Versatile Amphibian

In order to help me understand how executive teams are configured, I’ve chosen to classify the nature of the different jobs into a number of categories. I imagine that as my analysis proceeds these will change somewhat, To keep things simple I will leave this page as the master set of definitions so that I/ you can refer back to it and keep tabs on changes. At the bottom of the post you can find a working list of roles by category. Types of executive team role: Strategic Roles , the purpose of which is to define the direction of the organisation beyond the current trading year (and ideally 10 years out - more on that another time) and to construct new structures and capabilities that will enable that direction to be achieved Revenue Creation Roles , the purpose of which is to deliver revenue in the current year Platform Operation Roles , the purpose of which is to enable value to be created from revenue by operating the processes that fulfil demand or enable it to be generat...

As promised in my update on the research I'm doing on executive team roles and configurations , here is the first deep dive into an industry. I've chosen to start with Retail for a couple of reasons. First - selfishly - I have some ongoing cases that can make use of the data. Second, retail is a nice, simple business to understand. True, many companies make it complex to manage and understand, but relative to many other sectors retail is very easy. You buy products (some or all of which you may have designed), you move them into a market in which there is demand and then you sell them for more than you bought them for. Sure, there are many twists on this ('total lifetime value', as an excuse for discounting, for example), but fundamentally, you buy, you ship, you sell for more than your costs. You would think that with such a well understood model that there would be a consistent 'best' configuration for both leadership and the organisation that those people l...

Back in February I embarked on a new research project, looking at the configuration of executive teams today and how they might change in the future . Working in London, my first thought was to use the FTSE 100 as a data set. Although it generated some interesting results and a lot of conversation (thanks to the many of you who sent me thoughts, involved me in conversations on the topic and so on), the FTSE 100 proved a slightly frustrating set of companies to research. There were two reasons for this. First, 100 companies represents too small a set to give good coverage on all industries, particularly when the natural slant in the FTSE 100 towards areas such as resources and financial services is taken into account. Second, it turns out that UK listed companies are actually relatively untransparent. Fully a quarter of the UK's largest PLCs publish no information on their management team, their biographies and their roles. Although I was able to fill in some of the gaps through ...

This is the latest part of my thought experiment on the future of executive teams (ExCos). Thus far I’ve looked at the starting point in FTSE 100 ExCos , at roles that would allow them to defend their position in a Digital Economy, at roles that would enable them to create new growth and latterly at the most likely configuration of roles on the team. In this post I’m going to explore how today’s ExCo can evolve into the future. My conclusion in terms of makeup is that the ExCo should effectively halve in size from today’s average of 10 roles to 5 in the new configuration. Today’s average ExCo consists of: CEO CFO COO CHRO A Geographic Market Leader 2 Market Vertical Leaders CIO or Chief Digital Officer General Counsel CSO Before I talk about the future positions in a fully-installed Digital Economy, I need to do some renaming. Some of you might regard this as an atypical reversion to conventionalism… but it has been pointed out (kindly) that some of this work is ...

This is the fourth part of a thought experiment I’m performing about the future makeup of executive teams. If you’ve skipped them, here are parts one , two and three . One of the motifs that I use in the book to describe the role of leaders in the Digital Economy is the famous Hero’s Journey. Although it may seem a strange thing to reference, in reality that flow of comfort, storm clouds, challenges, fall and redemption is a useful metaphor for the journey that organisations go for. No leader is more exposed to this journey than the CEO. Interestingly though, it feels to me that the average CEO fails to engage in one critical part of the Hero’s Journey: assembling their party. Having talked about the kind of people that the CEO might want around him or her to defend their core business and take the offensive, we should now think about the way those perspectives can be combined to best effect. Of course, the combination of people that a leader wants around them is very de...

In the last two posts, I’ve presented an analysis of the makeup of executive leadership teams in the FTSE 100, then suggested some new roles that might help CEOs defend their cash cows as they commoditise and are affected by potential substitutes. In this post I’ll suggest some new perspectives that will enable CEOs to go on the offensive, to shape new markets and win within them. The best defence, as the adage goes, is a good offense. This is obviously complete rubbish, but it sounds great, so I’m going to give it air time. It’s also true in my mind that the majority of the roles that we need relate to shaping and building the future business. Let’s cover them in that order. We need to understand the environment in order to effect change within it. This suggests to me that we need to have someone in every decision who has a distinct mandate to seek to map out what could happen in the future in more specific terms than ‘change will happen’. One could see this role as a Chief E...

One of the central themes of the book (I am going to mention “the book” a lot in the coming weeks and months!) is the form of leadership required to win in the current environment and how those leaders should make decisions.  Given the constraints of a sensibly-long book, I was only able explore certain aspects of the topic. One piece I removed because it felt too much like conjecture relates to the form of corporate executive teams. My incoming thesis is that in general executive management teams have the wrong skills and perspectives to effectively guide their organisations in times of uncertainty. This is a function of a number of things: A lack of clarity about the actual purpose of the executive team The wrong composition of the leadership team, resulting in an inappropriate mix of skills and perspectives The wrong type of executives being selected to participate in executive leadership Each of these is covered to an extent in ‘Art and Science…’ but over...