CCOs At the Epicenter of Disruption
If you closely observe the nation’s leading corporations, you’ll notice there’s been a pendulum shift in the chief communications officer’s role. Already flush with a broad swath of responsibility, many CCOs have been tasked with adding concerns about emerging technologies, geopolitical rebalancing and anticipating new economic realities to their lengthy lists of “what keeps them up at night.”
Many of these leaders are feeling significant corporate reprioritization as social issues dominating mind share of recent years have quietly begun to bow to renewed emphasis on “back to business.”
Moving in parallel, CCO reporting lines are in flux. Many of them have moved their direct report accountability to the CEO, while others are settling behind CMOs, CHROs or the General Counsel. CCOs have emerged with a seat at the table, but maintaining their position there is a delicate balancing act.
How are CCOs strengthening their leadership position from within the epicenter of corporate disruption?
We recently met with CCOs from a diverse range of the nation’s leading companies, spanning those in consumer products, manufacturing and transportation to supply chain management and professional services. While most find themselves in an unprecedented role of business leadership, several themes emerged about the challenges they’re navigating to stay there:
ESG is now about doing the tough stuff: In recent years, many companies made bold declarations about their environmental and broader sustainability goals. However, leaders noted coming out of this year’s Climate Week and heading into COP28, we’re at an inflection point when it comes to delivery. The biggest challenge facing companies is to sustain momentum in an atmosphere of business growth, where competing stakeholder agendas may be at odds with ESG goals. As anti-ESG backlash rises, this three-letter acronym is becoming a four-letter word.
The challenge for today’s CCO is to ensure corporate ESG focus and investment holds up. The consequence of falling short could lead to missing declared goals, which will place the enterprise under greater scrutiny. CCO’s need to push their organizations to explore dynamic solutions, including partnerships with category competitors, to deliver ESG momentum without tapping the brakes on business acceleration.
Seeking quiet progress on social issues: Given the divisiveness and potential for litigation that taking a broad public stance on social issues has created for many companies and their leaders, there’s an emerging sensibility to deploy a new strategic tact. CCOs are leading a deeper assessment of their companies’ values, where impact can be made and finding an authentic place in these discussions.
The communications approach to social issues progress is evolving from a mass engagement to a more surgical one, specifically targeted at key stakeholder groups. The goal is not to drive headlines. It’s to problem-solve and deliver change through collaboration at a grass roots or community level. CCOs are striving to forge a quieter path to action. One that creates fewer potential speed bumps to growth.
Triangulating tech innovation: Most CCOs find themselves at the experimental phase of AI. While they consider emerging generative tech carries great potential, there’s growing concern CFOs will get too excited about these tools before they’re ready. CCOs are facing the challenge of keeping their organizations focused on the “additive efficiency” of new tech vs the “subtractive” alternative, where employee concerns about redundancy are stoked. Over the course of time, they will need to realign values on the skills they hire for.
The emphasis now is on proceeding with caution, ensuring appropriate guardrails and policies are established. In this pursuit, CCOs are forging triangular relationships with their law and IT departments to align on tech implications and use cases. A key issue these teams are addressing is the inherent biases built into learned tech models that depend on established content and data patterns. While useful for establishing a baseline framework, most acknowledge AI content will require significant human cross-checking for the foreseeable future.
Focused on the front line: For many organizations, communications priorities emanate from the inside-out. Employees are the lead consideration. The pandemic forced a major overhaul of internal communications models. Among the complexities has been balancing multi-generational information and delivery needs. Many are finding mass communications to employee populations needs to be supplemented by tailored channels to as many as five generations. These efforts account for consumption preferences to ensure messages are embraced.
The most important challenge CCOs wrestle with is connecting with the front line. It’s the lion’s share of their focus. These employees, who have the most direct touch with the marketplace, often carry different value sets than home office workers. They hunger for context. CCOs have found it increasingly hard to affect change from the center. They’ve turned their attention on ensuring leaders at all levels in the field have strong communications skills and empowering them with tools to carry it forward.
CCOs find themselves in a unique position as their remit has broadened and they’ve become essential to resolving a new set of corporate challenges. Their seat at the leadership table will be solidified as they prove adept at managing it all.
