Deloitte advocates companies hire a Chief Value Officer

Apparently, Deloitte has a newsletter, The Value Habit. Volume 9 has an article [1], Help Wanted: Chief Value Officer: Creating value is a full-time job.

It's an excellent article, and we believe, an even better idea.

The genesis of this idea was from discussions with Paul Kennedy [2] and the late Paul O'Byrne [2] (sorry, I still choke up writing it that way), of OBK [3].

They made a comment that really stuck with me on a flight back from visiting them in 2004.

They were one of the first firms to have formed a pricing council, probably back in 2001-2002.

After running this council for a year or so, they said that they were becoming too focused on price, and value was being ignored.

I could see how this could happen, and since value determines price, maybe we needed to focus more clearly on the ultimate objective.

I knew there existed among large companies Chief Pricing Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, Yield Management Groups, Revenue Management Groups, even BMW had a Chief Experience Officer.

But I couldn't find any company, anywhere, that had a Chief Value Officer.

Then in 2005, I presented to a firm (Ward Wilson) in New Zealand, strongly advocating they appoint a CVO.

They did [4] later that year, Brendon Harrex, who now has his own firm [5].

In my book, Pricing on Purpose [6], I profile Brendon as the world's first CVO, since I couldn't find one anywhere before this time.

The idea caught legs, and now we know of probably a dozen firms that have appointed a CVO [7].

Who's in charge of value in your firm?

Oh, and here's a question for Deloitte: Do you have a CVO?

If so, why do you still think that time = value?