The Org Chart Is a Decision Hypothesis

Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about where I want to take Decision Velocity next. Frankly, the way I’ve been talking about it has started to feel forced. The frame also feels narrower than the questions I actually want to explore. One thing I do know is that I don’t want to keep explaining authority, ownership, and decision closure as abstract ideas. They’re useful, but they come alive when there’s a real choice in front of us and enough evidence to think it through together. That’s what I was looking for when two Swiss company announcements recently caught my attention. Why Swiss companies? No particular reason. They just happen to be. On Holding moved toward co-CEOs. SoftwareOne moved away from them. That contrast was enough to make me look more closely. At first, it sounds like another invitation to debate whether two CEOs are better than one. I’m not very interested in that debate. What kept me looking was the reason each company gave for choosing its structure. The closer I looked, the more the two announcements seemed to belong together. So why these two companies? If you don’t know On, it’s the Swiss performance sportswear company behind the Cloud running shoes. It was founded in 2010 and has grown into a global footwear, apparel, and accessories business. Its 2025 sales surpassed 3 billion Swiss francs (CHF), and it now operates in more than 90 countries. SoftwareOne, on the other hand, is a very different business. It helps organizations buy, manage, optimize, and modernize their software and cloud technology. In July 2025, it combined with the Norwegian company Crayon. The enlarged company had about 13,000 people across more than 70 countries. So no, I’m not putting them together because running shoes and cloud software have much in common. I’m putting them together because both are Swiss-headquartered global companies dealing with a new level of complexity. Both recently used co-CEOs. Both talked about leadership structure as an answer to the phase the company was entering. And within less than four months, one moved toward shared executive leadership while the other moved away from it. That’s a useful comparison. We get to see the same visible tool used for two very different jobs. What caught me at On In March 2026, On announced that co-founders David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti would become co-CEOs. They’d also remain Executive Co-Chairmen of the board. Scott Maguire would become President and COO, with responsibility across the full value chain, from research and manufacturing through marketing, commercial operations, and technology. The titles are interesting, but the wording behind them is what caught my attention. On said it wanted to connect “founder-led strategic intent with execution,” preserve entrepreneurial speed, and align founder stewardship directly with the work of running the company. One year earlier, On had moved from co-CEOs to Martin Hoffmann as sole CEO. Now it was changing again, this time bringing two founders into the co-CEO roles and placing a President and COO across the operating core. You could look at that sequence and say On hasn’t decided what structure it wants. I don’t think the public record gives us enough to say that. What I see instead is a company moving judgment around as its needs change. The 2026 design seems to bring founder judgment closer to the top operating role while giving one executive a broad view across the value chain. That’s an important tension in many founder-led companies. How do you keep the judgment that made the company distinctive without making every important operating decision travel back through the founders? The announcement tells us what On wants the structure to accomplish. It doesn’t tell us how the authority works when the choices get difficult. Imagine a product launch where brand ambition, manufacturing readiness, margin, and a market commitment all collide. Which part belongs to the co-CEOs? Which part belongs to the President and COO? When does asking for input turn into asking for approval? If the three roles see the trade-off differently, who can close the call? I don’t know how On has answered those questions internally. It may have answered them very well. My point is that those answers, not the titles, will determine whether the structure gives the company the agility it says it wants. SoftwareOne made the opposite move SoftwareOne had a different problem to solve. When it combined with Crayon in July 2025, Raphael Erb and Melissa Mulholland became co-CEOs of the enlarged company. Erb looked after commercial operations, services, and the marketplace. Mulholland handled strategy development, customer platforms, and global functions, among other areas. You can see why that might be useful during an integration. Two global businesses were bringing together leadership teams, operating models, customer relationships, brands, systems, legal entities, a...