Companies need to start cross-training for executive needs of the future

As digital and analytic software technologies become embedded in every aspect of corporations, there is an increasing need for "hybrid executives" who can make money leveraging cloud, digital and artificial-intelligence products.

Examples include a chief marketing officer, whose job is now 50% digital, rather than the classic responsibilities of branding and market segmentation; a chief data officer, tasked with managing and monetizing data; and a chief customer officer, who is responsible for a consistent and elite user experience at every stage of a customer's interaction with the firm.

These roles all are cross-functional and include responsibility for profit and loss, marketing, analytics, data management, cloud computing and, most critically, enterprise change management.

There was no defined career path leading to these roles. Nearly everyone hired into them grew this mixed background though curiosity and serendipity.

But in the future, the need for these sort of executives will be so large that serendipity will not suffice for their development. How will we find enough of them?

Companies will deliberately develop them. The most useful metaphor comes from a former next-door neighbor of mine in southeast Minneapolis. A brain surgeon in his late 30s, he had spent nearly a decade after finishing his formal education trotting the world every year or two and apprenticing with top surgeons at elite medical centers. When he was done with his apprenticeships, he would himself be considered one of the top brain surgeons in the world.

It seems to me that companies will begin to develop hybrid technologists in a somewhat similar fashion. To become a successful chief data officer, for example, will require 15-plus years of success in a variety of roles. A series of two- to three-year "rotations" might take someone from IT to marketing then finance and P & L management.

Given the mobility of employees these days, most will not complete the entire training program, and most companies will not have an appropriate senior role for them upon completion.

But that isn't necessarily a problem. Even partly trained, a hybrid professional or midlevel executive will immediately have high return on investment to the organization that trains them.

Isaac Cheifetz, a Twin Cities executive recruiter, can be reached through catalytic1.com.