Power Fight: Who to boss at the C-level table

Picture the C-suite as a high-stakes poker table. Every seat is expensive, every player influential, and every move, whether it’s a bet on AI or an all-in on customer experience, has the power to change the game for the entire organisation.

The C-level arena is no longer a neat hierarchy of CEO at the top and everyone else in supporting roles. It’s a complex ecosystem of overlapping mandates, competing priorities, and strategic alliances that can either propel an organisation forward or send it into internal gridlock.

So… who really calls the shots? And, more importantly, who should?

The Non-Negotiables: The Core Power Trio

CEO, CFO, COO – the old guard. These roles still form the strategic backbone.

CEO: The visionary. Not just the company’s face but its long-range GPS, charting where to go, why to go there, and how fast to move.

CFO: The number whisperer. Today’s CFO doesn’t just keep the books, but also mines data for predictive insights and turns financial metrics into strategy.

COO: The strategist’s enforcer. They turn big ideas into operational reality, making sure the organisational engine runs at full throttle.

Without these three in sync, your C-suite is just a high-paid debating club.

The New Heavyweights: Tech & Transformation Bosses

Welcome to the 2025 reality. Digital is no longer a department; it’s the playing field.

Chief AI Officer (CAIO): The new kingmaker. They own AI integration, governance, and innovation pipelines, resolving tensions between tech dreams and operational realities.

Chief Information Officer (CIO): The architect of your digital foundations, ensuring every byte supports business goals.

Chief Digital Officer (CDO): The bridge between digital capabilities and commercial outcomes. If the CIO builds the infrastructure, the CDO monetises it.

In a power fight, these roles increasingly call the tactical shots - because, in a digitised marketplace, the speed of tech adoption can determine market leadership.

The Customer Commanders

If your market is flooded with competitors, customer loyalty is currency. Enter the Chief Customer Success Officer (CCSO) and Chief Experience Officer (CXO).

The CCSO is the strategic safeguard against churn. They don’t wait for complaints. They preempt them, align the entire organisation around customer outcomes, and turn retention into a revenue growth engine.

The CXO ensures every touchpoint (digital or human), builds emotional loyalty, not just transactional satisfaction.

These roles might not sign off on billion-euros budgets, but their influence is deep. They control the flow of the one asset no business can survive without: customer trust.

Specialist Power Brokers

Not every company needs them, but in the right industry, these C-levels are non-negotiable:

Chief Data Officer (CDO) – Turns raw data into competitive advantage.

Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) – Balances environmental pressures with growth.

Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) – Guards the gates against cyber chaos.

Chief People Officer (CPO) – Shapes talent strategy in an age where human capital can be more scarce than financial capital.

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) – Breaks down the marketing-sales silos to accelerate growth.

The Real Boss? The Strategy

Here’s the twist - no single role should dominate. The true power lies in architecting a C-suite where influence is fluid, flowing to the person with the most relevant expertise for the challenge at hand.

Research shows the most successful companies design their C-suite like an adaptive organism, cross-functional goals, shared performance metrics, and collaboration hardwired into the culture. Because in today’s boardrooms, the question isn’t who gets to boss around the others. It’s whether your leaders can set aside ego long enough to boss the market together.

The modern C-suite is less about titles and more about territory. In the power fight at the executive table, the winner isn’t the loudest voice. It’s the organisation that is smart enough to put the right boss in charge of the right decision, at the right time.

The Last Round of Bets

At this high-stakes table, every C-suite player brings their own chips: influence, expertise, and strategic priorities. The table's tension is palpable; every decision is a calculated bet with the organisation's future on the line.

The CEO, the table's de facto leader, sets the game's pace, deals the cards, sometimes going all-in on a bold AI vision or other predicted future technology — balancing long-term dominance against short-term risks.

The CFO plays conservatively, safely, eyeing ROI on every move. An AI bet? Only if the numbers say a projected 20% cost reduction in operations, he stacks up, but is quick to call a bluff on unproven ventures.

The CTO is the wildcard, pushing chips toward bleeding-edge technologies, such as quantum computing or generative AI, knowing that a single breakthrough could redefine the game or flop spectacularly.

The CCSO wagers on customer loyalty, betting that trust and experience can outlast operational quick wins.

Each move ripples across the organisation. An AI bet might streamline operations but spook customers if it feels impersonal. A customer experience push could drain cash reserves, making the CFO fold early. Trust, ego, and competing agendas collide. Data from recent McKinsey reports show 70% of digital transformations fail when C-suite alignment falters, proving the stakes are brutal.

The game is never just about the cards dealt: market trends, competition, or regulations. But rather how the players read each other. A single misstep, such as ignoring a 15% rise in customer churn, could bring the whole table crashing down. Every decision, whether on AI’s efficiency or customer-centric innovation, reshapes the organisation’s hand.

Who’s got the nerve to call, raise, or fold?