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The Return of the Commercial Operator

Why Boards Are Looking Beyond Functional Specialists for Their Next CEO

For the past decade, executive teams have become increasingly specialised.

More digital leaders. More customer leaders. More transformation leaders. More data leaders. More growth leaders.

And that specialisation has been necessary.

Businesses have become more complex. Customers are more demanding. Technology has accelerated. Channels have multiplied. Expectations around brand, experience, data and digital capability have all increased.

But when I speak with Boards and CEOs about succession, one question still cuts through all of that complexity.

Who can actually run the business?

That is why I believe we are seeing a return of the commercial operator.

Not because specialist expertise matters less. It matters enormously.

But at CEO level, the brief changes.

The role is no longer about being exceptional in one function. It is about bringing the whole business together.

The strongest CEO candidates I meet tend to have one thing in common: they can connect commercial performance, customer strategy, people, operations, brand, digital and growth into one clear direction.

They understand the numbers. They understand the customer. They understand how the organisation actually works. And, importantly, they can make decisions when the answer is not obvious.

That sounds simple. It is not.

A strong functional leader can be outstanding at marketing, digital, operations, finance or customer.

A strong commercial operator understands how each of those areas affects the other.

They know when margin matters more than volume. They know when growth is real and when it is being bought. They understand where operational complexity is slowing the business down.

They can challenge a strategy without losing sight of execution. They know how to build a team around them rather than trying to be the expert in every room. And they are comfortable being accountable for the whole result.

That broader commercial capability is becoming increasingly important in retail and consumer businesses.

The operating environment is demanding more from leadership teams.

Growth is harder won. Customers are more selective. Cost bases are under pressure. Digital investment needs to produce commercial return, not just capability.

Boards are asking harder questions around profitability, productivity, capital allocation and execution.

In that environment, the next CEO cannot only be a visionary. They need to be an operator.

This is also changing the way Boards are looking at succession.

Traditionally, the most obvious CEO pathways may have been through a Managing Director, COO or divisional leadership role. Those pathways still matter.

But we are now seeing a broader range of executives enter the conversation, particularly where they have built genuine commercial breadth around their core functional expertise.

A Chief Customer Officer with P&L accountability. A Chief Marketing Officer who has moved into broader commercial ownership. A COO who has led growth as well as efficiency. A Chief Growth Officer who has operated across channels, markets and business units.

A functional title on its own tells you very little. What matters is the scope underneath it.

Have they owned a number? Have they led through complexity? Have they made difficult trade-offs? Have they built high-performing teams? Have they grown something? Have they fixed something? Have they been accountable when performance moved in the wrong direction?

Those are the questions that tell you whether someone is ready to move from leading a function to leading an enterprise.

The other important shift is that Boards are becoming more open-minded about what a future CEO should look like.

The best successor is not always the person with the most conventional title.

Sometimes the strongest candidate is the executive who has quietly accumulated the broadest operating experience.

They may have moved across functions. They may have taken on a difficult turnaround. They may have run a region, a channel or a business unit. They may have spent time close to stores, customers and frontline teams rather than building their entire career within head office.

Those experiences matter because CEO roles are rarely clean. They are full of competing priorities.

Growth versus margin. Short-term performance versus long-term investment. Customer experience versus operating cost. Speed versus risk. People decisions that cannot be delayed.

Commercial operators tend to be comfortable in that tension.

They are not waiting for perfect information. They know how to make a call, communicate it clearly and move the business forward.

For Boards, that makes CEO succession less about asking “Who is the best functional leader in the business?” and more about asking “Who has demonstrated they can lead the whole enterprise?”

That distinction matters. Because the best CEO candidate may already be sitting inside the executive team.

But if their title is doing all the talking, you may miss them.

The return of the commercial operator is not a move away from specialist leadership. It is the next stage of it.

Businesses still need world-class functional experts. But at the top, breadth matters. Judgement matters. Commercial accountability matters.

And the leaders who can connect all of those disciplines into one coherent business strategy will continue to stand out.

For Boards and CEOs thinking about succession, it is worth looking beyond title and tenure.

Look at scope. Look at accountability. Look at decisions. Look at what the person has actually been trusted to run.

Because when it comes to choosing the next CEO, the most important question is still the simplest one.

Can they run the business?

 

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