Have we got the wrong set of Chief Officer roles in our businesses?

I have got a wonderful but odd job. Every year, I get to listen to, talk to, learn from and advise hundreds of boards, executive committees, CEOs, CFOs and CIOs. That is a privilege and already quite unusual. But I specifically have ended up talking to them about important but non-standard topics, that we all agree are important, but don’t quite fit in the usual buckets of revenue growth, productivity, operations, finance etc. Some topics I have been talking about recently: Digital Dragons, Antifragility, A World Without Truth, Simplification, Benefits Realization, and of course AI. All important topics with a lot at stake, both substantial (sometimes existential) upside if done right, but equally significant downside. Most of them don’t fit neatly in one function, one leader’s domain or any governance committee’s scope. Businesses usually don’t have a Chief Truth Officer, a Chief Simplification Officer, a Chief Antifragility Officer. For example, most businesses value simplification, but at best they have episodic simplification projects, not continual governance of simplification/ reducing bad complexity. Similarly, the World Without Truth is coming upon us, and it is not clear who is in charge of addressing that. Antifragility too. It sounds like risk management, but also focuses on the upside of risk – value creation through embracing new risks and evolving business and operating models in response. Even benefits realization, which sounds a bit more conventional and financey, is about governing based on value throughout the lifecycle of an initiative, which almost no-one is on top of. The world has changed a lot since the notion of companies, CEOs, CFOs etc. started. Non-financial intangible assets are more important. Information and technology (including AI) have a much bigger role to play. The digital dragons are bigger and more influential than many countries. Staff are more remote. Ecosystems and platforms are more powerful and dynamic. Perhaps that needs to be reflected in the set of C-level roles we have? Maybe we need to unthink and rethink the leadership structure of our organizations. Someone in charge of predictable growth. Someone in charge of antifragility. Someone in charge of ecosystems. Etc. And ideally such a change would involve retiring some roles/ governance committees, not just adding new ones. The exact answer to this question is, as my university textbooks used to say, left as an exercise for the reader. #Unthink #Unask #Unlearn #Leadership #Org Structure