Three essential strategies for chief strategy officers to secure their roles in a market downturn

The need for corporate strategy never goes away, but how companies prioritize this strategy depends on the macro environment. If the market experiences a significant downturn, or if there’s fear of a downturn (like there is today), it’s possible that organizational leaders will pause, or even halt, current strategic initiatives.

Let’s face it, strategy is part of overhead. And, as we all know, when a market underperforms or a company underperforms, it’s not uncommon for leaders to shed overhead functions.

In this article, we share three ways top strategy executives, specifically chief strategy officers (CSOs), can strengthen their job security in a down market.

1. Make sure your efforts successfully move the needle in the short term as opposed to the long term.

CSOs who focus on initiatives that add value in the distant future (3-10 years out) are more at risk in a down economy relative to peers focused on initiatives that create measurable impact in the next 6-24 months.

It’s not uncommon for boards of directors to task a CEO with their 10-year vision and plan. And oftentimes the CEO will engage the CSO to help think through what the company is going to look like in the next decade.

However, we’ve all seen situations where a market downturn derails all long-term planning, whereby the CEO’s focus suddenly shifts from the next 10 years to the next 10 weeks. In these situations, the CSO’s job security could depend on their ability to pivot and start moving the needle in the short term.

So, what does short-term value look like?

The best examples are projects that increase revenue or decrease costs, especially those that relate to core products or services that your company sells, as opposed to new projects that cost money to get started (the exception being if your company is already “all-in” on a new service or product line and you’re a key participant in making that happen).

Strategic projects that drive short-term value by increasing revenue could include customer segmentation studies, share of wallet analysis, salesforce optimization initiatives, etc. Similarly, examples of strategic projects that drive short-term value by decreasing costs could include span of control studies, vendor negotiation, process optimization, lean / six sigma initiatives, etc.

2. Add to your job scope by taking on additional functional responsibilities.

The second way we’ve seen CSOs strengthen their job security is by taking on more than just strategy, essentially stepping into a “strategy and” role. This expansion can include venturing into areas closely related to strategy, such as corporate development or organizational transformation, as well as exploring less conventional adjacencies like communications, employee experience, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), big data and artificial intelligence (AI).

In recent years, organizations have also leveraged the strategic chief of staff position in their leadership teams, which allows top strategic leaders to take on more responsibility by communicating and overseeing the execution of their corporate strategy, especially during transformations.

Related: The strategic chief of staff role, explained

As the CSO, odds are you have visibility into the most significant challenges and strategic initiatives that your company is focused on today. Therefore, you’re in one of the best positions to identify those additional initiatives where you know you can add value. Perhaps it might be time to reach out to the C-suite in your company and ask to take on some of these additional responsibilities.

3. When possible, increase your span of control with a team of individuals that further establish the importance of strategy throughout the organization.

It goes without saying that when you have a team, your work proliferates throughout the company faster. More people sing the praises of your strategic efforts, and your message is more likely to become a part of the fabric of the organization.

Secondly, strategists tend to have a broad skillset that contributes value in a wide variety of ways. We’ve never heard an executive say, “the strategic toolkit just doesn’t add value around here.” They always say the opposite: “If I could just get more of those analytically minded, hardworking strategists who can tell a compelling story, I would take over the world!”

If you have a team, odds are they are finding ways to add value throughout organization, which tends to make the strategy function “stickier” in your company. In fact, many CSOs tell us they have job security because they’ve become known as the person who brings rock star talent to their company, and that talent goes on to do great things. In other words, they are a feeder of future stars.

Lastly, companies don’t like to orphan a function by eliminating the leader, because then you have a rudderless group. If you’re tasked as the leader for an entire function and the resulting team, your role is more secure than if you’re simply an individual contributor.

The takeaway:

So, in summary, it’s pretty straightforward. By focusing on value creation in the short term, taking on responsibilities adjacent to strategy and growing your team, we believe CSOs will achieve greater stability while also accelerating their careers.

To learn more about our capabilities in strategy recruiting, visit CharlesAris.com/strategy.