In recent years, the C-Suite landscape has experienced significant shifts, driven by macro trends, market dynamics, and technological advancements. As organizations navigate the post-COVID recovery phase, executives are reevaluating their strategies and priorities. In this article, we’ll explore key trends in marketing and digital leadership within the C-Suite.
1. Survival Mode
During the pandemic, organizations focused on survival. The primary concern was employee safety and maintaining business continuity. Executive searches slowed down, with a notable emphasis on CFO roles. Financial stability became paramount, and CFOs played a critical role in steering companies through uncertainty.
2. Stabilization and Profitability
As the market stabilized and supply chains realigned, companies regained profitability. However, this phase was just a stepping stone. Organizations needed to transition from survival mode to growth mode. As companies move to the next stage of growth, It is critical to have the right talent and leadership in place.
3. The Role of Marketing
Digital marketing, once put on hold, is now back in the spotlight. Organizations recognize the need to leverage data, technology, and consumer insights to drive growth. Marketing leaders are at the forefront especially during this age of generative AI, pulling together data-driven strategies and customer-centric approaches.
4. The Multi-Disciplinary Marketing Executive
Today’s CMOs must wear multiple hats. They combine full-funnel marketing expertise with performance marketing skills. Additionally, they are commercially oriented, focusing on the consumer experience and the brand of the organization and its products and services. Agility, innovation, and data literacy are essential traits.
5. Owning the P&L
Perhaps the most significant shift is the expectation for marketing leaders to own a profit and loss (P&L) statement. This change aligns marketing with overall business operations, elevating the CMO’s role within the C-Suite.
Conclusion
In the ever-evolving C-Suite landscape, marketing and digital trends play a pivotal role. As organizations seek growth, they rely on agile, consumer-centric executives who understand both data and business operations.
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Kimberly Melcer is Head of the Marketing practice at RSR Partners. She specializes in recruiting across all C-Suite level positions in the AdTech, MarTech, Digital, and Marketing industries at start-ups, privately held, and public organizations.
RSR Partners is a boutique professional services firm that specializes in helping Boards and CEOs with their most critical recruiting, selection, and succession needs. The firm was founded in 1993 by industry icon Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. The firm has conducted thousands of projects for Boards and CEOs across a range of functions and industries.
The RSR Partners Marketing team operates at the convergence of marketing, data, and technology. We understand the talent landscape and how to recruit top talent in this competitive market, and we successfully placed executives who exemplify the type of leader and culture carrier who can drive technological and digital transformation and growth.
When Russ Reynolds founded our firm back in 1994, he knew that “bigger isn’t always better.” And so, he purposely created a boutique firm with a truly collaborative and client first culture, and with a goal of providing our clients with “high touch” service and unbiased advice. We started out in the boardroom, focusing our efforts on recruiting directors. As would later be the case with all of our practices, senior members of our board practice would lead and execute every engagement and handle all candidate interface, assessments, references, and client interaction. Russ anticipated that staying small would prove to have a big and lasting positive impact on our clients and help preserve our client service culture as the firm evolved. He was right. For the past 30 years and still today, we have consistently achieved, and often exceeded, our clients’ recruiting objectives, and have successfully maintained long-lasting and meaningful relationships with them. While we have expanded our offerings to include executive search and a variety of advisory services, board recruiting continues to be at the core of what we do.
The demand for outstanding director talent is as high as ever. This is especially the case when considering corporate boards’ ongoing efforts to maintain the right mix of skills and experience and the right balance of gender and ethnic diversity in their ranks in order to enable them to stay ahead of an everchanging world in which their respective companies compete. Often, boards encounter supply and demand imbalances for certain types of candidates they seek. That’s why it is very important that the board recruiting firm can guarantee access to any and all relevant candidates without any exceptions. That is a promise that we have continued to keep with our clients since our firm’s founding. Given our firm’s size and structure, we purposely conduct a limited and distinct number of search assignments at any given time, and our engagement review and acceptance process ensures that at RSR Partners, there is no competition for candidates amongst our clients.
Our extensive candidate sourcing network continues to expand and advance. We utilize our own database, social networking tools, and other internet-based candidate search technologies (e.g., LinkedIn, BoardEx, etc.) that have leveled the playing field between boutiques and large firms when it comes to candidate identification. All partners from all practices are engaged as well for candidate ideas. As such, we have the ability to identify most any candidate who aligns well with a given profile.
The benefits associated with partnering with us to achieve our clients’ most important recruiting objectives are no better reflected than in the continued success we have had in achieving our clients’ diversity objectives. Since 2021, 86% of our board placements were either gender and/or ethnically diverse (it’s important to point out that diversity was one of a number of criteria each of these placements met).
As a small and agile team, we are also known for our thorough and rapid kick-starts to board recruiting assignments. We have always strived to complete our board searches within four to five months. There have been times when searches have taken longer than anticipated, but we have always completed our assignments and have amassed a 100% placed candidate “stick rate” along the way.
If I had to point to one step in the board search process that we have learned goes a long way toward ensuring a successful outcome, it would be to put a great deal of thought and effort at the beginning of the process into creating the candidate profile. This candidate profile development process should be a collaborative undertaking between the board and their search firm, and it can be completed in a short period of time. It starts with reviewing the director skills and experience matrix in the proxy and interviewing each member of the client’s Board, their Chairman, CEO and, depending on the nature of the search, certain members of the executive leadership team. Interviews focus on what skills and experience are needed in the next director and why, as well as the characteristics that make for a great cultural and chemistry fit on the board. Then, we undertake a comparison of what criteria the board currently possesses and identify gaps, which in turn, helps to refine the candidate profile. It is important to note that the matrix in proxies does not always provide an accurate picture of the degree to which skills and experience reside on the board (i.e., checking the box versus specifying the strength of a particular skill or experience each director indicates they possess using a 1,2 or 3 rating.) The interview process is therefore helpful on several fronts – it provides a deeper understanding of skills and experience that all the directors contribute, determines what the board is looking for in its next director, and creates alignment amongst the board members around the candidate profile.
Before finalizing the candidate profile, we typically review five to ten candidate ideas with our client to get their feedback and confirm we are in agreement. Sometimes adjustments are made after the client has the opportunity to see how the profile on paper materializes in viable candidates. The goal being to create a profile that is both on target and realistic. So, when clients commit to undertaking our candidate profile development process, it almost always leads to a more successful outcome.
As the leader of RSR’s Board Practice for almost two decades, I am proud of our track record in assisting a wide variety of clients – from start-ups and private companies to Fortune 50 corporations – in achieving their board recruiting objectives. We look forward to continuing to partner with existing and new clients and staying true to the principles that Russ established in the early days of our firm:
We continue to be a small firm with big results.
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Carter Burgess is head of the firm’s Board Recruiting practice and a senior member of the Board & CEO Services team. As practice leader, he focuses on director searches, the build-out of entire boards, comprehensive board composition analyses, multi-year succession planning strategies, and board performance assessments for companies in a broad array of industries.
RSR Partners is a boutique professional services firm headquartered in Greenwich, CT, that specializes in helping Boards and CEOs with their most critical recruiting, selection, and succession needs. The firm was founded in 1994 by industry icon Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. The firm has conducted thousands of projects for Boards and CEOs at public, private equity-backed, and family-owned businesses across a range of industries including asset management, consumer goods and services, industrial, technology, and healthcare.
Over the past few years, digital transformation has dramatically impacted the business landscape. This evolution is only intensifying in terms of need and speed – especially as we enter the age of AI. As organizations and leadership teams pivot to learn and adapt, the difference between success and failure may be determined by whether organizations are market leaders or market followers. It’s therefore critical to be ready for how digital transformation may impact your business, and even more crucial to be sure your team can embrace and leverage digitalization when the opportunities arise.
How can organizations and leaders determine that their teams are ready?
Human capital is critical. First, the right leadership team should be in place to gain the trust and buy in of the employees, stakeholders, and customers. Next, consider whether you have the right talent and resources to implement the transformation. Finally, consider the need to create and sustain the “new” culture through scaling the business.
1) Is your leadership team ready?
In speaking with organizations about their leadership needs, we often hear that they need to hire an executive to strategize and execute a digital transformation. Since digital transformation often requires coordination across functions, it can be a challenge for a new executive to gain the buy-in necessary to achieve their goals.
Additionally, what problems are you trying to solve? In today’s customer-centric environment, it is critical to listen to the needs of your customer. Be sure you can explain the transformation and why it benefits the customer, and how it will enhance the customer experience and brand loyalty.
2) Does your organization have the talent and the resources?
When answering this question, it is critical to consider two factors – financial capital and human capital. With financial capital, it’s vital to fully assess the current state of the business, devise a plan including a timeline, budget, and resources. Is this achievable? What needs to change or shift?
It may also be a good time to assess the talent that will be on the front lines of the transformation and whether they are open and excited about being a change agent. Do they have the skills required to understand whatever is required of your digital transformation- whether it’s an appreciation of data analytics, cloud computing, SaaS platforms, AI, software development, and cyber security skills.
3) Can your culture sustain the digital transformation?
There must be an environment of trust and transparency built into the culture as well a more agile and innovation mindset and if not, the digital transformation will not be sustainable. If this is an issue you face, identify what resources you need to help shift the culture and get buy-in both internally and externally.
Additionally, consider if your organization has the resources to scale and grow. Digital transformation will bring efficiencies, speed to market, cost savings, and growth. The key is to plan for the growth and appropriately resource for the growth both from a financial and human capital perspective.
Too often an organization is led through the transformation and the infrastructure of the organization cannot handle the change and rapid growth. The organization ultimately decides to go back to their legacy business model. Unfortunately, this is not fair to the executives, the employees, and certainly does not reflect well for the organization in the marketplace and with their customers.
As these digital times continue to evolve, your organization should, too.
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Kimberly Melcer leads the firm’s Marketing practice. She specializes in identifying leaders with digital transformation capabilities across the C-Suite, and especially within the marketing function. She works with start-ups, privately held, and public organizations. She has extensive experience within the AdTech, MarTech, and broader consumer and marketing services industries.
RSR Partners is a boutique professional services firm headquartered in Greenwich, CT, that specializes in helping Boards and CEOs with their most critical recruiting, selection, and succession needs. The firm was founded in 1994 by industry icon, Russell S. Reynolds, Jr. The firm has conducted thousands of projects for Boards and CEOs at public, private equity backed, and family-owned businesses across a range of industries including asset management, consumer goods and services, industrial, technology, and healthcare. To learn more about RSR Partners, click here.
The annual letter from our CEO, Brett Stephens, to our clients and friends.
Dear Clients and Friends,
2020 has been a year of unprecedented change and reinvention. We have been honored to work alongside so many of you, helping you navigate these tumultuous times as successfully as possible. Effective leadership in the C-Suite and at the board level has never been more important, and the discreet advisory work we perform for Boards and CEOs has surged in response. We have spent many hours engaging with you on topics such as achieving agility; the emotional intelligence and moral quotient of leaders; the importance of diversity, inclusion, and equality initiatives; deploying technology, AI, and virtual work environments; managing risk; and addressing environmental, social, and governance concerns. Some of these topics were discussed at length during the roundtables we hosted earlier this year, and we expect to tackle these topics again at our 20th Annual Directors Dinner in January 2021. In the meantime, we wanted to share with you some additional trends that have emerged during the last few months that we expect will continue to evolve in 2021:
1. CEO Succession Disruption: CEO turnover reached a record high in 2019 but slowed temporarily during the crisis. The stress and trauma of leading an organization through a crisis often accelerates a CEO’s departure. When we reach a turning point and conditions stabilize, we expect to see a shift in the C-Suite at many organizations — even at companies that survived or thrived. Not only are public companies actively thinking about CEO succession, but our private equity clients have been building their potential inventory of CEO candidates in anticipation of deal activity returning significantly in 2021. Now is the time to begin CEO succession planning if you have not already. We have been trusted by boards and CEOs with succession planning for more than 25 years, and CEO succession is our premier service because we have minimal off-limits restrictions — meaning, we have unparalleled access to top talent and leadership across all industries due to our boutique size. In addition to our reputation for discretion and for identifying ideal successors, our clients also engage us to manage leadership assessment processes, if needed (with our neutral, third-party assessment partner); to help with the on-boarding and integration of the new CEO (whether an internal or external candidate); and to advise the board, CEO, and CHRO on how to manage the transition with leadership and throughout the broader organization.
2. Board Recalculation: The dialogue around which competencies, capabilities, and perspectives a board member needs to be effective in the “new normal” has gathered momentum. Some of our clients came to the stark realization that their directors were lacking the knowledge and experience necessary to help leadership execute the new direction that was charted in response to the pandemic and economic crisis. We are advising our board clients on how to effectively remake and reshape themselves with directors who possess the skills and capabilities to guide leadership through disruption and reinvention. Transformation at the board level typically takes time given how board dynamics can affect decision making, so we expect director recruitment to remain very active and increase in 2021.
3. Diversity Recruiting: The desire for more diverse boards has gained significant momentum across the country, making it critical to work with a board recruiting firm that has access to and existing relationships with high quality candidates. We often counsel our clients on how to achieve their long-term diversity goals in addition to managing immediate needs. (94% of our elected board candidates were diverse in 2019.) Similarly, at the C-Suite level, large Fortune 500 companies have the resources and prestige to attract diverse candidates, while mid- and small- cap companies will need to seek advisors who can prioritize them in order to compete for diverse talent. We have been more successful than our large competitors at attracting diverse talent to mid- and small-cap organizations, especially under time constraints. No matter how it is done, additional diversity of thought and experience in the C-Suite and at the board level should be a positive outcome of the conversations taking place across our country about diversity, inclusion, and equality.
4. Separation of the Roles of Chairman and CEO: Similar to past economic downturns, boards have increasingly recognized the benefit of a Non-Executive Chairman who can help the CEO navigate through a crisis. Based upon the consistency of the demand for our services advising on these arrangements, we believe splitting the Chairman and CEO roles will be a more frequent occurrence in 2021. However, such a decision requires concise communication and planning and should not be made to generate press coverage. Organizations need a highly analytical and candid assessment of their strengths, shortcomings, opportunities, and risks — with a learned objective and with experienced advisors — to make the right decision for their organizations at this crucial and unpredictable time.
We continue providing services to Boards and CEOs on a broad range of governance and leadership needs. To cite a few current examples, we are:
Board Recruiting and Advisory
CEO Services
Leadership and Talent Consulting
In the event you have a sensitive board or leadership need in the coming year, we would be honored to share our experience and expertise regarding this critical process and help you solve for your organization’s immediate needs, and for its long-term success. Thank you for the continued trust and confidence you have placed in our firm. We look forward to working closely with you in the year ahead, and for many years beyond.
Barrett J. Stephens
Chief Executive Officer
O: +1 (203) 618-7022
BStephens@RSRPartners.com
