Everyone’s been whispering that dreaded word – recession – for at least a year. And now that we’ve experienced the second-largest U.S. bank failure in recent history with Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse, many aren’t bothering to whisper anymore. It’s all a bit too 2008. The trepidation is tangible. In a survey run by Nielsen IQ, 62% of global respondents feel like they’re living in a recession now, and 48% of these consumers expect this economic downturn to last for a year or more. Consumers and investors are afraid and so they’re both risk-averse; in a word, that’s how we got SVB’s demise. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, you’ll have to adapt to this changing consumer mindset in order to survive.

CX leadership brings some special challenges. If you’re a CFO, CMO or even a CEO, there is a more conventional way to exert leadership. If you’re a CX leader, there are too many different approaches to declare anything approaching a standard. So you have to look far and wide, pick your favorite leadership traits to emulate and then create your own roadmap.

I’ve heard from countless CX executives, both seasoned and new, about how much more successful they would be if they reported to their CEO and owned all of the resources needed to execute their strategy. This way of thinking is almost always a trap. There are scenarios where total control makes for a strong CX foundation. But being overly focused on reporting relationships and ownership of resources can lead you astray. Your CX program, given the wrong organization model, will either be suboptimal or — even worse — counterproductive.