Words ooze into and out of the business vocabulary, their coming and going equally unheralded. Any fresh concept – or, rather, any fresh way of presenting a recycled concept – is sure of rapid adoption. ‘At the coalface’ was one of my favorites, used by ‘hands-on’ managers whose knowledge of the black stuff was such that they would probably try to stick a fork in a lump of it were it served to them on a porcelain plate.
Then there were the ‘synergies’ we were always looking for to enhance ‘the bottom line’ to reach ‘the next level’ and ‘grow shareholder value’, another short-lived concept much abused by managements looting the shareholders they had mesmerized by putting it into every paragraph.
I recently realized that the ambitious were piling into the ‘C-suite’. It took me a while to shake off associations with a C-section but, for once, the phrase was not entirely vacuous. In fact companies do have suites, and they are full and getting fuller, packed with chief cooks and bottle washers.
Companies that once had a chief executive officer and a chief financial officer – and even possibly a chief operating officer – are now adding a chief human resources officer, chief technical officer, chief corporate communications officer, chief marketing officer, chief supply chain officer, chief creative officer, chief diversity officer and, increasingly, a chief security officer.
They even have their own collective acronym: CxOs (although some companies have a chief experience officer with those initials). A CxO is not the manager of a massage parlor, but someone deemed necessary to manage the various external facets of a company to make it glister even if it is not always gold. But then he or she might be fighting for suite spots with the chief administrative officer now sometimes deemed necessary to conduct this unruly orchestra of ambition. Presumably to justify his or her job and high salary, the chief security officer will order the others not to travel together in case of lightning or meteor strikes hitting the team.
A Harvard Business School report notes that between 1985 and 2005 the size of the executive team reporting directly to the CEO doubled from five people to 10. Not since the great vice outbreak of the 20th century, when everyone past the receptionist became a vice president, has there been such managerial inflation. The answer then was to make more and more people ‘senior’ vice presidents but now chiefdoms have broken out of the reservation.
Has this expansion really increased efficiency or just self-importance? Researchers report that these high-flying specialists soar out of touch with their specialties and become more generally managerially minded. The same Harvard study suggests the number of managers who now say the CxOs ‘are unaligned to some degree is greater in each case than those saying they are extremely well aligned.’ Managerial studies suggest that where once pushy innovators had only to win the ear of the CEO or CFO, the new collegial style now means everyone has to get buy-in from the entire C-suite before getting anything done.
If C-suites are like CEOs, interchangeable Renaissance people with managerial skills detachable from their bases, then maybe a head transplant is the way to revive flagging companies. C-suites are so physically remote from actual work, they don’t even have to move – so we could just switch the cables and change the logos on the executive jets. But looking at compensation plans in C-suites, we should perhaps beware the tumbrils rumbling toward Wall St with ambitions for incomplete head transplants…
