Why extra CEOs are sharing the highest job | EUROtoday

For nearly 16 years, Pippa Begg ran Board Intelligence as co-chief government with Jennifer Sundberg.

Together they grew the enterprise, which supplies evaluation and providers for firm boards, and at the moment it employs 200 workers and has huge huge title purchasers, together with Nationwide, Rolls-Royce and Reckitt.

“We are quite different people – very much yin and yang – but I think decisions are better made with two brains rather than one as it stops hubris,” says Begg, who’s London-based.

Begg and Sundberg are a part of a pattern, that is seen extra corporations experimenting with a co-CEO management construction.

In 2015, there have been 11 corporations with co-CEOs within the Russell 3000 group of the largest public corporations within the US, whereas in 2024, this had greater than doubled to 24, in keeping with an evaluation by public firm intelligence agency MyLogIQ.

A raft of main corporations additionally made such appointments in 2024, comparable to Oracle, Comcast, and Spotify. Netflix, in the meantime, has had co-CEOs since 2020.

Top company executives are effectively rewarded – a report from final 12 months confirmed that chief executives on the UK’s greatest corporations are paid, on common, 122 occasions the wage of the common full-time, UK employee.

However, there are downsides to being in cost.

According to a survey by management advisory agency ICEO, 56% of high executives felt burnt out in 2024.

A co-CEO mannequin divides accountability, accountability, and, in the end, the burden between two individuals.

Leadership coach Audrey Hametner has noticed that co-CEOs can take day out that sole CEOs would possibly in any other case really feel they can not do. She remembers a CEO consumer who had not taken a vacation in 5 years, however was lastly capable of have a household vacation as soon as he discovered a co-CEO associate.

Hametner says it additionally permits bosses to play to their strengths.

She provides the instance of a earlier consumer the place one co-CEO labored extra carefully with the advertising and product departments, and the opposite primarily with finance, authorities regulatory our bodies and authorized.

“You may have co-CEOs where one is an outgoing and high-level thinker, who may find it more challenging to focus on all the small tasks, and the other CEO is more detail-oriented and loves to speak to the data and the nuances,” she says.

Sharing the workload can also give the co-CEOs extra time with their household. That’s one thing they is perhaps missing – 60% of CEOs report spending too little time with their household, in keeping with a examine by government search agency Russell Reynolds.

Begg took three maternity leaves of round six months within the house of 5 years, returning to work every time in a four-day week capability.

Similarly, Sundberg took two maternity leaves in that interval.

Begg notes that it is uncommon for a CEO on each counts.

Some feminine CEOs have been public about taking minimal maternity depart, with 71% of ladies in management positions taking lower than six months’ depart for worry of jeopardising their jobs, in keeping with information from That Works For Me.

The identical examine reveals a 32% drop in girls at managerial degree after having kids.

Begg credit her co-CEO partnership for not turning her into one other statistic.

“Without the co-CEO structure, the trade off would have either been too great for the business, or too great for the way that we wanted to have our children and have maternity leave,” she displays.

“If we hadn’t had the co-CEO model, we probably would have felt that we needed to find a new CEO, or even sell the business, which are things that happen to so many female-run businesses because they don’t see how it’s going to work. Our experience was that this can really work.”

It’s been the case for Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Anything, a startup centered on “vibe coding”, which permits anybody to create an app with out figuring out find out how to code.

Thanks to the arrange, Amin was capable of take two paternity leaves of three weeks every in 2024 and 2025.

“Marcus has covered for me twice. We’ve both had times when we’re gunning hard for the company, and times we’re not. The structure gives us permission to be human without everything falling apart,” says Amin, who is predicated in San Francisco.

In Finland, Denise Johansson was capable of take three weeks away from work when her father died all of a sudden in 2024. She has been co-CEO and co-founder of cost processing platform Enfuce with Monika Liikamaa since 2016.

“It was not only a huge emotional shock, it also came with a lot of unexpected responsibility as I inherited another business at the same time,” says Johansson, who is predicated in Mariehamn, within the Åland Islands.

“Monika stepped in without hesitation, took on more of the day-to-day load, and created the space I needed to deal with both grief and practical issues.”

With six kids between them, Johansson and Liikamaa are additionally capable of take time with household whereas the opposite one holds the fort.

“If my kids need me, I will be off with them – no question. We coordinate so that key moments for our children are protected, while the company still has a steady hand on the wheel,” says Johansson.

Yet a co-CEO mannequin has but to change into a mainstream, long-term resolution. Salesforce, SAP and Marks and Spencer all appointed co-CEOs within the early 2020s, lasting not more than two years.

Tierney Remick is a Chicago-based vice chairman and co-leader of the worldwide board and CEO apply at enterprise consultancy Korn Ferry.

She’s noticed that co-CEOs are likely to work greatest at unbiased corporations with out advanced buildings, and with two those that have already labored collectively.

Otherwise, there might be energy struggles, misalignment in imaginative and prescient, and confusion amongst the broader firm.

“Leaders trying to establish their partnership, as well as drive the business and evolve the strategy – and doing it in a way that doesn’t create confusion in the organisation – is usually very difficult if they don’t know each other,” says Remick.

Co-CEO pairings can be used as a sort of succession planning to see if one will in the end change into the only, core CEO, she provides.

“There’s a tremendous amount of succession planning happening at the moment. And there is the reality that the pipeline of ‘ready-now’ CEOs has decreased over the last several years,” she says.

“So we are seeing boards find different ways to expand the roles and responsibilities of high potential leaders, to see how they accelerate and grow in a market that is creating a lot of change and ambiguity every day.”

For Begg, her co-CEO days got here to an finish in 2024 when Board Intelligence acquired personal fairness backers, which grew to become a pure level for Sundberg to face down. Sundberg stays on the corporate’s advisory board.

Now Begg is the only CEO, she acknowledges she has much less time to spend with household, so her husband left his job to be extra current at dwelling.

After their youngest youngster began college final September, he arrange a consultancy that he works on throughout college hours.

“He carries the load of home and family life. It still probably raises an eyebrow when he’s called into a meeting and he says it has to be between 10am and 3pm. They’ll be shocked that a man has said that,” says Begg.