By architecting a fit-for-purpose model that creates the necessary conditions for identifying, pursuing, capturing, and managing new opportunities. In a shift mirroring market trends in 2020, CFOs recognize the importance of a purpose-driven strategy, with 82% of respondents saying that they are increasingly seen by key stakeholders as the stewards of long-term value, according to the 2020 EY DNA of the CFO. Resilient organisations thrive before, during and after adversity. A total of 99 respondents participated in this inaugural survey. As part of their learning process, CSOs can certainly find valuable support from internal IT personnel. As an adviser, a CSO helps the company formulate its strategy by framing clear strategic choices, soliciting the perspectives of the organization’s senior leaders, driving decision-makers to alignment, and articulating the resulting strategy. The CSO position is a relatively new addition to the C-suite and remains one of the most ambiguous. In today’s fast-moving world, the current strategic planning cadence is not nearly fast enough to avoid incoherence between a company’s strategy and the evolving realities of the marketplace. Our previous research2 on CSOs reveals they typically play six roles (figure 3): The primary role for CSOs and the Strategy function, according to the survey respondents, is “the adviser” (27 percent of the time) (see figure 4). How do you maintain the right level of fluidity to adapt in real time as market conditions change or new material events occur? Tom focuses on working closely with senior leadership teams to develop their growth strategies and architect the enterprise-wide transformations. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the looming threat of a global economic downturn was a real concern for Strategy executives. Copy a customized link that shows your highlighted text. View in article, Mike Armstrong, Tom Schoenwaelder, and Nick Bullard, The making of a successful chief strategy officer—Insights from the field, Deloitte, 2019. How do you keep your strategy current if market dynamics change meaningfully in monthly or quarterly (versus annual or biannual) cycles? In fact, 39 percent of CSOs surveyed report that Strategy has existed as a formal function for less than five years at their organization. Nonetheless, CSOs are uniquely prepared to help their organizations sense new market dynamics, understand disruptive shifts, navigate uncertainty, and position the business for sustained, long-term growth. Integrating those small acquisitions successfully has also proven to be difficult, and deal valuations are becoming too high to justify the capital investment. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know exactly when a downturn will strike, or what it will look like. With its roots in ancient military traditions, Strategy only started to solidify itself as a management discipline in the 1980s. Recent engagements include engineering a digital transformation for one of the world’s largest CPG companies, an innovation-led transformation for a large oil and gas player, transforming the customer experience for a leading US retailer, building a new US business for a leading Indian conglomerate, developing emerging market business models and entry strategies for a global consumer and industrial products conglomerate, and redesigning the customer experience for one of the world’s leading airlines. 3 100% BEFORE the COVID-19 pandemic, in a typical week, did you ever work remotely? Despite ambiguities around their role, CSOs are uniquely positioned to see around the corner, help their organizations navigate uncertainty, and position their businesses for long-term success. However, only 29 percent of top Strategy executives are awarded a C-level title of either chief strategy officer (27 percent) or, much fewer, chief growth officer (2 percent). How? Nelson began his career as a strategy consultant in 1988 at Monitor Company in Cambridge, MA. ​Monitor Deloitte's Strategic Growth Transformation offering helps clients architect strategies and transformation programs for growth and value creation through levers such as strategic dialogue facilitation, innovation, portfolio optimization, differentiation, and business model transformation. The Rise of the Chief Data Officer. Conversely, CSOs wish they could spend less time in the “special projects leader” role, which is sometimes seen as a distraction. History has taught us that executive teams who prepare themselves strategically, operationally, financially, and psychologically can win. © 2021. The point of scenario planning is not to predict the most probable future; rather, the objective is to develop and test strategic choices under a variety of plausible futures, and to challenge the assumptions underlying the strategic plan. The process is largely sequential, takes months to complete, consumes lots of valuable (and scarce) organizational resources, and only happens in long cycles (e.g., annual, biannual, or even less frequently). When asked about how they would prefer to allocate their time, CSOs wish they could spend more time in the more strategic “adviser” and “sentinel” roles. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. While Strategy first surfaced in organizational charts in the 1990s and has existed for several decades at many large multinational corporations, companies today continue to stand up Strategy groups as new additions to their corporate structures. Scenario planning, as discussed earlier, can be a great ally in helping CSOs plan for different ways in which a downturn may unfold, identify areas of vulnerability, uncover “blind spots,” explore new strategic options, gain greater clarity on when to act, and align the management on a playbook to weather the storm as it forms in the horizon. Moreover, there have been several high-profile examples of successful CSO-to-CEO transitions over the years, such as former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, who served as PepsiCo's senior vice president of corporate strategy and development for seven years before becoming chief financial officer and ultimately chief executive in 2006. We are witnessing the dawn of a new era of possibilities for Strategy as a corporate function, and for CSOs who have the drive and the foresight to seize the moment. Second, many CSOs lack a baseline understanding of new disruptive technologies and their potential applications. "The current attack methods are generating tremendous illicit financial gains, with relatively little investment or expertise required. Yet both the function and the role remain ambiguous, and sometimes misunderstood. The most common areas of responsibility include: long-range strategy planning and development (95 percent), ad hoc presentations (79 percent), special projects (78 percent), M&A/JVs/partnerships (71 percent), insights/analysis (66 percent), market research/scenario planning (61 percent), innovation (49 percent), and program management/strategy execution (49 percent).