How Chief Ecosystem Officers are Revolutionizing the Way Businesses Perform

The very name exudes authority, conjuring images of power suits and corporate boardrooms. However, the recent pandemic and changing economic conditions have revealed how susceptible most organisations were to the pandemic.

It begs a question: Are traditional CEOs about to become a vestige of the past. With the disruption taking place over the last 24 months, it is becoming clear that the leadership style that served us in the pre-COVID era is no longer appropriate to serve us moving forward.

Most Executive Officers looked at numbers and bottom-line impact as the singular metric of performance, resorting to downsizing and cutting human labour costs in order to rebalance the books.

Ecosystem Officers focus on a different set of metrics: how many clients were visited? How many employees did you spend time with this week? How much training did we do the past month? Ecosystem Officers focus on the longer-term impact, both internally on their Employees, and externally on their Clients, Suppliers, Communities, and Competitors. Ecosystem Officers understand that if the ecosystem is healthy, the inevitable result is strong bottom-line outcomes.

But the tables are turning, as is the role of the Chief Executive Officer. As the global economy slowly shifts back into gear, we are beginning to see the ramifications of some of those early decisions.

Are we ready for such a fundamental rethink of organisations? As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches its second birthday, organisations that laid off large numbers are now finding themselves severely under-staffed. The talent that was let go so quickly is now proving much harder to replace, leading to a rethink about the role of Peak Capitalism and the Chief Executive Officer in a dynamically changing world.

I am based in the United Arab Emirates, and am the Chief Ecosystem Officer of CG Tech, a diversified holding formed in the United Kingdom in 2012 together with Niall Carroll, Andrew Jackson, Dany De Barros and Joseph Zinyana which has since grown to become an investment holding company focused on industrial and temporary infrastructure services and technologies, with successful ventures in Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa.

Why 'Ecosystem'? Because we have simultaneously managed to scale our business interests in the oil and gas and events sectors, expanding into film sets, media and adventure parks, all the while creating incubators for digital innovation that create the solutions that support the needs of partner companies, as well as those of the broader market.

But what really sets CG Tech apart is our ability to identify the synergies that exist within our portfolio companies, the possibility of seeing how each company serves a role in the other, and identifying how to develop those pockets of new value in new ways.

The ability to adopt 'ecosystem thinking', to see the organisation and how it connects and interacts within the system, offers a unique perspective. In my upcoming book, "The Oros Effect", I explore ecosystem thinking through the lens of organisational culture.

Co-opting the metaphor of Oros, a popular regional orange concentrate, to spread corporate culture throughout organisations, my book shows how aligning people around a common cause and organisational beliefs can propel organisations forward in uncertain times, regardless of their position or title.

It's hard enough for leaders to navigate the challenges of the present. Unless leaders are able to effectively pass on the corporate culture, their knowledge, their beliefs and their ideas - effectively, their "Oros" - onto those around them, it becomes increasingly challenging to push forward and disrupt in such a rapidly changing market.

What's in a name?

In a recent media announcement in Dubai, EMAAR Chairman Mohammed Alabbar proposed to 'suspend the use of all job titles across the company', with the aim of shifting the focus on talent over titles. Imagine - no job titles at all.

The job title has played such an important role in neatly defining the roles and responsibilities within the organisation, as well as defining the personal identities and status of its people when they are outside of it.

In times of certainty, clear role distinctions are necessary to optimise organisations, in order to streamline operations and increase profits.

The challenge comes in uncertain times, when streamlined operations move from an asset to a liability when the very thing they optimise is suddenly no longer relevant in a changing market. At that point, it becomes an 'all hands on deck' situation - suddenly, role distinctions are a hindrance to identifying, assessing and pivoting into new business models that add value.

Ecosystem thinkers such as Mr. Alabbar and myself see the value in promoting a culture of organisational flatness and openness and shifting the focus from job roles to job needs.

Can Pandemics be good for business?

Taking an ecosystem view unlocks so-called multi order effects - synergies in seemingly non-obvious directions where Black Swan events such as pandemics, low probability events with high impact, might be reframed as unique, new opportunities to create new value contexts.

For an executive officer, a change in the market would have them first looking at the risk presented by the change, followed by an assessment of financial impact. For an ecosystem officer, surveying the evolving landscape and identifying the changing reality often presents a new and exciting possibility to explore.

Redundancy is future-proof

An Executive might look at unutilised cash in a bank account as an underperforming asset. Far from it. In the case where a company is able to maintain cash in times of extreme uncertainty, it serves as a prudent risk management strategy.

Prior to the pandemic, many companies were highly financially leveraged, funding business growth with borrowed money, leaving them sensitive and exposed to minor (let alone major) drops in sales volumes.

Ecosystem thinkers are aware that market volatility is unpredictable in cause, but predictable in impact. Pandemics, it would appear, are exactly why we should be saving for a rainy day.