- Cover Story: The New Value Equation
- Expert Corner: Insights from the Industry Leaders on Redefining the Value Equation
- Executive Movements: Transitions and Pivots
- Career Development Advice: Your Functional Expertise Got You Here. Enterprise Thinking Will Get You Further.
View From The Top
Rajesh Khanna,
President,
Vantedge Search
As markets become more selective, the question facing organizations is no longer only whether they can offer quality, scale, or competitive pricing. It is whether customers, boards, and stakeholders can clearly understand why a choice is worth making. This edition of The Vantedge Point examines that shift through the lens of the new value equation. Buyers are not simply becoming more cost-conscious; they are becoming more deliberate. In response, companies must move beyond discounting and build propositions that are credible, measurable, and commercially sustainable.
For leadership teams, this has important implications. Value can no longer be defined by one function alone. Finance, product, marketing, operations, sales, and technology each shape a different part of what customers ultimately experience and justify. The leaders who will matter most are those who can connect these perspectives without allowing any single metric to dominate the conversation. As this issue explores, the next leadership equation will be defined by enterprise range, integrative judgment, and the ability to keep answering a deceptively simple question: why is this worth it?
The New Value Equation
For decades, business strategy rested on a relatively stable assumption: create a better product, build a trusted brand, price it competitively, and customers would respond. The mechanics varied by industry, but the logic rarely did. Companies created value; markets rewarded it.
The logic is under pressure.
Not because customers value brands less. Nor because quality has become irrelevant. Rather, the conditions under which people assign value have fundamentally changed. Persistent inflation, economic uncertainty, and greater financial scrutiny have altered the psychology of purchasing. Buyers have not become irrational. They have become more deliberate.
Consumers are not simply spending less; they are demanding stronger justification for every purchase they choose to make. The same pattern is emerging in boardrooms. Procurement teams ask harder questions. CFOs scrutinize technology investments more closely. Capital is still available, but conviction has become more expensive.
This is where many organizations misread the moment.
The instinctive response is to treat affordability as the problem. Discounts increase. Promotions multiply. Prices are adjusted in the hope that demand will follow. Sometimes it does. Often, it comes at the expense of margins, brand equity, or both.
The companies navigating this environment more successfully appear to be solving a different problem altogether.
They are not asking, “How do we become cheaper? “They are asking, “How do we become easier to justify?”
This is a profoundly different strategic question. It shifts the conversation from price to value. And value is rarely determined by price alone.
Value can mean flexibility. It can mean predictable outcomes. It can mean transparency. It can mean convenience, accessibility, confidence, or reduced risk. The common thread is not cost. It is the customer’s ability to explain—to themselves or to others—why choosing one solution makes more sense than another.
Seen through this lens, pricing stops being a financial mechanism and becomes a strategic language.
Every pricing decision communicates something. Premium pricing signals confidence and differentiation. Flexible pricing signals accessibility. Outcome-based pricing signals accountability. Even the decision to maintain prices sends a message about where an organization believes its value resides.
This is why pricing can no longer belong to one function.
Marketing shapes perceived value. Product defines delivered value. Operations determine the cost of creating it. Finance determines whether it is sustainable. Sales tests it in the market. Leadership aligns these perspectives into a proposition customers believe is worth paying for.
There is a leadership implication here that is easy to underestimate. When the basis of value changes, the capabilities required to create it change too. A CFO can no longer evaluate a decision only through margin and return; a commercial leader cannot pursue growth without understanding the economics required to sustain it; a technology leader has to connect investment to outcomes customers and the business can recognize; and a CEO has to reconcile all of these perspectives without allowing one to dominate the others. What is becoming more valuable, therefore, is not simply broader experience, but integrative judgement: the ability to see how a decision in one part of the enterprise changes the value created—or destroyed—somewhere else. That is a harder leadership muscle to build because it is developed across boundaries, not within them.
For boards, this should raise a more consequential question: are we still defining leadership roles around the capabilities that made someone successful yesterday, or around the problems they will have to solve tomorrow? A strong functional track record remains important, but it tells only part of the story. When assessing, developing or appointing CXOs, boards increasingly need to test for evidence of enterprise range: Has this leader made decisions beyond the protection of their own function? Can they hold customer value and commercial discipline in the same frame? Can they navigate competing priorities without defaulting to the metric they know best? Can they bring other executives with them when the answer requires shared ownership rather than functional control? In a market where customers are continually reassessing what deserves their money, companies may need to reassess what deserves a seat at the leadership table. A new value equation ultimately demands a new leadership equation.
The organizations that address this shift successfully will not necessarily be those that compete hardest on price, or even those with the strongest brands. They will be the ones whose leaders can understand what customers value as that definition changes—and align the enterprise around delivering it in a way that is credible, differentiated and commercially sustainable.
That is what makes the new value equation a moving target. What customers consider worth paying for will continue to change; the harder task for leadership is ensuring that the organization can change with it. Value, in other words, is no longer something leaders can define once and defend. It has to be continually understood, tested and recreated.
Ultimately, the market will keep asking the same deceptively simple question:
“Why is this worth it?”
The leadership question is whether the people at the top can keep finding a compelling answer.
For more information on Vantedge Search, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.
Expert's Corner –
What's Trending?
Insights from the Industry Leaders on Redefining the Value Equation
The new value equation is playing out differently across industries, but the underlying challenge is the same: how do you make value easier to see, measure and justify? These three CFO perspectives show how leaders are responding: from creating greater flexibility for consumers, to tying price more directly to outcomes, to bringing finance deeper into pricing decisions.
John Murphy, President and CFO of Coca-Cola
Murphy offers a more nuanced view of consumer resilience, emphasizing that purchasing power is not holding up equally across income groups. He points specifically to segments under pressure and argues that Coca-Cola has a choice about whether to remain relevant to them, noting that some consumers simply do not have the purchasing power. That perspective is reflected in Coca-Cola’s use of different pack sizes, formats and price points, providing lower-cost options for budget-conscious consumers while continuing to offer premium formats to those willing to trade up.
Patrick Villanova, CFO of BlackLine
Villanova brings the buyer’s perspective to the new value equation: for finance leaders, AI spend needs to be predictable and connected to outcomes they can measure. He argues that token-based pricing makes that difficult because CFOs are accountable to budgets and increasingly expected to demonstrate ROI. BlackLine’s response is outcome-based pricing, where customers pay for a defined result—such as a number of automated reconciliations—rather than units of AI consumption. Villanova expects this approach to become more common as AI adoption grows, putting greater emphasis on whether the value being delivered can be clearly measured and justified.
Georgi Nikolov, CFO of Dreamix
Nikolov argues that pricing improves when finance enters the conversation before deals are made, bringing visibility into delivery costs, margins and profitability alongside the commercial team’s understanding of clients and market conditions. From his experience, pricing without that complete picture can erode margins in either direction—through unnecessary discounting or by pushing rates where competitors are actively competing on price. His approach is not for finance to take pricing away from commercial teams, but for both to work from shared data so that pricing decisions reflect client dynamics, market conditions and actual delivery costs.
Executive Movements:
Leadership Transitions & Strategic Pivots
CXO Movements
B&G Foods
B&G Foods has appointed Robert “Rob” D. Mills as President and CEO, succeeding Kenneth C. “Casey” Keller, who retired after five years in the role. A B&G Foods director since 2018, Mills joins from Tractor Supply Company, where he most recently served as Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, Digital and Pet Services. He takes the helm as B&G Foods focuses on reshaping its portfolio, improving margins and cash flow, reducing leverage and accelerating growth, with digital, data, technology and AI among the capabilities Mills intends to bring to the company’s transformation.
Source: B&G Foods Announces Retirement of CEO and Selection of Successor
Matthews International Corporation
Matthews International has appointed Michael J. Whitehead as President and CEO, succeeding Joseph C. Bartolacci, who is retiring after more than two decades of leadership. Whitehead joins from Lincoln Electric, where he most recently led its $2.5 billion Americas Welding business and previously grew its automation, cutting and additive solutions business to over $1 billion in revenue. His appointment brings deep experience in industrial technology, innovation and operations as Matthews looks to sharpen its strategic focus, strengthen execution and drive its next phase of growth.
ConocoPhillips
ConocoPhillips has named CFO and EVP of Strategy and Commercial Andy O’Brien as President and CEO, succeeding Ryan Lance, who will transition to Executive Chair after 14 years as CEO. A company veteran since 1997, O’Brien has held leadership roles spanning finance, strategy, international operations, LNG and M&A. Konnie Haynes-Welsh will step up from VP, Finance and Controller to CFO, marking a coordinated internal succession designed to maintain strategic continuity while advancing the company’s focus on disciplined execution, free cash flow growth and shareholder returns.
Conagra Brands
Conagra Brands has appointed Amy Held as Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, a newly created role combining oversight of Human Resources and Corporate Communications with chief of staff responsibilities. Held joins from The Simply Good Foods Company, where she served as Chief Human Resources Officer, and previously held senior transformation roles at J.M. Smucker. The appointment reflects Conagra’s move to streamline key corporate functions under unified leadership, with an emphasis on organizational simplicity and accountability.
Source: Conagra Brands Appoints Amy Held as Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer
Emerson
Emerson has appointed Rudy Sengupta as Senior Vice President, Chief Technology and AI Officer, succeeding Peter Zornio, who will retire at year-end after two decades with the company. Sengupta, currently VP and General Manager of Test and Analytics Software, joined Emerson through its acquisition of NI and has led initiatives across software, AI and data analytics. His appointment reinforces Emerson’s focus on AI-enabled automation and advancing its technology strategy toward autonomous operations.
Source: Emerson Appoints Rudy Sengupta as Senior Vice President, Chief Technology and AI Officer
AGCO Corporation
AGCO has realigned its leadership to support the growth of its precision agriculture business, naming former CFO Damon Audia as President of PTx & Corporate Strategy. Indira Agarwal, previously Chief Accounting Officer, succeeds Audia as Senior Vice President and CFO. The changes bring corporate strategy and transformation alongside PTx, which AGCO identifies as a key growth lever, while elevating Agarwal as the company continues its focus on efficiency, profitability and strategic M&A.
Source: AGCO Aligns Leadership to Advance PTx™ Growth Strategy
Steel Dynamics
Steel Dynamics has named longtime CFO Theresa E. Wagler as President and CEO, effective January 1, 2027, succeeding co-founder Mark D. Millett, who will transition to Executive Chairman. Wagler, with the company since 1998, has played a central role in its strategy, growth and capital allocation. The succession forms part of a broader leadership realignment that includes a new Chief Technology Officer role and expanded operating responsibilities, positioning the company for continued growth, innovation and decarbonization.
Best Buy
Best Buy has appointed Anne Bramman as Executive Vice President and CFO, effective August 19. Bramman, most recently Chief Financial and Growth Officer at Circana, brings more than 30 years of experience across finance, operations, strategy and transformation, including previous CFO roles at Nordstrom, Avery Dennison and Carnival Cruise Line. She joins as Best Buy undergoes a broader leadership transition, partnering with incoming CEO Jason Bonfig, who will succeed Corie Barry on November 1.
Source: Best Buy appoints Anne Bramman as Chief Financial Officer
CarMax
CarMax has announced that Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and People Officer Diane Cafritz will leave the company at the end of 2026. Cafritz will subsequently serve as a consultant to CarMax through June 2027, providing continuity beyond her departure. The arrangement extends her involvement during the transition while allowing the company to retain access to her experience and institutional knowledge.
Source: CarMax announces leadership transition and consulting arrangement – The Globe and Mail
CDW
CDW has announced that CFO Albert J. Miralles will retire in 2027 after five years in the role and a 35-year career. Miralles will remain CFO while the company searches for a successor and will subsequently serve in an advisory capacity to support the transition. His tenure has included helping shape CDW’s transformation and growth strategy, with the company emphasizing an orderly succession and continuity of leadership.
Source: CDW Announces CFO Transition
W.W. Grainger
W.W. Grainger has appointed Laurie R. Thomson as interim CFO, effective September 5, following the resignation of Deidra C. Merriwether to pursue another opportunity. A longtime Grainger executive, Thomson currently serves as Vice President, Controller and principal accounting officer, and has held senior roles across finance and internal audit since joining the company in 2008. Grainger has begun a search for a permanent CFO, with Thomson continuing her Controller responsibilities in the interim.
Source: W.W. Grainger (GWW) Announces CFO Transition: Deidra Merriwether
CACI International
CACI International has appointed Marcie Small as Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, succeeding Angie Combs, who has retired after more than seven years with the company. A 15-year CACI veteran, Small most recently served as Senior Vice President of Talent Acquisition and Growth. Her appointment builds on her work modernizing CACI’s talent strategy, leadership development and workforce capabilities to support the company’s long-term growth.
Source: CACI Names Marcie Small Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
V2X
V2X has announced the resignation of Senior Vice President and Chief Growth Officer Dr. L. Roger Mason, Jr., effective August 7, 2026. Mason has also stepped down from all positions held across the company’s subsidiaries. He is leaving V2X to serve as Director of the National Reconnaissance Office.
Source: V2X announces resignation of chief growth officer L. Roger Mason, Jr. By Investing.com
NVE Corporation
NVE Corporation has appointed Peter G. Eames, Ph.D., as President and CEO, succeeding Daniel A. Baker, Ph.D., who is retiring after leading the company’s evolution into a provider of advanced spintronics-based products. Eames, with NVE since 2003, most recently served as Vice President of Advanced Technology, leading R&D, production expansions and major capital investments. Subject to shareholder approval, Baker will remain as Chairman, Eames will join the Board, and the Board will expand from five to seven directors.
Source: NVEC – NVE Corp. | News | OTC Markets
U.S. Premium Beef
U.S. Premium Beef has appointed Jim Sellers as CEO-elect, succeeding Stan Linville, who will retire on December 26, 2026, after leading the company as CEO since 2013. Sellers joins from Land O’Lakes, where he most recently served as Director of Demand Development for the beef value chain. He brings extensive industry experience, including more than 20 years at Tyson Fresh Meats in sales leadership roles, as USPB prepares for its next chapter of growth.
Source: Stan Linville to retire as CEO of U.S. Premium Beef
Newmark Group
Newmark Group has announced that Barry Gosin will step down as CEO on December 31, 2026, after nearly five decades of leadership. He will remain Chairman of Newmark & Company Real Estate, the group’s operating company, to support the leadership transition and will continue in that role through 2029. Newmark’s Board expects to name a new CEO by year-end as the commercial real estate firm prepares for its next phase of growth.
Target
Target has appointed Chandhu Nair as its first Chief AI Officer, effective August 24, as the retailer increases its focus on AI across the enterprise. Nair joins from Lowe’s, where he most recently served as Senior Vice President of Stores, Data, AI and Innovation. Target has also promoted Purvi Shah to Senior Vice President of User Experience, bringing AI and UX leadership closer together as part of its broader strategy to modernize the customer experience and revive growth.
Source: Target taps Lowe’s executive as first chief AI officer | Retail Dive
Sandisk
Greg Kim has joined Sandisk as Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, bringing more than two decades of cybersecurity, technology and semiconductor industry experience. He joins after a 22-year career at Skyworks Solutions, where he most recently served as Interim CIO alongside his role as Vice President, Global CISO & IT Operations. His experience spans enterprise cybersecurity, AI security, infrastructure modernization and technology governance, as AI drives new demands across data infrastructure, memory and storage technologies.
Insights: Inferring the why
These movements tell us who is stepping in, stepping up or stepping aside. They also reveal something more interesting: companies are rethinking the shape of leadership itself. The signal is not simply which capabilities are in demand, but how roles are being redesigned, combined and transitioned to meet a different set of business challenges.
- The C-suite is becoming a portfolio of capabilities, not a fixed set of jobs
The interesting signal in the new, combined and expanded mandates is that companies appear increasingly willing to redesign the job around the problem rather than fill a conventional vacancy. The implication is significant: the future C-suite may be less standardized, with its composition changing according to the few enterprise problems that matter most at a particular moment. - Companies may be buying transformation through people rather than programs
Several appointments bring a capability associated with one part of a leader’s career—technology, automation, digital, growth, transformation—into a much broader enterprise mandate. Rather than launching another transformation office, companies appear to be embedding the desired change in the authority of the person running the business. Transformation becomes less something the organization does and more something leadership is selected for. - The distinction between ‘operator’ and ‘transformer’ is disappearing
The movements repeatedly favor profiles that combine operating experience with a change capability. That suggests companies may no longer believe transformation can sit alongside the core business while operators run today’s machine. The emerging expectation is to change the machine while running it—making transformation part of operational competence rather than a separate leadership specialty. - Organizational seams are becoming a board-level concern
When companies combine functions or deliberately place strategy, technology, people and operations closer together, they are implicitly acknowledging that value is often lost between functions rather than within them. The next productivity frontier may therefore be organizational: reducing the hand-offs, competing priorities and blurred accountability that prevent individually capable functions from producing an equally capable enterprise. - The clean-break model of succession appears to be weakening
The number of outgoing leaders retained as chairs, advisers or consultants suggests an interesting paradox: companies want new leadership but are increasingly reluctant to accept the knowledge loss that traditionally comes with it. Succession is becoming an overlap rather than a handover. That could reflect how much corporate value now resides in relationships, context and institutional judgement that cannot be transferred through process alone. - Internal succession may be becoming evidence of organizational health, not conservatism
Historically, an external appointment could signal ambition while an internal one signaled continuity. These movements complicate that assumption. When companies can move leaders across finance, technology, R&D, talent and operations into enterprise roles, the ability to appoint from within becomes evidence that leadership capability has compounded inside the organization. The more interesting question may no longer be “internal or external?” but “did the company build the capability it now needs—or does it have to buy it?”
The more interesting inference is that companies are not merely changing who leads; they are becoming more fluid about what leadership itself should look like. Roles are being reshaped around problems, transformation is being embedded into operating authority, and succession is being designed to preserve accumulated capability. The org chart is starting to behave less like a permanent structure and more like a strategic instrument.
Your Functional Expertise Got You Here. Enterprise Thinking Will Get You Further.
If value is becoming the defining competitive advantage, then creating it can no longer be the responsibility of a single function. The most successful organizations are redesigning how finance, sales, marketing, operations, and technology work together to solve business problems. The same shift is redefining executive careers. Functional expertise remains the foundation of leadership, but enterprise thinking is increasingly what separates executives who lead departments from those who lead organizations.
- Understand How Value Is Created
Don’t limit your perspective to your own function. Learn how revenue is generated, costs are managed, customers are acquired, products are developed, and capital is allocated. Enterprise leaders understand the entire value chain—not just the part they manage.
- Speak the Language of Every Function
The ability to translate between finance, operations, technology, marketing, and commercial teams is becoming a strategic advantage. Leaders who can bridge these perspectives reduce friction, accelerate decisions, and build stronger organizational alignment.
- Look Beyond Optimization
Improving your department is expected. Improving how departments work together is leadership. Seek opportunities to remove organizational bottlenecks rather than simply improving functional performance.
- Make Decisions Through an Enterprise Lens
Every major decision creates winners and trade-offs. Before recommending a course of action, consider its impact on customers, profitability, operational capability, and long-term strategy. The wider your perspective, the stronger your judgement.
- Build a Reputation for Creating Business Value
The executives who rise fastest are rarely those known as the best marketer, the strongest operator, or the smartest financier. They are the ones trusted to solve enterprise-wide challenges because they consistently put the business ahead of the function.
Career Takeaway
The next generation of C-suite leaders will not be defined by the depth of their functional expertise alone. They will be recognized for their ability to connect disciplines, align competing priorities, and create value across the enterprise. In an increasingly interconnected business environment, seeing the whole organization is becoming as important as mastering one part of it.