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 immediately it employs 200 employees and has large large identify shoppers, together with Nationwide, Rolls-Royce and Reckitt.

“We’re fairly completely different individuals – very a lot yin and yang – however I believe selections are higher made with two brains quite 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, similar to Oracle, Comcast, and Spotify. Netflix, in the meantime, has had co-CEOs since 2020.

Prime company executives are properly rewarded – a report from final yr confirmed that chief executives on the UK’s greatest 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, finally, the burden between two individuals.

Management coach Audrey Hametner has noticed that co-CEOs can take trip that sole CEOs may in any other case really feel they cannot do. She recollects a CEO shopper 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 companion.

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

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

“You’ll have co-CEOs the place one is an outgoing and high-level thinker, who could discover it more difficult to deal with 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 might also 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 information 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 best way that we needed to have our youngsters and have maternity go away,” she displays.

“If we hadn’t had the co-CEO mannequin, we most likely would have felt that we wanted 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 is going to work. Our expertise was that this may actually work.”

It has been the case for Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Something, a startup targeted on “vibe coding”, which permits anybody to create an app with out figuring out tips on how to 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 lined for me twice. We have each had occasions once we’re gunning onerous for the corporate, and occasions we’re not. The construction provides us permission to be human with out the whole lot falling aside,” says Amin, who relies in San Francisco.

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

“It was not solely an enormous emotional shock, it additionally got here with loads of sudden duty as I inherited one other enterprise on the similar time,” says Johansson, who relies 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 youngsters want me, I can be off with them – no query. We coordinate in order that key moments for our youngsters are protected, whereas the corporate nonetheless has a gentle hand on the wheel,” says Johansson.

But a co-CEO mannequin has but to turn out to be a mainstream, long-term resolution. 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 follow at enterprise consultancy Korn Ferry.

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

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

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

Co-CEO pairings will also be used as a kind of succession planning to see if one will finally turn out to be the only, core CEO, she provides.

“There is a great quantity of succession planning occurring in the intervening time. And there’s the truth that the pipeline of ‘ready-now’ CEOs has decreased over the past a number of years,” she says.

“So we’re seeing boards discover alternative ways to broaden the roles and obligations of excessive potential leaders, to see how they speed up and develop in a market that’s creating loads of change and ambiguity on daily basis.”

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

Now Begg is the only 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 little one 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 most likely raises an eyebrow when he is referred to as into a gathering and he says it must be between 10am and 3pm. They will be shocked {that a} man has mentioned that,” says Begg.