Too many Chiefs...

I was reading an interesting article in the McKinsey Quarterly: How chief strategy officers think about their role: A Roundtable by Renee Dye. You have to be subscribed to read the whole thing, but the link is here. I was laughing to myself while reading the thing, because each of the panelists basically contradict each other continuously. Here's a good summary paragraph from the very beginning of the article, which reading between the lines, sounds a lot more diplomatic than the conversation probably was. I may be making that up, maybe it was more good natured and professional than I pictured it (like cats in a sack) - but anyway here goes:

"Some of the panelists say that they have one foot in the corporate suite and the other deep in the business units. Others believe that while communication with the business units is very important, a CSO’s primary concern is the development of high-level strategy. In that capacity, CSOs grapple with the challenge of balancing short- and long-term goals: handling the multifaceted demands of an increasingly global business environment, they strive to focus on growth without losing sight of productivity. All panel members agree that a close relationship with the CEO is vital for instigating change, but they voice different views on other issues, such as how to interact with the finance function."

So I was mulling this all over and thinking about all that in the context of maybe writing one of my usual posts about strategic thinking and how it should be nurtured at mid-levels of an organization, instead of all this top-down strategy where they can't even figure out what the relationship should be between the CSO and the CEO and the CFO... and then, a couple of days later, I come across this post by social media marketer Chris Heuer, where he happens to mention another McKinsey article, this time on the Evolving Role of the CMO. It's a premium article, so I couldn't read the whole thing, but the summary said it's about how chief marketing officers' roles will need to broaden:

"Today, many CMOs have narrowly defined roles that emphasize advertising, brand management, and market research. In the years ahead, companies will need their CMOs to lead far-reaching change efforts, shape their public profiles, help manage complexity, and build new capabilities. CEOs have a role too: helping CMOs to set priorities and drive organizational change while fostering closer connections between them and other senior executives."

And Chris goes on to talk about the need for a Chief Social Officer:

"Why do we need a Chief Social Officer? Because embracing social media is embracing change management; changing the way teams collaborate; improving our relationships with customers; affecting our interaction with partners; overseeing customer support; empowering sales people to be purchase support; altering our product innovation and creation processes; and ultimately, bringing us out of the industrial age, beyond the information age and into a new age of enlightenment. It requires us to break down, once and for all, the silo walls that separate groups, the moats that have created fiefdoms of power and the interpersonal bullshit that prevents us from seeing that we all want what’s best, even if we have different ideas of how to do it."

OK.... But seriously.

Do we really need all these Chiefs?

Don't you think adding more Chiefs will simply ADD to the "fiefdoms of power and interpersonal bullshit"?

I agree that we need to break down silos. I agree that we need to change the way teams collaborate and how we interact and create relationships with external stakeholders! And I realize that all of these articles are probably talking about large enterprise management, not little associations. But the whole point of social media is that it breaks down the barriers between the internal and the external "messenger". It turns the "message" into the "conversation". It all started because it empowered the "little people" to speak for an organization - even if the organization leadership didn't necessarily want that.

So while of course you need leadership and vision, and management structure within this context of a new way of working wikily, I really don't think adding a bunch more Chiefs (or even one more) with a bunch more titles with "social" in them is the way to do it.

The way to do it is to empower lots of people across an organization to be able to connect and respond to anyone who connects and inquires with them. To engender and cultivate an organizational culture where it's OK - and good - for staff to talk to members or customers, where it's OK to be evangelists for your association (or to stay silent if you can't), where it's OK to join the conversation that's already out there. Just like EVERY staff person in an association is ACTUALLY responsible for member relations - from the Executive Director to the receptionist - which is something that should be explicit and a given.

And how can you do that? Well, maybe you add a "community" "social" element to the role of EVERY existing manager - social strategy, community marketing, social technology planning. OR, you add someone responsible for listening to and monitoring the community to every department (or a floating team or person who would tie all departments together though that lens - but not a "chief" - someone who would not step on others' toes or override other managers). I'm not saying you should do this right off the bat, unless you're really serious about fully participating from day one and have gobs of money to throw at it (not that that is necessary either!). I'm also not saying there shouldn't be rules and guidelines for how a staff person should represent themselves and how they should act or speak if they are speaking as the voice of an organization.

You could start small, just by teaching everyone how to listen.

But don't just add more layers of top-down bureaucracy.

What do you think?