With CEOs, there are two flavors: Visionaries and Operators. One builds the future; the other keeps the lights on. The insights industry welcomed new leadership, any guesses what kind?
In the category of Market and Marketing Research, the biggest players are IPSOS and Kantar, and both got a little shake-up last month. First, IPSOS appointed Jean-Laurent Poitou as Global CEO. Then, Kantar announced Paul Zwillenberg as its new Global CEO.
Big Insights is looking for a change, and it’s unquestionably needed. The arrival of AI-driven insights compels both leaders to secure a durable future for two legacy companies closing in on 100 years of operation.
What’s interesting is that in both leaders, we see the same blueprint; they’re both what you’d consider to be operators. It’s not surprising, but it got me thinking: what kind of leader do these companies need to survive the next 50 years?
Visionaries vs. Operators
We know the Visionaries. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Phil Knight and Henry Ford come to mind. Often characterized as controversial experts with a vision, and the know how to get there. They’re happy to take on debt if it means they will achieve their outcome faster or more successfully.
Then there are the Operators. These are the dark horses, the CEOs you’ve never heard of. They often fly under the radar, Joe consumer does not know who they are, and they’re lacking a grand vision for the product or company. What they have in spades is operational genius. They focus a company on financial outcomes and reshape a business into a well-run machine built to last.
The world is full of visionary CEOs. Every venture-backed startup, mom-and-pop shop, or sole proprietor is its own visionary. They parlay their inherent understanding of a market into value for customers. Visionaries are the engine of capitalism. They create almost everything we value as consumers: smartphones, cars, shoes, etc. So why are most leaders operators if visionaries are the engines of innovation?
Why Operators Usually Win?
It boils down to one thing: shareholder return.
Everyone has someone they answer to. For you and me, that list likely includes family, friends, your employer, etc. Either consciously or unconsciously, we rank the priority of each of those groups. Many parents put family first, but not all. We know the trope of the absent dad who travels for work and misses little Jimmy’s softball games. That’s a real thing, and in that case the father prioritized work over family perhaps out of need or a goal of maximizing Jimmy’s future.
The same obligations and prioritization hold true for businesses, but often the stakeholders are more limited. In business, the two most common stakeholders are customers and investors. Depending on how the business has prioritized its stakeholder groups, you can predict the leader they’ll bring onboard.
Operators are more predictable. They’re more likely to drive initiatives that benefit investors, specifically focusing on profit and short-term growth.
Visionaries rarely care as much about immediate shareholder value, a focus that can backfire. They risk everything for customer value but when they succeed… wow! Remember Amazon? It took them seven years to turn a profit because Bezos was obsessed with the customer experience and refused to back down. He had a vision. Now, their quarterly income is more than the cumulative profit of their first 24 years. The payoff is there, but Visionaries are tough on investors who aren’t keen to wait a decade for returns.
This is why we’ve seen visionary CEOs pushed out. The most famous example is when Apple’s board brought in John Sculley (an operator) to replace Steve Jobs. A decision that backfired and was reversed, resulting in Steve Jobs being granted the license to turn Apple into the world’s most powerful brand.
The Apple Case Study: A Warning Label
Let’s take a quick jaunt down memory lane. After returning to Apple, Steve renewed the focus on his vision of making the world’s best products. He succeeded, and by the end of 2010, the company had amassed $27 billion in cash. Most investors, including Warren Buffet, wanted him to use it for stock buybacks or dividends. Jobs adamantly refused, asking, “Which would you rather have us be? A company with our stock price and $40 billion in the bank? Or a company with our stock price and zero dollars in the bank?” Steve knew there’d be new products to develop and needed access to capital to make it work.
Steve Jobs passed away in October 2011, and his operating partner Tim Cook took over as planned. Months later, in early 2012, Tim announced Apple’s capital return program. As you’d expect from an Operator CEO, he had re-prioritized the company focus from customers to investors and leaned in on returning value to shareholders. Investors loved it. However, when Steve passed, so did Apple’s vision.
Let’s be real, today’s iPhone is a shinier version of the one from five years ago. Siri, purchased by Jobs and once the front runner, is a laughable failure compared to Alexa and Google Assistant. Apple’s announced AI features like Apple Intelligence never materialized. By 2023, even the Apple product team knew they were behind on AI with only 50,000 NVIDIA AI processors to Meta’s 150,000, Microsoft’s 500,000 and Google’s 1 million. Yet, the CFO, Luca Maestri, shut down a request to purchase an additional $20 billion (50,000) in chips with the feedback, “make the existing chips more efficient”. Instead, what did Apple do with its cash that year? They dropped $98 billion on dividends and buybacks.
Apple makes beautiful devices, but setting aside the fanboy card, it’s clear to see the company is behind on product development. iPhone sales have plateaued, and growth is coming from accessories like AirPods. Cook has been drafting on the phenomenal brand equity built by Jobs rather than true innovation.
And that’s the rub. Tim Cook took over 14 years ago and, despite middling product innovation, he’s kept revenue and profit growing. This tells us two things. It illustrates the power of a brand and brand marketing. But it also makes it clear to see why most investors champion the operator approach. Apple has been a massive financial success despite the lack of vision.
So, what about insights?
The Apple story provides a useful anecdote for combining strategic vision and operational expertise. To break new ground on innovation, you want the visionary calling the shots, backed by operational excellence. This helps deliver long-term durable value without sacrificing enterprise value for investors.
However, visionary CEOs are unicorns in established businesses, especially those backed by private equity or fickle investors who want a 2-5 year return on investment. These days, the blueprint for an operator CEO is a tenure at a big consultancy like McKinsey, Accenture, or BCG. They are the Ivy League master mechanics who tune an engine to run smoothly and efficiently. They’ll overhaul clunky businesses, setting them up to get it over 200,000 miles without issue. The gamble most investors take is that while they’re tuning the engine, an innovator across the globe is not building a driverless future.
So, let’s look back at our two new insights CEOs, Paul and Jean-Laurent. A quick peek at their LinkedIn profiles tells you everything you need to know: they’re textbook operators. This makes perfect sense given the financial expectations of both firms. Both are outsiders to the industry but are likely among the smartest and most capable leaders around.
So, the million-dollar question: how long until they find a vision? And will it be a vision they understand and believe, or one adopted from consultants and a multitude of internal insiders? And when it comes time to make bets, to trade off profit for customer value, will they be comfortable doing so? It’s hard to say.
My money’s on them not climbing that ladder. Their intuition will be to focus on what they know, investors first and customers second. For both businesses, it’s not a bad thing to work on financial performance. But in a world where the AI innovation cycle is moving at breakneck speed, I can’t shake the feeling that these companies hired Indy car mechanics for a trip to Mars.
Regardless of my thoughts, I’m sure both CEOs will see P&L success in tuning their organizations for growth. They both appear to be capable leaders and have earned their shot. Yet I’m still curious to know what the future will bring and whether they will set both companies up for the next 100 years of operations. This will be the ultimate A/B test in operational leadership.
For a great deep dive into the Apple case study check out Apple Explained