Today’s article focuses on highlighting firms who have created a more collaborative approach to the position of CEO – sharing the traditional responsibilities of one person between many. We look at these examples and explore the pros and cons of this organisational design model which goes against the conventional wisdom that there should be one single point of accountability.

Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate are a independent family business runs beautiful tea rooms, handmade cakes and top quality refreshments acting as the business behind Yorkshire Tea, Taylors of Harrogate and the famous Bettys Cafe tea rooms.  And they do something quite differently – they  share the traditional responsibilities of one person between a group of 5 ‘collaborative CEOs’ who collectively take shared responsibility for organisational strategy and development, and business operations.  Their website profers that “this structure signals our commitment to a peer-based leadership approach and promotes the ways of working that we are developing throughout the business”.

Having worked with several Legal Partnerships over the years, HR Optimisation would argue this shared leadership accountability model is not wholly unique – but in the broader commercial sector having such a high volume of shared senior accountability persons goes against the typical solitary grind model.

But the appetite for different ways to manage big and small companies alike seems to be growing.  This is perhaps driven by the growing realisation that for most people the modern day pressures of leading a business alone is too great.   Findings from the American Psychological Association suggest that having a single CEO at the top is simply too much. The modern business landscape is too fast-moving and the demands on a CEO have become too innumerable for a single person to set an organisation’s strategic direction.

Salesforce, Netflix and Jungle Creations

In  2018 Salesforce drew attention when the highly-liked company appointed  co-CEO Keith Block to join Marc Benioff – who still enjoys a 97% approval rating on Glassdoor – to helm the company alongside the company founder.  Benioff told CNBC in a profile published in early 2019 that he elevated Block to co-CEO to enable a “divide and conquer strategy” and to give Benioff time to do the things he enjoys.

In 2020 Netflix elevated Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos to co-CEO, sharing the title with founder Reed Hastings.   And just this year, media firm Jungle Creations appointed co-CEOs Melissa Chapman and Nat Poulter citing a belief that having someone to stress-test new ideas against leads to better success, and makes for more effective, hands-on leadership.

There are also advantages to retention of top c-suite players in a co-CEO model, helping combat the attrition of top team members who were passed over for CEO.  That said, it may not be a panacea to automatically lead to business success (indeed Oracle and SAP abandoned their co-CEO forays).  The multi-CEO structure will require constant work and exceptionally high trust for the tandem ‘job share’ role to work.  It requires great self awareness to be able to divide the role into areas of strength for each person, and considerable planning to ensure clear expectations, defined roles and responsibilities, regular collaborative strategizing and problem solving.  The key is to distribute authority, not responsibility.  Done well, giving up power actually can mean having more of it, as a partnership co-CEOs could accomplish more than the individual and can better buffer against the overwhelm of the unrealistic demands facing most singular CEOs.
Might the organisational pyramid in your organisation be stifling innovation and performance, when a division of authority might unleash it?

If you operate a co-CEO model in your business we’d love to hear from you and share your learnings with our readers.

Until next time,

 

Hannah