Why more CEOs are sharing the top job

For nearly 16 years, Pippa Begg ran Board Intelligence as co-chief govt with Jennifer Sundberg.

Collectively they grew the enterprise, which supplies evaluation and companies for firm boards, and at this time it employs 200 employees and has massive massive identify purchasers, together with Nationwide, Rolls-Royce and Reckitt.

“We’re fairly totally different folks – very a lot yin and yang – however I feel selections are higher made with two brains somewhat than one because it stops hubris,” says Begg, who’s London-based.

Begg and Sundberg are a part of a pattern, that is seen extra corporations experimenting with a co-CEO management construction.

In 2015, there have been 11 corporations with co-CEOs within the Russell 3000 group of the largest public corporations within the US, whereas in 2024, this had greater than doubled to 24, in line with an evaluation by public firm intelligence agency MyLogIQ.

A raft of main corporations additionally made such appointments in 2024, reminiscent of Oracle, Comcast, and Spotify. Netflix, in the meantime, has had co-CEOs since 2020.

Prime company executives are nicely rewarded – a report from final yr confirmed that chief executives on the UK’s largest corporations are paid, on common, 122 times the salary of the typical full-time, UK employee.

Nevertheless, there are downsides to being in cost.

According to a survey by management advisory agency ICEO, 56% of prime executives felt burnt out in 2024.

A co-CEO mannequin divides duty, accountability, and, in the end, the burden between two folks.

Management coach Audrey Hametner has noticed that co-CEOs can take day trip that sole CEOs would possibly in any other case really feel they can not do. She recollects a CEO consumer who had not taken a vacation in 5 years, however was lastly in a position to have a household vacation as soon as he discovered a co-CEO associate.

Hametner says it additionally permits bosses to play to their strengths.

She provides the instance of a earlier consumer the place one co-CEO labored extra intently with the advertising and marketing and product departments, and the opposite primarily with finance, authorities regulatory our bodies and authorized.

“You might have co-CEOs the place one is an outgoing and high-level thinker, who could discover it tougher to concentrate on all of the small duties, and the opposite CEO is extra detail-oriented and loves to talk to the information and the nuances,” she says.

Sharing the workload may give the co-CEOs extra time with their household. That is one thing they may be missing – 60% of CEOs report spending too little time with their household, according to a study by govt search agency Russell Reynolds.

Begg took three maternity leaves of round six months within the area of 5 years, returning to work every time in a four-day week capability.

Equally, Sundberg took two maternity leaves in that interval.

Begg notes that it is uncommon for a CEO on each counts.

Some feminine CEOs have been public about taking minimal maternity go away, with 71% of girls in management positions taking lower than six months’ go away for concern of jeopardising their jobs, in line with knowledge from That Works For Me.

The identical research reveals a 32% drop in girls at managerial stage after having youngsters.

Begg credit her co-CEO partnership for not turning her into one other statistic.

“With out the co-CEO construction, the commerce off would have both been too nice for the enterprise, or too nice for the way in which that we wished to have our kids and have maternity go away,” she displays.

“If we hadn’t had the co-CEO mannequin, we in all probability would have felt that we would have liked to discover a new CEO, and even promote the enterprise, that are issues that occur to so many female-run companies as a result of they do not see how it’ll work. Our expertise was that this will actually work.”

It has been the case for Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Something, a startup centered on “vibe coding”, which permits anybody to create an app with out understanding how you can code.

Because of the arrange, Amin was in a position to take two paternity leaves of three weeks every in 2024 and 2025.

“Marcus has coated for me twice. We have each had instances after we’re gunning exhausting for the corporate, and instances we’re not. The construction provides us permission to be human with out every little thing falling aside,” says Amin, who is predicated in San Francisco.

In Finland, Denise Johansson was in a position to take three weeks away from work when her father died abruptly in 2024. She has been co-CEO and co-founder of cost processing platform Enfuce with Monika Liikamaa since 2016.

“It was not solely an enormous emotional shock, it additionally got here with plenty of sudden duty as I inherited one other enterprise on the similar time,” says Johansson, who is predicated in Mariehamn, within the Åland Islands.

“Monika stepped in with out hesitation, took on extra of the day-to-day load, and created the area I wanted to take care of each grief and sensible points.”

With six youngsters between them, Johansson and Liikamaa are additionally in a position to take time with household whereas the opposite one holds the fort.

“If my children want me, I shall be off with them – no query. We coordinate in order that key moments for our kids are protected, whereas the corporate nonetheless has a gradual hand on the wheel,” says Johansson.

But a co-CEO mannequin has but to grow to be a mainstream, long-term answer. Salesforce, SAP and Marks and Spencer all appointed co-CEOs within the early 2020s, lasting not more than two years.

Tierney Remick is a Chicago-based vice chairman and co-leader of the worldwide board and CEO apply at enterprise consultancy Korn Ferry.

She’s noticed that co-CEOs are likely to work finest at impartial corporations with out complicated constructions, and with two those that have already labored collectively.

In any other case, there may be energy struggles, misalignment in imaginative and prescient, and confusion amongst the broader firm.

“Leaders attempting to ascertain their partnership, in addition to drive the enterprise and evolve the technique – and doing it in a approach that does not create confusion within the organisation – is often very tough if they do not know one another,” says Remick.

Co-CEO pairings can be used as a sort of succession planning to see if one will in the end grow to be the only real, core CEO, she provides.

“There is a large quantity of succession planning taking place in the mean time. And there’s the truth that the pipeline of ‘ready-now’ CEOs has decreased during the last a number of years,” she says.

“So we’re seeing boards discover other ways to broaden the roles and tasks of excessive potential leaders, to see how they speed up and develop in a market that’s creating plenty of change and ambiguity each day.”

For Begg, her co-CEO days got here to an finish in 2024 when Board Intelligence acquired non-public fairness backers, which grew to become a pure level for Sundberg to face down. Sundberg stays on the corporate’s advisory board.

Now Begg is the only real CEO, she acknowledges she has much less time to spend with household, so her husband left his job to be extra current at residence.

After their youngest youngster began faculty final September, he arrange a consultancy that he works on throughout faculty hours.

“He carries the load of residence and household life. It nonetheless in all probability raises an eyebrow when he is known as into a gathering and he says it must be between 10am and 3pm. They’re going to be shocked {that a} man has mentioned that,” says Begg.