Wisdom from the West Coast: the New Executive Roles that Could Change Your Business
Last month, Jo Oliver, partner at Octopus Ventures, accompanied 16 startup CEOs to Silicon Valley to meet some of the highest achieving leaders in the business. A number of the speakers described new roles that personify new attitudes and approaches. So what were they?
Throughout the summit, the issue of hiring came up again and again. Who to
hire, when to hire, how to hire — how to fire — and the imperative importance of hiring ‘A’ players (more on them in a future post). But can the way we think about the C-Suite roles be improved? Is it possible that new titles could create new and better results?
A new “CEO”
Joanna Rees, Director of West Ventures, declared that a company should
have not one, but two CEOs. A Chief Executive Officer (obviously) and a
Customer Experience Officer. This secondary CEO would be concerned with
every interaction your customer has with your company.
At Apple, Joanna pointed out, Steve Jobs was effectively Customer Experience Office. His obsessive interest went as far as timing the number of seconds it takes to open a new iPhone box. The grade of packaging stock, the print finish, and the air-displacement were purposefully engineered to maximise the emotional anticipation. A more formalised Customer Experience Officer position would allow a senior executive to be wholly focussed on these kind of details, as well as the broader aspects of the customer/company relationship.
The full experience
Joni Reicher (Mesosphere), Steve Jobs’ former Director of Human Resources at Apple, had a slightly different take on an alternative CEO title: Chief Experience Officer. This role is not about customers, but employees. “To have someone on the executive team representing the employee from the minute they walk in your door,” Joni said. This CEO brings each employee’s experience into full awareness, “from the recruitment process right through to the goodbye.“ This new role shifts perception of an employee, beyond just a representative of a company, to a recipient and exponent of its values. The recruitment process, particularly, will give many people an experience of a company, whether they get the job or not. An employee’s “goodbye” can also leave a person out there either speaking well or badly about your company. A Chief Experience Officer will do their best to ensure it’s the former.
A CSA — a Customer Service Advisor — walks the halls of the customer’s organisation. This role is pivotal to Philip Lay’s Customer Success mantra, as expounded by the Chasm Group he consults for. A CSA (‘A’ for Advisor or Architect) would be focused on advising customers on how and when to increase their deployments for optimal results. The CSA would be so attuned to a customer’s situation that they would anticipate and head off issues arising in the customer organisation before they become problems. The CSA isn’t so concerned about ‘sales’ as they are with the health of the customer relationship and genuine, insightful problem-prevention.
Holding the vision
Finally Jeff Miller (Jamm Ventures) described the role of a Chief Direction
Officer. This is more a component of the traditional CEO role than a C-suite
position in itself, but basically, it sifts out the task of formulating and
maintaining the vision. The right vision must transcend where the company is
today, so the role of holding that vision, while others are focussed on the day-
to-day, is crucial. Any good CEO will be doing this, but describing it helps
clarify its importance.
Questioning existing C-suite job titles can reveal complacency. Creating new
titles can refresh and even re-invent the effectiveness of a role. In the next
post, we’ll zoom in and bring together our guest speakers’ collective view on
that most valuable quality of all, leadership.
“Every investor likes to proclaim they bring more than capital to the table; organising such a trip and opening these kinds of doors and insights, is truly a game changer not everyone can or will bring to your table”
Philipp Man — Chronext
