According to recent research conducted by the American Psychological Association, the modern business landscape seems to be too fast-moving and changing for a single CEO. The demands have become too high for a single person to set up an organisation, oversee a multitude of internal decisions, and manage all stakeholders.

It should be noticed that, in recent years, several important organisations in various business sectors had implemented and then abandoned the Co-CEO model, among them, for example, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Luxottica and Finmeccanica, while other companies are recently resurrecting this management model, such as Netflix, Unicredit, and Pirelli.

A joint leadership model is quite common among family-owned companies, regardless of their size. According to AIDAF | Italian Family Business, 37% of the Italian family-controlled companies, with an annual turnover equal to or greater than 50 million euros, have a collegiate leadership with two or more CEOs. In a third of the cases, they are a family member and an external manager. These companies accept and live with a certain organisational ambiguity, but at the moment of succession, this model allows for various possible scenarios.

Among the listed companies, separation of powers is less frequent, because the market wants to clearly see who is in charge. The real risk is that the duplication of the CEO role could leave complexity unaffected, that has to be solved at an even higher level by a person not completely dedicated to the management of the company.

However, we should also consider that modern organisations have become more agile and less hierarchical, able to adapt quickly to sudden disruptions, and that the expectations of modern leadership have been evolving.

Certain soft skills have become essential ingredients for leadership, such as empathy, self-lessness, collaboration, expressiveness, self-awareness, and flexibility. All these skills could seem really too much for a single person.

Companies often lose the precious expertise of their leaders. Indeed, according to a study conducted by Stanford Business School in 2016, 75% of executives leave their companies after getting passed over for CEO, hurting companies and dispersing talent.

The Co-CEO model is a sort of professional marriage, and it requires common vision, clear communication, and deep trust.

Would-be CEOs are typically high-performing persons, and the idea of joint accountability means setting performance standards that put each manager in the position of having to live up to the other. This could create healthy competition and mutual monitoring.

The alternative of having two leaders in the CEO role could be an opportunity in certain situations.

The organisation must clearly define who is in charge of which area or unit of the company and where decision-making authority lies. Clearly, delineating areas of responsibility also prevents CEOs from being a bottleneck, facilitating a faster response, and, in the case of relevant issues, a leader can approach the problem from an outside perspective.

The co-CEO model also represents an opportunity to create room for growth in the C-suite and to train junior leaders for the future role of CEO.