this lack of CEO business worries me

OK, so let's have a DoF for the football side. Fine.

So that leaves someone needing to be in charge of the non-footballing side. Let's be boringly unoriginal and call them a COO. Fine.

So far so normal for just about every business I've come across.

But no CEO? So what's going to happen when the wishes of the DoF clash with the wishes of the COO? Who is primus inter pares? If both supposedly equal, who is going to be brokering the deals between them? Who is going to be smoothing the inevitable arguments around direction? Who is going to be providing the unifying strategic guidance to make sure both sides of the business are pulling in the right direction?

There seems to be this fear of having a strong CEO - the Board may have had a bad experience or three with having too weak (Doncaster?) or too strong (McNally, Moxey) characters in the post, but killing the post itself is not the answer.

I can see the (very strong) argument for delegating the role & responsibilities of the CEO and having the DoF/COO type roles in place, but not having a CEO is not going to end well.

Posted By: CWC, Mar 12, 19:55:35