How the drive for data, technology, and financial skills is reshaping the chief strategy role
As C-suite roles continue to evolve, quantitative skills appear to be in demand—especially for organizational strategy leaders
As organizations navigate the rapid pace of uncertainty and disruption, some are gravitating toward more analytically grounded capabilities and decision-making, prompting them to rethink what emerging C-suite skills and knowledge can best support their organization’s growth agenda. In continuing to examine the evolution of C-suite skills, explored in Deloitte Insights’ “Designing for growth in the C-suite,” a deeper dive into the shifting skill requirements of the chief strategy officer confirms a growing demand for quantitative skills.
Deloitte’s analysis of 825 open CSO role postings, tracked between 2018 and 2023, reveals a rapid evolution occurring for these executive-level strategists.1 Six years ago, CSO role postings included more customer, sales, and marketing-related skills. While this may have mirrored the organizational importance of connecting customer-centricity to strategy, the current rise in technical and quantitative capabilities, like data science and artificial intelligence skills, looks to be shifting what organizations are seeking from their prospective CSOs. That is, the data may be showing that organizations now seek more analytical, scientific, and financially oriented leaders who can help drive an enterprisewide strategy.
And the shift to more quantitative and financial backgrounds is significant. For instance, in 2018, 41% of CSO role postings listed marketing strategy as a core skill; by 2023, that number decreased to 26%. Similarly, the demand for sales management and customer service backgrounds dropped significantly. But there is a different story unfolding for more quantitative skill sets and backgrounds. In the same six-year window, general finance backgrounds grew substantially (18% of CSO job postings sought general finance skills in 2018, versus 32% in 2023). Meanwhile, demand for analysis, research, and development backgrounds grew from 12% of 2018 postings to 28% in 2023, and financial modeling grew from 6% of postings in 2018 to 14% in 2023—both experiencing over a 133% increase in their representation in role postings (figure 1).
What are some factors driving the CSO shift to quantitative skills?
Several trends may be driving this shift in desired CSO skills and backgrounds. First, perceived economic and market uncertainties are making financial acumen and modeling an essential element of the strategy function.2 CSOs often wear the hat of “banker” and work closely with corporate development or hold that remit as part of their responsibilities—something that is often important for major financial decisions, like strategic mergers and acquisitions.3
Further, as business units and other functions become more tech- and data-savvy, so too should the strategists that work and collaborate with them. In fact, this is even changing how the strategy function is organized: according to Deloitte’s 2023 Chief Strategy Officer survey, more organizations are moving strategy from a centralized function to a federated model (one that serves both the enterprise and individual business units). This shift in structure aligns with the trend toward more digitally connected organizations. As more enterprisewide data becomes available, there may be greater opportunity to gain a 360-degree view of how the organization is navigating its strategic goals.
Closely related to these enhanced data and technical capabilities, organizations are often faced with short time frames to react to changing conditions and require faster insights to make decisions. It makes sense that the organization’s leading strategists should be equipped with the right skills—like analysis, financial, and scientific skills—to help bring these insights to the rest of the organization. These skills also include implementing new techniques like dynamic scenario planning. While traditional scenario planning is typically a point-in-time exercise, dynamic scenario planning continuously maps, models, and monitors uncertainties to analyze multiple possible futures (for example, changing economic environments, customer preferences, and technological innovations) and adjusts and adapts strategic plans in near real time to align to the shifting environments.4
Finally, the emergence of new executive titles focused on customer, sales, and marketing skills could also be contributing to a shift away from skills demand in these areas. In addition to the long-standing chief marketing and sales officers, roles like chief growth officer, chief customer officer, and chief experience officer have emerged to provide a clearer link between customer and marketing.5 This reflects both strategic priorities and the role of CSOs, who often take on the role of “special projects” leader to incubate strategic initiatives before these tasks gain more permanent homes. As these new, more nuanced titles grow to cover more specific aspects of customer, marketing, and sales, the CSO is no longer needed to temporarily lead these initiatives.6
What can be expected with this shift?
With this skills evolution, the modern CSO can help create focus and drive value, and do so in a more rapid and timely way by:
- Embracing uncertainty to build resiliency: In addition to strategies that are robust and well-articulated, executives are likely also looking for strategists who can infuse more resiliency into the organization. As such, a more quantitative, data-driven, and financial-based skill set could help CSOs drive this resilience, lean into new dynamic analytical approaches, and help organizations focus on true value creation in the face of an uncertain business landscape.
- Increasing speed to insights for more decisive decision-making: For CSOs, “speed to insight” is an emerging key performance indicator—and data processing and analysis is often a straightforward path to effectively connect insights.7 As such, it’s becoming increasingly important for CSOs to not only understand the new analytical frontier but also work across the organization in collaboration with data science talent and business-line expertise.
- Leveraging data and analytics to focus on the right priorities: Decision-makers and strategists have more data available to them—encompassing operations, markets, customers, competitors, and more—than ever before. More analytical and finance-savvy CSOs can look to better deploy this data to help their organizations make better decisions and growth investments.