Why the C-suite is getting so big

This article is part of "Workforce Innovation," a series exploring the forces shaping enterprise transformation.

The C-suite is getting pretty crowded.

The complexity of running a major business has meant some leaders have brought on a bevy of chiefs in recent years. Beyond the usual top jobs, some organizations now have chief experience officers, chief AI-ethics officers, and chief transformation officers.

Critics see it as C-suite creep. Others see it as necessary diversification, arguing that more expertise than ever is needed to run a thriving enterprise — or simply to keep up.

Leadership experts told Business Insider that rapid advances in tech, like artificial intelligence, help explain why CEOs might want to pad their bench. But some suggested that having too many people at the top risked muddling decision-making and hurting productivity.

Ram Charan, an author and consultant who's advised top execs and boards at Bank of America, Verizon, and Coca-Cola, said that many C-suites had grown too large and argued that solving big problems doesn't necessarily require additional execs.

"You don't need more people at the top," he said. "You need the right people at the top."

More CEOs seem to think the ideal lieutenants are those in roles such as chief data officer, chief legal officer, and chief human resources officer. LinkedIn said in September that those were the fastest-growing C-suite roles on its platform from 2022 to 2023.

Jason Saltzman, director of growth at Live Data Technologies, said a review of its figures found that, since 2019, growth at US public companies in newer C-suite roles like chief customer officer and chief corporate responsibility officer has been 9.8% faster than that of a half dozen traditional roles like CFO and CMO.

Charan said the number of challenges — particularly external ones — coming at companies has "grown exponentially" from about a decade ago. These include AI and shifts in how companies earn money and how consumers behave.

"Somebody has to make sense out of that and determine priorities," Charan said.

Charan recommends the C-suite comprise a handful of "broader-based" execs who can think critically and serve as a CEO's sounding board.

He said CEOs could have specialists, like those in charge of risk management report to them even if they're not part of the C-suite. Still, he said, there shouldn't be too many people, because CEOs don't have the time to manage that many direct reports.

Charan's recommendations might seem at odds with the approaches of CEOs like Jensen Huang at Nvidia and Elon Musk at Tesla, both of whom are said to have dozens of direct reports. But Charan said that in Huang's and Musk's cases, they and a few other people "make the priority decisions."

Janet Sherlock, who recently retired as the chief digital and technology officer at Ralph Lauren and who has a background in researching organizational design, said executives and board members are sometimes reluctant to question whether a person in a top management position has the skills for the role.

Sherlock gave the example of a company that has a chief information officer but then hires a chief analytics officer — the hiring of that person could suggest to employees that the information chief "wasn't up to the task."

On the flip side, Sherlock said, firms specializing in selling data services might justifiably have several people in leadership who focus on analytics.

But she said a lineup that includes a chief marketing officer, a chief information officer, and a chief customer-experience officer might indicate insufficient internal coordination.

Sherlock said the amount of innovation and change over the past 20 years had in some cases led to organizational bloat at the top.

"Instead of reworking and rewiring organizations, companies have often thrown leaders and people at problems," she said.

Sherlock speculated that many organizations were reaching a "critical breaking point" and that some might try to thin their C-suites.

"Do I need a customer-experience officer whenever I have a chief commercial officer, a chief information officer, and a chief marketing officer?" she said, adding, "Or are the processes or executive skill sets sufficient?"

Sherlock said that in the research she completed while earning a doctorate in organizational leadership, she found that overlap among executives' remits was associated with worse productivity, product quality, time to market, morale, and employee engagement.

"This is so much more harmful than CEOs, CHROs, or boards of directors are aware," Sherlock said.

She said that's why it's essential to maintain clear responsibilities and decision-making lines.

Christine Porath, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's business school who wrote the book "Mastering Community," said collaboration among C-suite executives could help connect disciplines.

"That also helps role-model that for other employees and the organization as a whole, which I think is very healthy," Porath said.

She said research she helped conduct indicated that even before the pandemic many workers didn't feel a sense of community at work — and then the pandemic made that worse.

She said leaders often ask how they can foster greater connection and community in the workplace. "It really starts at the top," Porath said.

Porath said it wouldn't do any good to just slap an organization's values on a website or an office wall.

"If you don't see leaders living them, people tend to get very cynical quickly," she said, "and, unfortunately, they will follow leaders' behavior."

Dorie Clark, a communication coach who teaches at Columbia Business School and who wrote "The Long Game," said it's understandable why many C-suites would be organized with clear distinctions in responsibilities.

"You know where the buck stops, and there's no debate," she said.

But a chief marketing officer, for example, still has to know "an incredible amount" about technology, Clark said. She argued that a C-suite should have those clear lines of responsibility while still allowing for close collaboration.

It's possible to go too far, she said. Clark pointed to organizations that experimented with co-CEOs — a setup she said "almost never goes that well."

"When the lines of authority and responsibility are blurred, people have a hard time with that," Clark said. Workers don't necessarily who to go to, and needing to loop in more people can slow down certain processes, she said.

Not everyone thinks the C-suite has bulked up too much.

Ty Wiggins, the global lead of the CEO- and executive-transitions practice at the leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates, said that as tech like AI becomes more important within organizations, bringing more tech experts into the C-suite beyond chief technology officers or chief information officers will be necessary.

He said Russell Reynolds recommends all C-suite leaders become proficient in AI and other technologies.

Wiggins, who wrote the book "The New CEO," argued that leaders needed to have "closer connections" to different aspects of the business.

"You have to realize when you're a CEO that the information coming to you is filtered multiple times before it gets to your desk," he said.

Wiggins said most CEOs' remits had expanded over the past 15 years — they often now include digital transformation, employee well-being, sustainability, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, among other things.

Wiggins said that's why there's more pressure on C-suite leaders to act as a well-informed unit of experts rather than technical specialists. That can mean extra work for them.

"The demands that have been put on them are increasing," he said.