Tomorrow’s digital leaders

In today’s chang­ing com­mer­cial envi­ron­ment, the posi­tion of chief dig­i­tal offi­cer (CDO) is the piv­otal point on which a company’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion suc­ceeds or fails.

How­ev­er, Clare John­ston, co-chief exec­u­tive and founder of spe­cial­ist dig­i­tal exec­u­tive search firm The Up Group, believes fun­da­men­tal to the suc­cess of a CDO is their rank with­in the cor­po­rate hier­ar­chy.

“If the CDO reports direct­ly to the chief exec­u­tive, this sig­ni­fies the com­pa­ny is tak­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion seri­ous­ly,” says Ms John­ston.

To effect the lev­el of change often desired, very senior lead­er­ship is required, feed­ing into the trans­for­ma­tion of sys­tems, cul­ture, process­es, tal­ent and devel­op­ment, mea­sure­ment, and entire ways of work­ing, as well as user expe­ri­ence, she says.

“It’s impor­tant to have a senior CDO as opposed to them sit­ting a few lev­els down, report­ing to a chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer or a chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, because dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is cen­tral to how a busi­ness oper­ates,” says Ms John­ston.

Sean Corn­well, CDO at Trav­elex, says the role is often cre­at­ed by frus­trat­ed chief exec­u­tives seek­ing cat­a­lysts for change.

“Oth­er C‑suite roles are sel­dom able to dri­ve the required change because they are not broad-reach­ing enough,” he says. “I think these roles will be with us for a few years, but they are ulti­mate­ly tem­po­rary as digi­ti­sa­tion becomes part of every employee’s DNA. You wouldn’t catch Google or Face­book talk­ing about a CDO – they’d be laughed out of the room.”

Those recruit­ed as CDOs will often have grown up in pure-play dig­i­tal busi­ness­es, yet in order to be effec­tive at dri­ving trans­for­ma­tion, they need to be able to com­mu­ni­cate in a more tra­di­tion­al envi­ron­ment.

“There will be organ rejec­tion,” says Ms John­ston, who describes the opti­mum CDO can­di­date as some­one with mul­ti­chan­nel expe­ri­ence, across dig­i­tal and tra­di­tion­al.