Here is a write-up on roles and responsibilities of some of the key persons in an organisation. The insights have been picked from various sources, but the content proves to be reflecting the fact and hence we thought sharing the same would benefit the readers.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO):
Function:
– To implement the strategic goals and objectives of the organization
– Enable the Board of Directors to fulfill its governance function
– To give direction and leadership toward the achievement of the organization’s philosophy, mission, strategy, and its annual goals and objectives
Reports to: Board of Directors
Major Functions / Accountabilities:
1. Board Administration and Support — Supports operations and administration of Board by advising and informing the Board of Directors, interfacing between Board and staff, and supporting Board’s evaluation of chief executive
2. Program, Product and Service Delivery — Oversees design, marketing, promotion, delivery and quality of programs, products and services
3. Financial, Tax, Risk and Facilities Management — Recommends yearly budget for Board approval and prudently manage organization’s resources within those budget guidelines according to current laws and regulations
4. Human Resource Management — Effectively manages the human resources of the organization according to authorized personnel policies and procedures that fully conform to current laws and regulations
5. Community and Public Relations — Assures the organization and its mission, programs, products and services are consistently presented in strong, positive image to relevant stakeholders
6. Fundraising — Oversees fundraising planning and implementation, including identifying resource requirements, researching funding sources, establishing strategies to approach funders, submitting proposals and administrating fundraising records and documentation
LEADER
– Advises the Board
– Advocates / promotes organization and stakeholder change related to organization mission
– Supports motivation of employees in organization products/programs and operations
VISIONARY / INFORMATION BEARER
– Ensures staff and Board have sufficient and up-to-date information
– Looks to the future for change opportunities
– Interfaces between Board and employees
– Interfaces between organization and community
DECISION MAKER
– Formulates policies and planning recommendations to the Board
– Decides or guides courses of action in operations by staff
MANAGER
– Oversees operations of organization
– Implements plans
– Manages human resources of organization
– Manages financial and physical resources
BOARD DEVELOPER
– Assists in the selection and evaluation of board members
– Makes recommendations, supports Board during orientation and self-evaluation
– Supports Board’s evaluation of CXO”s
Chief Financial Officer (CFO):
The function of a CFO has undergone an evolutionary change.
1. There has been a division of the job into parts such as treasury, taxation, mergers and acquisitions, investor relations, and strategic finance and planning. This requires the CFO to handle issues relating to the design of information technologies, risk-management systems, and forecasting.
2. At the group level, however, the responsibilities are greater and more macro. At the level of a business unit, financial functions revolve around management accounting, advising the head of the unit on financial matters, and any managerial decisions having financial implications. At the group level, the functions concern investor relations, taxation, funding new businesses, and resource allocation.
3. The knowledge of sufficient financial data is enough to enable one to take business decisions at the operational level. But at the corporate level the CFO needs to consolidate all the information, to evaluate businesses that are performing well and those that are not, and to allocate resources between them, to help in deciding to retain some businesses and to restructure others, and to track improvements in the performance of the portfolio.
4. For instance, at the group level the CFO cannot be expected to know how a company’s division is doing on a daily basis, what sort of financial data is needed regarding costs and other market details, what can be done to improve market share, and how much needs to be spent on advertising. That would be done by the financial chief of that particular division. At the group level, the CFO will look at the funding requirements of the company as an important business portfolio of the group.
5. When the task is so momentous, it isn’t anyone who can wear the crown. A CFO needs to have more than just finance skills. He has to have the right technical skills and a good grasp of the business and market dynamics, have good communication skills, and be adept with numbers. He must understand his subordinates and peers and be comfortable with people. He should also be willing to share knowledge and mentor people.
6. While holistic thinking — strong industry and market awareness — is critical, the most insightful perspectives are meaningless without the ability to apply them through concrete decisions that address specific business objectives.
7. Industry knowledge is one of the most powerful assets in developing a good business strategy. While it is important to know your own company, it is equally necessary to know your industry: your competitors, suppliers and channels. A good CFO must be a strategic thinker. He should be able to discover ways through which the company can be significantly different from the competition.
8. CFOs also need to think critically about the future. The language of accounting and finance measures the past, but value creation is a function of the future. History may help identify models for decision making, but it is no substitute for anticipating how suppliers, distributors or customers may act within the framework of new relationships.
9. A CFO also needs to build cross-functional, result-oriented work teams. Managing this human capital requires thinking: about roles and responsibilities, compensation, performance measurement, and staffing.
10. The opportunities for smart, savvy individuals to redefine the role of finance in the future are great. Tomorrow’s CFOs will have extensive cross-functional experience, which includes the management of profit-and-loss responsibility, and the launch of a new product or service. They will have impacted revenues or profitability in a variety of situations. They will have built and led teams that enacted business change. Most of all, successful CFOs will be decision makers who make a difference in their company.
11. If the number of attributes that the office demands seems excessive, it is justified by the spate of corporate scandals that have highlighted the position of the CFO in the business sphere today. The scandals have also drawn attention to the integrity, sincerity and trust that must be displayed by a person who holds that position. A CFO needs to be ‘the conscience keeper’ of the CEO and the trustee of the shareholder. He has to ensure that institutions that prescribe corporate governance are working and that adequate data has been provided to enable them to function.
12. A CFO’s work is never done. Apart from doing his own duties, he also needs to work very closely with the CEO and provide scenarios for the appetite for risk in an organization. He must also be willing to expand the type of risk that an organization can take through financial engineering and proper financial strategies.
13. The emerging role of the CFO has to be seen in the light of the new role of finance, and its ability to support and drive growth. Finance, rightly managed, can play a crucial role in linking business strategy to shareholder value, decision making and performance objectives. In this new role, he has to constantly provide the CEO and other business heads with real-time, online information regarding different products, businesses and geographical locations. Reporting is no longer periodic, since he takes on a ‘decision-support’ role. He must also hone his creative skills and be in a position to predict what the interplay of internal and external figures may imply for the organization in the long term.
14. Gone are the days when the CFO was a bookkeeper. The function has gone beyond keeping financial order and enforcing management controls. The accounting mindset has to be reinforced with new business realities. The CFO has emerged in a new form, fully capable of providing operational skills that complement those of the CEO. The required skills set now includes an ability to be a strategist, lead change initiatives and prepare value-added analyses to enhance the company’s value.
Chief Technology Officer (CTO):
The role of the CTO within each organization can be simply stated as that of the primary interpreter of operational technology issues and decisions. As the role of the CIO faces outward and is concerned with policy and strategy, the complementary role of the CTO faces toward the organization’s needs, use, and replenishment of technology within strategic and policy guidelines.
Historically, many CIOs performed both roles; the increasing complexity and expanding role of technology, along with expanded security concerns, have enlarged these roles to be too large a burden for one individual. The CTO role involves a detailed understanding of where technology is going, a vision of where the business should go, and the ability to mesh those together and explain on both sides how that vision is going to be accomplished.
Ultimately, the CTO serves as the bridge between the technologists and program areas to help them understand these details in order to make disciplined, proactive IT investment decisions.
As a key adviser to the CIO, the CTO is responsible for designing and recommending the appropriate technology solutions to support the policies and directives issued by the CIO. In so doing, the CIO is able to merge the recommended technologies with the strategic business objectives of the organization. This approach establishes the CTO as the technology specialist. In the role of technology specialist, the CTO should have a skill set not dissimilar to that of the CIO. The CTO should place more emphasis on a strong technology background and knowledge of significant trends and features which differentiate technology products and services.
CTO has the following roles and responsibilities (categorized into three key functional areas).
Strategy Formulation:
– As a senior advisor to the management on technology investments and initiatives
– Participating with CIO and other Senior IT leaders including Architecture team in planning the short and long-range technology strategies;
– Providing leadership in ensuring appropriate technology usage
– Developing IT technology standards and protocols inline with requirements and industry “best practice;”
– Assesses new and emerging technologies to determine application to various programs and services
– Identify and oversee business process driven technology improvements
– Manages and chairs the IT configuration control board
Opportunity Evaluation:
– Identifies and evaluates new technology developments and gauges applicability to business processes by providing the Solution Architecture that satisfies business goals and objectives;
– Maintains a current working knowledge of IT best practices and innovative solutions within both government and industry;
– Develops, recommends, influences, and evaluates technology support, infrastructure operation, custom applications, and governing policies;
– Oversees and coordinates with all IT Initiatives/Projects
Tactical Planning and Prioritization:
– Recommends, develops, integrates, administers, and evaluates policies, procedures, and standards needed to provide flexible and cost-effective IT services (specifically related to Web Services, Software Development Life Cycle, Technology Refreshment, Solution Architecture, and Technology Research and Collaboration);
– Provides Subject Matter Expertise to the Chief Information Officer;
– Solves IT business issues while managing IT costs and risks;
– Defines essential education and training required for the implementation, operations, and maintenance of Department information technology.
The distinguishing feature of all of these roles and responsibilities is their focus on operations. Long-range system architecture, blueprint development, and business process alignment with Departmental policies and strategies are the responsibility of the Chief Architect. The CTO assists in the association and realization of these areas through technology and its application to the operational environment.
Chief Information Officer (CIO):
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a job title for the board level head of information technology within an organization. The CIO typically reports to the Chief Financial Officer and in IT-centered organizations, to the Chief Executive Officer. In military organizations, they report to the commanding officer or commanding general of the organization.
The Information Officer is the central manager responsible for coordination, assessment, and synchronization of all organization policies and standardization requirements for the geospatial information enterprise, which will help enable interoperability across multiple and often disparate domains, bringing enterprise user closer to the realization of a unified common operational picture (COP).
The prominence of the CIO position has risen greatly as information technology has become a more important part of business. The CIO may be a member of the executive board of the organization, but this is dependent on the type of organization. CIO as a job title originated in the US, but is slowly replacing IT Director as the de facto title in Europe and Asia.
No specific qualification is typical of CIOs in general; every CIO position has its own specific job description. In the past, many have degrees in computer science, software engineering, or information systems, but this is not universal. Increasingly CIOs, especially those from a technical background, are gaining an MBA to strengthen their management skills. More recently CIOs’ leadership capabilities, business acumen and strategic perspectives have taken precedence over technical skills. It is now quite common for CIOs to be appointed from the business side of the organization, especially if they have project management skills.
In recent years governments and government departments have employed CIOs and recruited them from the private sector. The main reason for this is that as government departments have modernized their processes they have made costly IT mistakes and now require highly experienced IT executives to cut the best deals for their organizations.
The CIO role is also sometimes used interchangeably with the Chief Technology Officer role, although they may be slightly different. When both positions are present in an organization, the CIO is generally responsible for processes and practices supporting the flow of information, whereas the CTO is generally responsible for technology infrastructure.
The top 10 concerns of CIOs: people leadership, managing budgets, business alignment, infrastructure refresh, security, compliance, resource management, managing customers, managing change and board politics.
Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a job title commonly given to the person in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. As information technology and systems have become more important, the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as a key contributor in formulating strategic goals. Typically, the CIO in a large enterprise delegates technical decisions to employees more familiar with details. Usually, a CIO proposes the information technology an enterprise will need to achieve its goals and then works within a budget to implement the plan. Typically, a CIO is involved with analyzing and reworking existing business processes, with identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, with reshaping the enterprise’s physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise’s knowledge resources. Many CIOs head the enterprise’s efforts to integrate the Internet and the World Wide Web into both its long-term strategy and its immediate business plans.
A CIO needs to know that there is now multi-actor system. There is no longer just the government; there is the private sector, the third sector. There is a need to collaborate with all kinds of sectors. This is called the evolution from government to governance. Increasingly, governments have to arrange to work with other actors to get things done. Not only CIOs in the public sector but even in the private sector need to know about this evolution because they will increasingly work with government. One has to ask how the future of government will be and the general agreement as of this day is that government will evolve into a regulatory function whereby the service delivery function will be taken on by other kind of actors -the private sector, the third sector. The CIO needs to know how industry is transforming. In parallel to government, industry is transforming substantially.
Chief Operating Officer (COO):
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is a corporate officer with one of the highest rankings in a company that presides over the entire organization and usually reports only to the CEO or Chairman of the Board. The COO is usually an executive or senior officer that manages the daily activities of an organization and for operations management (OM).
The focus of the COO or Head of Operations, is on strategic, tactical, and short-term OM, which means he or she is responsible for the development, design, operation, and improvement of the systems that create and deliver the firm’s products/services. Managers need to understand the real work behind the company’s core operations, and the buck stops with the COO, whose primary concern is operations improvement. The duties of the COO may reside in certain organizations with a President of Operations. Operations management is an area of business that is concerned with the production of goods and services, and involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient and effective. It is also the management of resources, the distribution of goods and services to customers, and the analysis of queue systems.
Operations also refers to the production of goods and services, the set of value-added activities that transform inputs into many outputs. Fundamentally, these value-adding creative activities should be aligned with market opportunity for optimal enterprise performance.
The COO ideally needs to have domain knowledge of the business as well as understanding of management theories such as TQM, Kaizen, and BPR. Knowledge of standards such as ISO 9001, and Six Sigma is also a must for global organizations.
Functions of a COO:
1. Advise the CEO on strategic business development and key corporate planning issues and make recommendations on major business decisions.
2. Efficiency by creating and maintaining a positive flow of work by utilizing what resources and facilities are available as set out by the chief executive officer and the board of directors.
3. Lead by developing and cascading the organizations strategy/mission statement to the lower ranking staff
4. Organize resources such as facilities and employees so as to ensure effective production of goods and services
5. Plan by prioritizing customer, employee and organizational requirements
6. Shaping and monitoring staffing, levels, Knowledge-Skill-Attitude (KSA), expectations and motivation to fulfill organizational requirements
7. Performance Measures for the measurement of performance and consideration of efficiency versus effectiveness
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO):
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is a corporate title referring to an executive responsible for various marketing in an organization. Most often the position reports to the chief executive officer.
With primary or shared responsibility for areas such as sales management, product development, distribution channel management, public relations, marketing communications (including advertising and promotions), pricing, market research, and customer service, CMOs are faced with a diverse range of specialized disciplines in which they are forced to be knowledgeable. This challenge is compounded by the fact that the day-to-day activities of these functions, which range from the highly analytical (eg. – pricing and market research) to highly creative (advertising and promotions), are carried out by subordinates possessing learning and cognitive styles to which the CMO must adapt his or her own leadership style.
Beyond the challenges of leading their own subordinates, the CMO is invariably reliant upon resources beyond their direct control. That is to say, the priorities and/or resources of functional areas outside of marketing such as production, information technology, legal, and finance have a direct impact on the achievement of marketing objectives. Consequently, more than any other senior executive, the CMO must influence peers in order to achieve their own goals. Clearly, this necessity to lead peers compounds the complexity of challenge faced by the CMO.
Chairman:
The chairman is the highest office of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office is typically elected or appointed by the members of the group. The chairman presides over meetings of the assembled group and conducts its business in an orderly fashion. When the group is not in session, the chairman’s duties often including acting as its head, its representative to the outside world and its spokesperson.
The terms chair and chairperson are sometimes used to avoid the perceived sexism of “chairman”; chairwoman is sometimes used as a female counterpart to “chairman”. The National Association of Parliamentarians does not approve using “chairperson.”
A vice chairman is sometimes chosen to be subordinate to and to serve in the absence of the chairman. In the absence of the chairman and vice chairman, groups sometimes elect a chairman pro tem to fill the role for a single meeting.
Chairman has its origins in 10th century Kingdom of England, when the king or his spokesman sat alone in a chair before the group, who sat on benches. Other terms sometimes used for the office and its holder include presiding officer, president, moderator, chair, and convener. The chairman of a parliamentary chamber is often called the speaker. In the United States, the presiding officer of the “lower” house of a legislative body, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, is frequently titled the Speaker, while the “upper” house, such as the U.S. Senate, is commonly chaired by a “President”.
Chair also refers to the place from which the holder of the office presides, whether on a chair, at a lectern, or elsewhere. During meetings, the person presiding is said to be “in the chair”. He or she is also referred to as “the chair.” Parliamentary procedure requires that members address the “chair” rather than the “chairman,” or by using a person’s name. This is one of many customs aimed at maintaining the presiding officer’s impartiality and insuring an objective and impersonal approach.
