The Chief Communications Officer Advisory

No.

CCOs come to this work from different starting points. Some are new and want to move with clarity rather than guesswork. Others have been leading their function for years and know the business has outgrown the current communications mandate. Some are navigating a significant organizational shift – a new CEO, a merger, a strategic pivot – and need the function to perform at a different level. The starting point is different, and the destination is the same.

We know from  25+ years of our firm working with C-Suite leaders, CCOs, and communication teams that speed and sequencing are different things. The CCOs who move well are moving in the right order. Start with a diagnostic rather than a reorg, identify low-risk, high-value fixes that show movement without burning capital, and build stakeholder relationships before they're needed. Those are sequencing decisions. The goal in the first 90 days is visible traction rather than transformation. The transformation follows. 

That's exactly what the diagnostic is for – and it's one of the most common places CCOs get stuck. Acting on the wrong diagnosis wastes time, burns capital, and often makes the underlying problem harder to fix. The 90-minute modernization diagnostic gives you an objective read on where the gaps actually are before you move, so the changes you make are aimed at the right target.

This is one of the first questions the 90-minute diagnostic surfaces. Whether you were hired to drive change or maintain momentum shapes everything that follows: the listening tour, the priorities, the relationships you build first, the pace you set. Understanding what happened with your predecessor and whether the mandate is transformation or continuity isn't always obvious – and misreading it early is one of the most common and costly mistakes new CCOs make. The CCO Advisory helps you get to that clarity quickly, before it shapes decisions you can't walk back. 

The honest answer is you might not be. Every leader brings built-in filters and assumptions into a new situation, and acting on those prematurely is one of the patterns we see most consistently in CCOs who struggle in the first year. The 90-minute diagnostic is partly about giving you objective evidence to act on. Sometimes it confirms what you sensed. Sometimes it changes the order of operations entirely.

Yes – and personnel decisions are one of the areas where pace matters most. The CCOs who most often say they'd do something differently are the ones who waited too long to make decisions about their team. Competing demands – learning the business, managing up, building stakeholder relationships – push talent decisions down the list. By the time they resurface, the delay has already slowed momentum. The CCO Advisory surfaces a structured capability and capacity assessment early, so the personnel decisions can be made quickly based on evidence rather than instinct.

Not necessarily – and certainly not at the start. Very often, CCOs restructure before they have the data to do it well. Structure should follow strategy. The 90-minute diagnostic starting point gives you the objective basis to make structural decisions from evidence rather than urgency. Some CCOs do reorganize as a result of this work. Others find that role clarity, stronger processes, and better alignment get them most of the way there without a formal reorg. The answer depends on what the data shows.

Carefully and early – and not only with your own team. A common misstep is when a CCO is deeply visible to their team but barely known to their business partners early on. The relationships that determine success aren't always the most obvious ones. Understanding who holds real influence and where the tensions already exist is as important as the rest of the work. We help you map that landscape and navigate it deliberately, so the allies you need are in place before you need them.

We help you build the alignment and operating model that brings business units, legal, HR, or regional offices into a coherent enterprise framework, without triggering the political resistance that comes from forcing a structural change. The goal is a unified function that behaves like one – without requiring a reorg to make it happen.

The measurement conversation with the CFO is almost always the hardest one. Share of voice, earned media, engagement rates – those metrics are meaningful inside the function and invisible outside it. The work we do together to modernize your communication function as part of The CCO Advisory helps you build a metrics story that connects to the outcomes the business is already tracking: retention, reputation risk, acquisition, decision-making speed. When your partners start citing your data in their own conversations, that conversation has changed.

AI is woven through the five stages to modernize your communication function – from basic pilots and defined use cases through proprietary capabilities that set industry benchmarks. We help you assess where your function currently stands on AI adoption, define your principles for responsible use, and build the roadmap to close the gap. The goal is to ensure that your function isn't left behind when technology is reshaping the role.

It's designed to work around the world you're already in, not the ideal conditions you wish you had. The work starts with a focused, structured diagnostic. From there, we build the roadmap together and stay in execution alongside you, so the burden doesn't fall entirely on you to drive it. Most CCOs tell us the value shows up early in the diagnostic, before the heavier transformation begins.

Faster than you would expect! The sequencing is designed to surface visible traction early: low-risk moves that demonstrate momentum without requiring a full transformation to be complete. Most CCOs are leading credible conversations with business leaders by month three.

Competing priorities are not the exception. The 90-minute diagnostic within The CCO Advisory is designed to start with the situation you've inherited and help you create the clarity and traction. The best time to start is when the business demands it, vs. when there’s open time to address the need.

The returns tend to show up in a few places: reduced redundancy across communications functions, faster time to credibility with the CEO and board, retention of high performers, and budget conversations that shift from defensive to data-driven. One recent client restructured their operating model in a way that delivered $10 million in savings while advancing two stages on the maturity model in 18 months.

Clarity and options, regardless of what comes next. We'll ask about your priorities, the business conditions your function is working within, and what's driving the urgency. You'll get a candid read on whether and how this work fits your situation, what the right entry point might be, and what we'd expect the first 60 days to look like. If it's not the right fit, we'll tell you that too. The goal is to leave with more clarity than you came in with – not a follow-up or proposal you didn't ask for. Many CCOs move to the initial 90-minute diagnostic as the next step to learn more.