Digital's Impact on the C-Suite

One of the interesting things about Digital Adoption and Transformation is the way in which it is impacting roles in the C-suite.

In some early adopters, the default leader for digital transformation was the CMO, as digital marketing initiatives picked up and marketing ran away with the ball.

In second wave adoption there has been a bit of a split between whether a specially appointed person, the Chief Digital Officer, should manage the business's strategic response and run all things digital. In others they have handed this to the CIO. Though occasionally the CEO has decided that this is too important and grabbed the reins him/her-self. The longer term trend does appear to gradually hand this back to IT and CIO (as discussed in previous posts).

However, there is a growing realisation, as discussed in a recent Forbes article, and in my book that culture is crucial to success. Culture needs to be aligned to a number of positives:

• Collaborative working across functional siloes
• Product and value focus
• Opex Thinking
• Tolerance of Experimentation and alignment of Risk Appetite with Value and Learning from Failure/Experience
• Customer Focus

Apparently, this is now leading to the situation where enterprises are beginning to appoint Chief Culture Officers.

Additionally, some are also appointing Chief Customer Experience Officers to reinforce the idea that the key value proposition of Digital is Excellent Customer Experience. Although in design led organisations this may be Chief Design Officers who are also interested in the customer engagement by design thinking.

One of the questions that we have to ask is how will this mature? at the end of the 19th Century as electricity started to be adopted, some organisations flirted briefly with Chief Electricity Officer roles, but they did not last long.

Will Chief Culture Officers be subsumed into Chief HR Office roles and will this change the face of HR for the better? will customer experience revert to the Chief Marketing Officer, or will CIOs hybridise and pick up aspects of these roles as part of the CDO element of their job as they delegate more technical aspects to CTOs. Or will CTOs have to become more human?

Whatever happens, CxOs will all have to rethink what their core attributes and operating models should be. Digital required disciplined team play, as well as skills and flair.