Co-ceos looks great-unless they are

Often, two partner founders believe that it is a good idea to share the responsibilities of the CEO as a co -co -operative CEO. The logic is that they can separate their role and responsibilities, leading some departments (such as sales and marketing) with one person, and the other guides other departments (such as, technology and operations). The fact is, this is a very bad idea.

There should be only one leader at a time in a business that can “lead” the ship and ensure that everything has been integrated throughout the company. This article will teach you the potential disadvantages of the CO-CEO strategy.

Related: 6 ways to run his company successfully with co -president

A single vision/lack of control

Whenever you add additional people to the decision -making process, it certainly involves you to compromise, where you are not doing exactly what you have done if you were the CEO alone.

At the slightest points, it may not matter. But if these are important strategic level points that you are compromising, you reduce your personal instincts and beliefs. And these are the same dignity and beliefs that often differ between good results and average results. You never want to be in a position to “manage the happy middle land”.

Lack the same sound within the team

When there are two leaders, and those people are not necessarily 100 % alignment on the vision, they may be telling the team contradictory things to the instructions they are providing to the staff. This can cause a lot of confusion among the team members, because they are unclear whose voice is to hear the most, because they are both co -CEOs. And worse, it seems that the CEOs are not in alignment and are not interacting well with each other, which causes the team to panic that the top leadership does not know what they are doing.

Tie breaker deficiency

What happens when the two partners cannot agree on a topic? There is no one to break the tie. Which either produces a stroke level where there is no decision and work is not done at all. Or, it requires a co -CEOS so that they can back up and agree to another CEO (usually loud and personality wins). And it can cause anger to another person who does not listen to or follow his opinion.

Related: Co -CEO model’s profession and in -law

Different styling of administration can cause friction

No two people are the same. What happens when there are philosophical level differences in the administration’s point of view? We say that one of the co -CEOs is a “top down” strategic level thinker who likes to “see the Big Picture Forest”, and the other co -CEO is a “lower -part” thinker who likes “to stay in the trees.”

They are both different ways to make style decisions, and over time, these two co -cEOs can “not prefer them easily” with “wings”, they can force them to think and act in these ways.

You lose half the business control

If you are the leading CEO of “Sales and Marketing”, this does not mean that you do not have the opinion of how “technology and operations” are operating through other CO-CEO. But by distributing responsibilities, you are basically giving all other decisions to other co -co -operative CEOs in these other departments. This is okay if you trust the other person to work alone in their psileo.

But when you have a basic disagreement, what is the way that these other departments are being run? You can talk to try and fix it to your CO-CEO, but eventually it depends on the changes you want, what they can do or can’t.

Your co -CEO refused to stay “in their swimming lane”.

Although you may have divided administrative responsibilities with your CO-CEO, it does not mean that they will always be in their “swimming lane”. The CEOs who want to guide and control usually give someone else a really difficult time to give up control.

And when he “likes to control”, the co -CEO begins flowing into the “swimming lane” of his other co -co -operation, which has to input every decision in his departments, which will really eliminate the co -CEO. On this occasion, you don’t really have a COO structure at all, in which a person needs to overcome all the decisions. It will end badly.

Related: 4 Things Successful leaders know about their business

Limits your exit options

When it comes time to sell your business, the new buyer will prefer to make a CEO the only decision maker, who sits on his board and works with investors. Also, when you are ready to sell, your partner may not be ready to sell CEO.

Now, you are owning and working in a business you don’t want to work anymore. Or even worse, you miss “your open window” to sell, and market conditions change when your co -CEO is finally ready to sell, but now the window is closed, and you cannot sell.

When you get out for your equity, you can’t handle the co -CEO’s opinion, you never want to stay in a situation when you see you coming out as a straight path.

Ideas to close

Hopefully, when you are considering a co -CEO setup for your business, you will now have a better idea of ​​these challenges. There are examples where the CEO has worked together-think about the founders of Google (Sergey Burn and Larry Page).

But more often, it doesn’t work well – think that sales force executives (with Mark Benevif first with the Keith Block and then with Brett Taylor). Therefore, if you are considering this co -CEO, be careful, as it is ready with potential losses and will not work well for the co -CEO, staff or your investors.