ‘permission’ to be sizing new market opportunities, discreetly challenging your own thought process, presenting new ideas and data, or giving a frank assessment of why the competition is pulling ahead. Once a year there might be a scramble to get down on slides what’s in your head – weekends lost to that Board presentation, or maybe an underprepared strategy away day for the senior team?
If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone.
There are number of characteristics we see on a recurring basis for both CEOs and Chief Commercial Officers:
Add to this complexity a touch of COVID disruption – how it’s absorbed senior management time and how it’s accelerated long-term trends for your sector. You’ll have ideas, but would you like to know how others in your sector are responding?
For further information on how we can help, get in touch with our Strategy team. We'd be delighted to hear from you.