The CVO in a development company: who looks after direction so the company can grow without deciding slowly

Of every 100 companies with employees born in Brazil in 2017, only 37 were still active five years later (37.3%). The figure comes from the study Demografia das Empresas 2022 (Business Demography 2022), by IBGE, the Brazilian statistics institute, released in December 2024 and summarized by Agência Brasil. In construction, it was 26 in every 100 (26.2%), the lowest rate among the sectors in the study. The sector includes real estate development alongside works and services of every kind, and the figure does not single out developers. It says that lasting is not the default, even less so in construction.

And those that last tend to grow. In the European Union, companies that reached five years employed 72% more people in 2024 than in 2019 (Eurostat). Growth puts more people between the question and the answer.

The seat of CVO, which stands for chief visionary officer, is born from this problem. This text defends a thesis about it, marked as such, and says where the research stops. Quotations from Brazilian sources and from the Portuguese-language code are freely translated; the others are given in the original English.

The CVO exists so the company lasts, renews itself and keeps deciding fast

In the thesis InnCorPower defends here, the CVO answers for three things that day-to-day management does not cover: that the business endures, that it reinvents itself before it has to, and that it does not lose decision speed as it grows. The CVO thinks about the business outside the CEO's agenda.

The third is the least obvious. The company that used to decide in a conversation between two partners starts deciding in a meeting, then in a committee, then in next month's cycle. Nobody chose to become slow; the slowness came with size.

Hence the angle of this text: speed that lasts, deciding fast today and with three times as many sites. The yardstick sits at the front line: at the site waiting for a decision to pour concrete, at the crew that needs to know what comes next, at the buyer who was given a date.

The CVO is not a long-term CEO, nor an adviser who gives opinions without answering for the choice, nor a reviewer of every decision. The CVO enters day-to-day work through one door only, the direction exception.

Research on the CVO is missing, but governance codes separate direction from daily management

No study read for this text measures the CVO seat by name. The neighboring roles, however, follow a rule repeated from country to country.

Sweden's governance code says the chief executive "is responsible for the company's day-to-day management" and that the board sets out "the overall goals and strategy of the company" (Swedish Code). Norway (NUES, 2025) and Finland (Finnish Code, 2026) say the same. Belgium makes the division a principle: board and executive management shall "remain within their respective remits" (Belgian Code, 2020).

In the United Kingdom, the board establishes "the company's purpose, values and strategy" (UK Code, 2024). In Germany, the management board and the supervisory board must look after the continuity of the company (Kodex, 2022). In Hong Kong, the stock exchange speaks of "long-term success" (HKEX, 2026). All of them rank among the top 13 of the United Nations Human Development Index (UNDP, 2025). The codes apply to listed companies; for the privately held developer, they serve as a pattern for dividing roles, not as an obligation.

Brazilian law does not create the figure of the CVO. It speaks of the administrator, the officer or manager legally in charge. The administrator must act with "the care and diligence that every active and honest person usually employs in managing their own business" (Código Civil (Brazilian Civil Code), art. 1,011). In corporations, the law also asks for loyalty and attention to the "social function of the company" (Lei 6.404/1976 (Brazilian Corporations Law), arts. 154 and 155). The title neither adds nor removes duties.

The thesis of this text: in the privately held developer, the CVO seat reproduces the separation found in the codes, with someone holding a name and a mandate for direction, separate from whoever executes.

Direction is choosing what the company will be; execution is making it happen every day

Direction is choosing what the company will be and what it will not do: which cities to operate in, which product to pursue, how much risk to accept, how to build. Execution is making it happen, and it already has an owner. The CEO leads the company and answers for the whole; the CFO, for the money; the COO, for the sites; the general coordinator, for the schedule and risk board of all of them. The CEO may also be a partner and answer for the sites; none of this changes with the CVO seat.

The direction exception is the day-to-day decision that changes the company's path, and not just the week's schedule. Changing the window-frame supplier is execution. Reducing the finish promised in the specification to save the margin of one site is direction: it touches the promise made to the buyer and what the company's name comes to mean.

The criterion is not the time horizon. The schedule of a four-year site is execution; accepting in one afternoon a plot outside the chosen market because the price looks good is direction. Guarding that boundary is the CVO's job.

Decision (examples)	Nature	Who decides	Why
Entering a new city	Direction	CVO, with the numbers from the CEO and CFO	Defines where the company competes for years
Adopting a new building system on all sites	Direction	CVO, with the COO	Changes cost, schedule and crews across the whole portfolio
Reducing the promised finish to save the margin of one site	Direction exception	Goes up to the CVO, with the proposal ready	Alters the promise made to the buyer
Launching the second phase of an already approved development	Execution	CEO	Fits inside the direction already decided
Moving crews between two sites	Execution	COO	Changes the week, not the path

The exception goes up with the proposal ready, never as an open question: whoever executes brings the solution they recommend and the cost of the alternatives. The Swedish code draws something similar for listed companies: matters "of an unusual nature or of exceptional importance" fall outside day-to-day management. The chief executive prepares them and presents them to the board (Swedish Code). And the list of exceptions stays written down, short and known on site. A long list becomes a review of everything.

Slow decisions are born far from the site, and the site pays the bill

In Australia, the government's productivity commission concluded in 2025 that, between approvals and permits, the timeline of a major housing development "can stretch to ten or more years". And "often only a small part is time spent building". These are public approvals, not decisions by the company. The effect, however, reaches the site: "because construction is highly sequential, delays and disruptions can create 'cascading failures', which push up costs" (Productivity Commission).

Even in the time spent building, what holds things up most is coordination. In Ireland, a study followed two sites using the Last Planner, a method in which each crew promises what it will do during the week and measures how much it delivered. Fulfillment by contractor ranged between 72% and 92%, and the main reason for failures was scheduling and coordination, ahead of lack of staff (Power & Taylor, 2019). A small sample, but the message points the same way: what was missing was resolved sequence more than extra hands.

The American consulting firm Bain says it found, in ten years of research with more than 1,000 companies, a clear correlation between decision effectiveness and performance. The symptom, in the firm's description: "from the C-suite to the front line, people feel as if they're stuck in molasses" (Bain & Company). It is correlation, not cause. In the United Kingdom, the 1998 Egan report opened its list of the five drivers of change in construction with "committed leadership" (Rethinking Construction). In Singapore, the sector's authority called in 2022 for building "smarter" (BCA).

No study read measures directly the link between clear direction at the top and fast decisions on site. The link is InnCorPower's thesis in this text, and the mechanism is simple: with the criterion written down, most doubts get resolved at the front line, and only the exception goes up.

For the buyer, a slow decision becomes delay, and delay has a price in the law

Since Lei 13.786/2018 (Law 13,786/2018), the Brazilian real estate development law accepts delivery up to 180 days after the scheduled date, without penalty, if the tolerance is in the contract "clearly and prominently" (art. 43-A). Once the grace period has passed, the buyer who is up to date with payments and keeps the property receives 1% of what was paid for each month of delay, pro rata by day (§ 2).

The grace period is a cushion against the unforeseen. A slow decision is not unforeseen, but it eats the cushion all the same, and the buyer sees no difference. The buyer judges what was received.

In the United Kingdom, a national survey published by the home builders' federation asks buyers for their views eight weeks after they receive their keys. In the 2026 edition, 93% would recommend their builder to a friend, 90% were satisfied with the quality of the home and 88% with the service after moving in (HBF). A different market and an industry-association survey, but what the sector chooses to measure is what reaches the end of the line.

A hypothetical calculation: four decisions that wait three weeks instead of one

The example is hypothetical: assumptions chosen to show the arithmetic, with no research behind them and no real company. Only the delay rule comes from a source, art. 43-A.

A building has a gross sales value (VGV, from the Portuguese valor geral de vendas, the total the developer expects to sell) of R$ 90 million (R$ means Brazilian reais). Four exception decisions block the critical path, the sequence of tasks that, if it slips, delays the whole delivery. In the slow chain, each takes three weeks; with clear direction and a ready proposal, one.

Item (EXAMPLE)	Value	How it is reached
Development VGV (assumption)	R$ 90,000,000	Hypothesis
Capital at risk during the delay, net of what has been received (assumption)	R$ 40,000,000	Hypothesis
Developer's cost of capital (assumption)	1.2% per month	Hypothesis; 30-day month
Cost of keeping the site running with the work front stopped (assumption)	R$ 60,000 per week	Administration, security, rented equipment
Decisions that block the critical path (assumption)	4	Hypothesis
Wait per decision: slow chain / clear direction (assumptions)	3 weeks / 1 week	Hypothesis
Delay on the critical path	8 weeks (56 days)	4 × (3 − 1)
Cost of the idle site	R$ 480,000	8 × R$ 60,000
Cost of capital	R$ 896,000	R$ 40,000,000 × 1.2% × (56 ÷ 30)
Direct cost of the delay	R$ 1,376,000	R$ 480,000 + R$ 896,000; 1.53% of VGV
Cost per slow decision	R$ 344,000	R$ 1,376,000 ÷ 4
Share of the 180-day tolerance consumed	31%	56 ÷ 180
If the site goes past the tolerance (assumption: buyers have already paid 60% of VGV)	R$ 540,000 per month	1% × R$ 54,000,000 (art. 43-A, § 2)

Each slow decision costs R$ 344,000, and the eight weeks consume almost a third of the legal grace period before any rain falls.

The control is in the calculation itself: with no decision blocking the critical path, the delay is zero, and the direction seat gains nothing there. With a cost of capital of 2.4% per month, double, the total rises to R$ 2,272,000, 2.52% of VGV.

Renewing without stopping the sites takes two fronts linked by a common direction

The American researchers Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman start from an uncomfortable finding: one stream of studies indicates that "most organizations are largely inert and ultimately fail" (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2008). The way out they propose is called ambidexterity: doing well what is already done while testing what comes next.

The two tasks pull in opposite directions. One rewards "efficiency, control, and incremental improvement"; the other calls for "flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation" (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013). In a developer, the first is the sites under way; the second is the new market, the new product, the new method. In the form the authors describe, the two fronts stay separate but are held together by "a common strategic intent".

In the thesis of this text, guarding that intent is the central job of the CVO. It falls to the CVO to make sure the new front exists, that it does not steal the crew from the site that pays the bills and that, when it works, it joins the direction of everyone.

A study by Menz and Scheef, available in the open archive of the University of Geneva, in Switzerland, examined five years of companies in the S&P 500 index. The presence of a chief strategy officer in the top team was associated with diversification, acquisitions and interdependence among top roles (Menz & Scheef, 2014). The direction seat appears when the business becomes complex.

Succession is the hardest test of whether the company will last

The code of the IBGC, the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance, asks the board to devote time to the succession of the chief executive. The reason: "to mitigate risks, ensure the continuity of management and preserve the organization's value" (IBGC, 2023, item 3.11). Denmark recommends that a succession plan for the executive board be in place (Danish Recommendations). In Switzerland, the University of St. Gallen and UBS estimate that more than 100,000 family businesses will change generation by 2030 (HSG, 2026).

A study published in 2006 in the American Economic Review compared chief executive transitions. When the incoming chief executive was a relative of the previous one, of the founder or of a large shareholder, the company performed worse than those that promoted someone without that tie. The gap showed in operating profitability and in market value (Pérez-González, 2006). With data from Denmark, another study measured the effect of handing command to a family member: in those transitions, operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points. The loss is larger in fast-growing industries and in larger firms (Bennedsen et al., 2007).

The thesis gives succession a method without keeping the heir out: written criteria, prepared candidates, a transition with a date. The decision belongs to the partners or the board; the CVO's job is that it does not arrive as a surprise, nor as an automatic inheritance.

The seat becomes a bottleneck when it holds on to control or invades execution

The evidence against carries weight. Noam Wasserman, of Harvard Business School, studied 6,130 American startups. Each additional degree of founder control, controlling the board or holding the chief executive position, reduced the value of the company, on average, by 23.0% to 58.1%, depending on the measure and the method (Wasserman, 2014). They are not developers, but the warning applies: the vision seat can become the place where the founder keeps running everything, under another name.

Wasserman had already recorded that the share of founders who stay in command to the end "is extremely low" (HBS Working Knowledge, 2005). At St. Gallen, the researcher Zellweger names the difficulty: "Some people cannot let go of their life's work" (HSG, 2026).

The Menz and Scheef study brings another warning: having a chief strategy officer in the top team "does not significantly affect a firm's financial performance" (Menz & Scheef, 2014). The post, alone, delivers nothing. And the boundary does not hold itself: the Swedish code allows the board to decide "matters that are a part of day-to-day management" (Swedish Code). Even the Visionary/Integrator model, which separates a vision leader from a day-to-day integrator, is a consulting prescription, with no empirical study on the page that presents it (EOS Worldwide).

Bottleneck signal	What the evidence shows	Fix
The CVO approves decisions that do not change direction	The Swedish code allows the board to decide day-to-day matters; the boundary depends on design (Sweden)	Short, written list of direction exceptions
The founder becomes CVO to keep running the site	More founder control, less value (US); difficulty letting go of operations (Switzerland)	Mandate with a review date set by the partners
The seat exists, but nothing changes at the front line	The strategy post, alone, does not significantly change financial performance (S&P 500, study available in a Swiss archive)	Measure the wait for exceptions before and after
CVO and CEO disagree in front of the team	Without consensus at the top, renewing and executing drift apart (US)	Direction decided, recorded and defended by both

When creating the CVO seat does not pay off

First situation: decisions are still fast. One site at a time, few levels between the question and the answer, no work front stopped waiting for a decision. With no exception blocking the critical path, there is nothing to gain, and the seat would create the very layer it exists to avoid.

Second: the seat would serve so the founder does not let go of execution. If the CVO keeps approving purchases, measurements and site rescheduling, the title changes and the bottleneck stays.

Third: there is already an active board of directors that decides and reviews strategy from the proposals of the executive team, as the Belgian code asks (item 2.5). A seat beside it would create two voices on direction, unless the board delegates to it the preparation of direction, with a clear mandate.

The criterion for deciding is countable: listing the decisions of the last twelve months that stopped a critical front, noting how many weeks each one waited and separating those that changed direction from those that only changed the week. Few and fast: the seat can wait. Many: the cost already exists, in the order of magnitude of the calculation above.

Checklist: seven checks before creating or filling the CVO seat

1. Write down, on one page, what counts as a direction exception in your company and validate the list with the CEO and the partners.
2. Count the decisions that stopped a critical front in the last 12 months and how long each one waited, with the general coordinator and the site engineers.
3. Check whether the last five exceptions went up with a proposal and the cost of the alternatives, with the CEO.
4. Verify who is designated as administrator in the articles of association or bylaws, with the corporate lawyer.
5. Check that the specification, schedule and tolerance in buyer contracts change only by direction decision, with the legal team and the CEO.
6. Review the succession plan for the CEO and the key seats in light of item 3.11 of the IBGC code, with the partners or the board.
7. Set the review date for the CVO's mandate and what will be measured, such as the wait for exceptions and the use of the tolerance, with the partners.

Frequently asked questions

References (31)

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