C-Suite Shuffle: Quick Hits on Executive Staffing for Geopolitics
RESEARCH NOTES:
Geopolitics and the C-Suite
Maybe the c-suite really does have to change and adapt to geopolitical uncertainty. Let’s assume for now that it does. There’s some prima facie logic to it. Then who, ultimately, should carry the load?
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Does the c-suite really have to change and adapt to geopolitical complexities? Let’s assume for now that it does. There’s some prima facie logic to it: geopolitics is disruptive, it can damage business interests and activities, and knowing enough to be able to ride out the storm makes good sense. A hasty trawl of corporate and business media surfaces four basic models for executive-level geopolitics capability: the CEO-led shared responsibility model, the empowered General Counsel, the Chief Marketing or Public Relations Officer, and the Chief Geopolitics Officer (CGO). This is the mindmap that NotebookLM coughed up when fed a list of 25 articles and essays published since 2023:
The mindmap embedded in this post are AI-generated readouts of our reading list. They just skim the surface, but they raise a host of questions. Whither the Chief Risk Officer? The Chief of Staff, the COO or the CFO? Every organization will have unique structural, functional, and cultural attributes, not least of them its understanding of risk, appetite for it, and access to the resources needed to manage it. How mature is its understanding of geopolitics, or of its relevance to business activities, or - and this is a big one - the differences between risk, its constituent parts, and the workflows and resources needed to parse them into risk-calculable evidence? Cross-reference those points with personal motivations, job functions, individual KPIs, and the inevitable bureaucratic turf wars, and the evidence will point to a very different probability of success from one organization to the next.
Without giving too much away, I’ll close with this: understanding the prospects for success or failure of a geopolitically reconfigured c-suite means asking some pointed questions and getting straight answers to them. Who’s making the case for a geopolitically empowered CxO? Whose interests are served in a business equipped with robust geopolitical competence and capability? Whose interests aren’t? Is there board-level or other senior support - or opposition - for the idea? Who, ultimately, ends up carrying the load? What are the operational issues that that person or team will have to contend with? Will they have the resources and backing they need to succeed? There’s a lot to think about.
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