Harvard Business Review, October 2007
Tim Breene, Paul F. Nunes and Walter E. Shill
But in many companies, no one's driving execution. Many CEOs, grappling with the complexity of doing business in the global economy, are too overloaded to stay on top of strategy implementation. COOs and CFOs are too wrapped up in day-to-day dealings.
Some companies, including AIG, Kimberly-Clark, Motorola and Yahoo! have discovered a way to fill the execution void: hire a chief strategy officer. CSOs ensure corporate strategy gets translated into action, say the authors. CSOs communicate strategy to people throughout the organization and help them see how their work supports it. They ride herd on change initiatives needed to carry out strategy. And they make sure decisions at all levels align with strategic objectives.
Hire a CSO, and you help your senior team deliver faster, better decisions while building world-class execution capabilities throughout your company."
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