How one company is reaching new heights under two CEOs

This arti­cle is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the sto­ries of com­pa­nies bold enough to break busi­ness norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, head here.

While the buck stops with one leader in the vast major­i­ty of organ­i­sa­tions, the ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty for the per­for­mance of dig­i­tal media firm Jun­gle Cre­ations lies with a pair of CEOs. 

When Jamie Bold­ing announced that he would be step­ping down in Jan­u­ary 2021, hav­ing led the com­pa­ny since he’d found­ed it in 2014, Nat Poul­ter and Melis­sa Chap­man – its COO and chief con­tent and brand offi­cer respec­tive­ly – were both cho­sen to replace him. 

“The tran­si­tion hap­pened quite nat­u­ral­ly because the busi­ness had been run very demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly from the begin­ning,” Poul­ter says.  

Explain­ing the deci­sion to split the CEO role, he adds: “I think this is a bet­ter illus­tra­tion of what busi­ness­es look like nowa­days. There’s no sin­gle dic­ta­tor at the top. Every­one now has a voice that can feed into shap­ing the com­pa­ny – it’s a lot less hier­ar­chi­cal.” 

How does it work in practice? 

The pair con­tin­ue to over­see the sides of the busi­ness that they pre­vi­ous­ly ran: Poul­ter focus­es on the sales and agency func­tions while Chap­man looks after pub­lish­ing and mar­ket­ing. Hav­ing these clear demar­ca­tions means that oper­a­tions remain effi­cient and tac­ti­cal deci­sions can still be made quick­ly, accord­ing to Chap­man. 

But both have equal respon­si­bil­i­ty for set­ting the company’s over­all direc­tion. “We have to reach a gen­er­al agree­ment on the firm’s des­ti­na­tion and its strat­e­gy for get­ting there,” Poul­ter says. 

Although they admit that this can make some process­es slow­er, as the biggest deci­sions can­not be made uni­lat­er­al­ly, it ulti­mate­ly leads to bet­ter out­comes, accord­ing to Chap­man. 

“The co-CEO mod­el forces you to put the business’s sit­u­a­tion first, rather than your opin­ions,” she observes. “You have to be open to oth­er views and con­cede that your way won’t always be the right way.” 

The pair are often asked whether they butt heads, but so far it has been a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, reports Poul­ter, who adds that, while there have been “chal­leng­ing points, it’s always pos­si­ble to come to an under­stand­ing if you’re both try­ing to reach the same des­ti­na­tion”. 

Chap­man observes that the mutu­al trust and respect they have formed while work­ing togeth­er ever since Poul­ter joined the firm in July 2017 have been cru­cial in this.  

“We don’t need to sec­ond-guess each oth­er, as we’ve been work­ing with each oth­er for such a long time,” she says. “As long as we nour­ish our rela­tion­ship by con­tin­u­ing to be can­did with each oth­er, we can be effec­tive co-CEOs.”  

The business benefits 

Since tak­ing the helm, the pair have over­seen a 50% year-on-year increase in rev­enue and a 100% growth in under­ly­ing prof­its – fig­ures that Chap­man thinks are tes­ta­ment to the effec­tive­ness of the new approach.  

She adds that employ­ee engage­ment has also improved in every aspect mea­sured by its com­pa­ny-wide sur­veys, explain­ing that “the dual CEO mod­el has afford­ed us the time to focus more on mat­ters of well­be­ing and cul­ture, not just the finances”. 

This is some­thing that’s increas­ing­ly impor­tant for younger employ­ees, accord­ing to Chap­man. “Mil­len­ni­als and gen-Zers want their employ­ers to be more empa­thet­ic and open to dif­fer­ent view­points. Nat and I need to hold those val­ues at the top lev­el, which I think has ben­e­fit­ed the wider cul­ture,” she says. 

Poul­ter adds that oper­at­ing as a co-CEO requires inter­per­son­al skills that “per­haps weren’t present in many of the arche­typ­al busi­ness lead­ers of yes­ter­year. I couldn’t see some­one like Sir Mar­tin Sor­rell [the for­mer CEO of adver­tis­ing giant WPP] work­ing well in such a role, for exam­ple. Ulti­mate­ly, this mod­el aims to improve busi­ness per­for­mance by build­ing trust and con­fi­dence. I hope that’s what we’re achiev­ing here.”