What is the C‑suite?

What is the C‑suite?

The C‑suite are the high­est-rank­ing senior exec­u­tives in an organ­i­sa­tion. So called, because of the “C” rep­re­sent­ing the word “chief” in many cor­po­rate titles. Also known as “C‑level exec­u­tives”, these are the roles respon­si­ble for lead­ing a busi­ness and its respec­tive depart­ments and, as such, are the most pow­er­ful fig­ures in the com­pa­ny.

• What is a CEO?
• What is a CMO?
• What is a CFO?
• What is a CIO?
• What is a CDO?

What is a CEO?

The chief exec­u­tive offi­cer (CEO) is the most senior C‑suite exec­u­tive in a com­pa­ny and, ulti­mate­ly, respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the organ­i­sa­tion as a whole. Charged with max­imis­ing the company’s val­ue, CEOs report todi­rect­ly the board, and may even be the chair­man them­selves. The face of the com­pa­ny, every oth­er role reports to the CEO, requir­ing them to be strong lead­ers with a vision for the frame­work and direc­tion of the organ­i­sa­tion.

As with busi­ness, the nature of the CEO’s role is chang­ing all the time, and there are indi­ca­tions that a stronger mar­ket­ing focus may be required from the CEOs of the future. Exec­u­tive search firm Hei­drick & Strug­gles found the pro­por­tion of Euro­pean chief exec­u­tives with a mar­ket­ing back­ground grew from 15 per cent to 21 per cent between 2011 and 2015. Dave Lewis, Tesco’s chief exec­u­tive, was Unilever’s mar­keter respon­si­ble for Dove’s Real Beau­ty cam­paign, while Sainsbury’s chief exec­u­tive Mike Coupe is a for­mer Tesco mar­ket­ing direc­tor.

It is also no longer the case that CEOs must grow for years with the brands they come to man­age. “CEOs are a broad bunch, but there’s an appre­ci­a­tion they no longer need to ‘serve their time’ like they used to,” says Bren­da Trenow­den, for­mer man­ag­ing direc­tor of Lloyds Bank­ing Group. “Nowa­days, being at one com­pa­ny all your life could work against you. They need broad­er expe­ri­ence. They have to be bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tors, more attuned to dif­fer­ent groups, grasp tech­nol­o­gy bet­ter and be more agile.”

Read more about the CEO:

• How to become a CEO
• Cul­tur­al change: a map for CEOs
• CEOs strug­gle to bal­ance share­hold­er returns and growth
• A new era of brand build­ing for CEOs
• The Future CEO 2018 spe­cial report

What is a CMO?

The chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer (CMO) is the exec­u­tive respon­si­ble for all of an organisation’s mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty. This can include mar­ket research, brand and prod­uct man­age­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, pric­ing and cus­tomer ser­vice. CMOs must cre­ate and lead a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy which can gen­er­ate busi­ness and brand growth.

“The cur­rent land­scape is forc­ing CMOs to become com­plete busi­ness­peo­ple.” says Bob Liodice, chief exec­u­tive of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nation­al Adver­tis­ers. “Not just expert mar­keters, they now need to be sol­id and expert growth cham­pi­ons. It’s about mas­ter­ing mea­sure­ment and account­abil­i­ty; it’s about mas­ter­ing the dig­i­tal media sup­ply chain; and it’s about mas­ter­ing tal­ent and diver­si­ty, from gen­der equal­i­ty to mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.”

Today’s CMO must be as com­fort­able with data sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, econo­met­rics and ana­lyt­ics as they are with agen­cies and cre­atives. They’re as like­ly to be account­able for go-to-mar­ket cam­paigns as they are churn man­age­ment and loy­al­ty, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and devel­op­ing inno­va­tion pipelines.

Jeff Dodds, TalkTalk’s man­ag­ing direc­tor for mobile and for­mer CMO of Vir­gin Media com­ments: “It’s not that mar­ket­ing has changed; if you go back to the orig­i­nal def­i­n­i­tion of mar­ket­ing being about the sev­en Ps [prod­uct, price, place, pro­mo­tion, peo­ple, process and phys­i­cal evi­dence], that’s fun­da­men­tal­ly what a CMO is grap­pling with today, it’s just tak­en a while for organ­i­sa­tions to catch up and place all of those respon­si­bil­i­ties under one lead­er­ship role.”

Con­se­quent­ly, the path to this C‑suite mar­ket­ing role is also chang­ing, with future CMOs like­ly to have a back­ground beyond the tra­di­tion­al cre­ative and com­mu­ni­ca­tions routes.

Read more about the CMO:

• CMOs must be experts in mar­ket­ing and growth alike
• Pos­i­tive new chal­lenges for the CMOs of today
• CMOs now have to jug­gle many roles 
• The Future CMO 2018 spe­cial report

What is a CFO?

The chief finan­cial offi­cer (CFO) is the exec­u­tive respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing a company’s finances. This includes finan­cial plan­ning, record-keep­ing, finan­cial risk man­age­ment, data analy­sis and finan­cial report­ing. Ulti­mate­ly, the CFO is the top of the career lad­der for any accoun­tant, and is one of the roles which most com­mon­ly leads to becom­ing CEO.

“Stephen Robert­son, chief exec­u­tive of the Big Issue Foun­da­tion says hard finan­cial suc­cess got him noticed by a head­hunter. “It was all about what I’d demon­strat­ed,” he reflects. “Com­mer­cial­i­ty mat­tered. Yes, a CEO is about rela­tion­ship build­ing, but it’s hard to demon­strate this at inter­view, so finan­cial back­ground has sway. Hir­ers want to remove the spec­u­la­tive ele­ment that tak­ing on a CEO can be.”

It’s per­haps not sur­pris­ing that a head for fig­ures is still a trait most chief exec­u­tives share. Accord­ing to 2016 research by recruit­ment firm Robert Half, more than 50 per cent of FTSE 100 heads have a finance, account­ing or finan­cial ser­vices back­ground and 25 per cent are ex-accoun­tants.

But not every CFO has CEO aspi­ra­tions. An Ernst and Young sur­vey from 2016 found that more than 70 per cent of finance lead­ers did not aspire to be CEO. The aim was to be a more objec­tive, inde­pen­dent voice at the board­room table, one which brought facts and rea­son­ing to bear on the more intu­itive skills of the C‑suite.

In order to do this, how­ev­er, the future CFO will need a dif­fer­ent set of skills to those tra­di­tion­al­ly honed by the finance func­tion. And top of the list, accord­ing to an EY report, is an under­stand­ing of dig­i­tal, smart tech­nolo­gies and sophis­ti­cat­ed data ana­lyt­ics. Instead of being an essen­tial­ly his­toric and back­ward-look­ing func­tion, finance has to become much more active. With tech­nol­o­gy tak­ing over the grunt work, the entire finance func­tion is upskilling and the CFO has to lead the change.

Read more about the CFO:

• The future CFO: less finance and more strat­e­gy?
• Dan­gers of ‘beef­ing up’ the CFO role
• Good­bye CFO? Bots and blockchain are tak­ing over soon
• Are CFOs now ‘mini chief exec­u­tives’?
• The Future CFO 2017 spe­cial report

What is a CIO?

The chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer (CIO) is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing all IT and com­put­er sys­tems with­in an organ­i­sa­tion. This includes every­thing from cre­at­ing pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy to tal­ent man­age­ment, pro­cure­ment and sys­tems main­te­nance with­in the depart­ment.

The future CIO, how­ev­er, will have a lot more on their plate than IT issues. Accord­ing to a 2018 report from Gart­ner, 84 per cent of CIOs at top-per­form­ing organ­i­sa­tions have respon­si­bil­i­ty for areas of the busi­ness out­side tra­di­tion­al IT, the most com­mon being inno­va­tion and trans­for­ma­tion. “The CIO’s role is trans­form­ing from deliv­ery exec­u­tive to busi­ness exec­u­tive,” the report says.

The role of the CIO has evolved in par­al­lel with the grow­ing devel­op­ment and influ­ence of tech­nol­o­gy. As tech has become essen­tial for busi­ness­es, CIOs have become a main­stay of the organ­i­sa­tion. They have switched from being a back-end IT execu­tor to a strate­gic and influ­en­tial mem­ber of the board tasked with deliv­er­ing growth.

There is no point in a CIO sit­ting with the rest of the C‑suite, how­ev­er, if their voice isn’t heard, ensur­ing tech­nol­o­gy can make a mean­ing­ful impact on the busi­ness.

“You need to lead the con­ver­sa­tion with the busi­ness first and have a broad­er set of skills includ­ing the need to under­stand finan­cials; you can’t just sit in the meet­ing and wait until tech­nol­o­gy comes up and shut up the rest of the time,” says Richard Stew­ard, for­mer CIO of adver­tis­ing busi­ness Clear Chan­nel and UK con­sumer goods firm PZ Cus­sons.

To do that, the Bank of England’s exec­u­tive direc­tor and CIO Rob Elsey sug­gests CIOs must under­stand the busi­ness dri­vers, the threats to the organ­i­sa­tion and the oppor­tu­ni­ties. Cru­cial­ly, he says, the CIO needs to be able to “demys­ti­fy tech­nolo­gies to the board”.

Read more about the CIO:

• What is the role of a CIO today?
• CIOs need to lead the cul­tur­al change
• The free­lance CIO boosts the start­up econ­o­my
• CIOs at the heart of dig­i­tal shift
• The Future CIO 2018 spe­cial report

What is a CDO?

The chief data offi­cer (CDO) is respon­si­ble for a company’s data gov­er­nance, some­thing which is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant in today’s data age. Organ­i­sa­tions are mov­ing to becom­ing more data-dri­ven, and the CDO must ensure that data is rel­e­vant, pro­tect­ed and easy to access.

Nic Orton is CDO for glob­al data ana­lyt­ics organ­i­sa­tion Lex­is­Nex­is Risk Solu­tions; “the suc­cess of my role is con­sid­ered in the ulti­mate per­for­mance of the busi­ness, but more direct­ly I ensure we use the right data in the right way,” he says. “There is a con­sen­sus that the data uni­verse is dou­bling every two years, with a 50-fold growth between 2010 and 2020. I pro­mote inno­va­tion, but also ensure focus and trust.”

“We have four main met­rics: uplift to prod­ucts through added val­ue; insight and intel­li­gence for our­selves on cus­tomers, com­peti­tors and mar­kets; poten­tial for advanced ana­lyt­ics; and qual­i­ty.”

“The suc­cess cri­te­ria for a chief data offi­cer need to flow from an organisation’s dig­i­tal strat­e­gy” says Bren­den Dal­ton, CDO and chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer for the Com­mon­wealth Sci­en­tif­ic and Indus­tri­al Research Organ­i­sa­tion in Can­ber­ra. “If that push­es dis­rup­tion, for exam­ple, then the CDO needs to work with a high­er tol­er­ance to data risk.”

“So a suc­cess­ful CDO needs to unite an organ­i­sa­tion in its appre­ci­a­tion of data risk and decide on the right lev­el of over­sight for busi­ness units, and how much free­dom to give them.”

Read more about the CDO:

• What makes a suc­cess­ful Chief Data Offi­cer?
• How CDOs can unlock the val­ue of unstruc­tured data
• Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion: CDO or CIO — and does it mat­ter any­more?
• CDOs must be stew­ards of eth­i­cal busi­ness stan­dards
• The Future CDO 2018 spe­cial report

What­ev­er the role, it is clear that the remit of the C‑suite is con­stant­ly shift­ing and evolv­ing, no one mem­ber can remain sole­ly with­in their field and all must be able to work togeth­er to tack­le the issues fac­ing busi­ness today.

What do you need to make the C‑suite?

• Con­fi­dent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, espe­cial­ly when col­lab­o­rat­ing with the board and fel­low C‑levels
• A good under­stand­ing of data and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and how they apply to your organ­i­sa­tion
• Strong lead­er­ship abil­i­ty
• An agile mind­set and a will­ing­ness to upskill where nec­es­sary to adapt to a shift­ing busi­ness land­scape
• A com­pe­tent under­stand­ing of all areas of your organ­i­sa­tion

What is the C-suite?

What is a CEO?

What is a CMO?