Today’s Digital Imperatives Demand C-Suite Reinvention

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a trend that began decades ago in some large companies: using digital technology to reshape the ways they invent, produce, distribute, market, sell, support, , hire, manage, and conduct business.

Such changes have also forced these companies to create new jobs at the top. As I explain in my latest article in TCS Perspectives, it’s a veritable reinvention of the C-suite.

For many, these new roles couldn’t come too soon. A TCS 2020 survey of 287 executives at global companies found only about a quarter had key digital capabilities. Only one in four could offer customers an end-to-end digital customer experience. Less than a quarter had highly automated core business processes, and just 21% had struck key digital ecosystem partnerships.

It could very well be that these mandates have fallen between the cracks of traditional C-suite roles, and that making them happen requires relentless focus and accountability. The way some companies have dealt with that is by creating new roles, as I explain in the article.

Forward-thinking companies have a history of adjusting the roles their C-suite executives play to respond to business imperatives. In the article, I point out several new roles that large companies have created over the last decade – including chief experience officer (USAA), chief technology and risk officer (Humana), chief transformation officer (United Parcel Service), and chief customer and employee experience officer (Adobe) – that have made a big difference. I discuss what the people in these roles have helped their organizations accomplish. (By the way, one of these executives became his company’s CEO).

I also discuss three relatively uncommon roles that I believe every company will need in their C-suite this decade, and why: chief talent experience officer, chief reskilling officer, and chief wellness officer.

Many firms have adapted their business operations to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now is the time for leaders to assess the new C-suite roles their companies may need, to accelerate growth and manage risk. I invite you to read my article “Today’s Digital Imperatives Demand C-Suite Reinvention” and ponder whether your organization may need some C-suite renovation too. And it will be good to know your views on the subject too!