C-Level Titles

Our management is defined in Management Work Group and is very different from classic, more hierarchical organizations. At VSHN, the Management acts as a Delegator for semi-autonomous, self-organizing teams. The Management has no direct influence on what happens in VSHN and mainly serves as an oversight and escalation function only, which can then bring up issues with the teams or other roles, but management can’t simply decide on their own. Read more in here about how VSHN works.

Please don’t use C-level titles at VSHN internally or proactively communicate them externally. We do not identify with these titles; they are not defined roles at VSHN, nor do they serve any function within our organization.

Signature Rights

Many VSHNeers, independent of their role (and especially C-level titles) might officially sign for VSHN, usually a "joint signature-at-two" is required. See commercial register.

If you need to name a C-level person

From experience, we know that for customers, partners, and the business world, it’s unfortunately sometimes tricky to avoid naming some C-level titles. Therefore, if after explaining how VSHN operates, an external party insists on knowing a C-title or when you have to sign as "C-level" on a contract, you might use one of the following VSHNeers.

Title	Possible VSHNeer	What it could mean	How it actually is
CEO (Chief Executive Officer)	Markus Speth, Marco Fretz	Represent VSHN to authorities, customers, at events, and the like.	While anyone might drive decisions, members from Management, People Ops, Culture or Strategist roles often do. Depending on what it is, anyone might represent VSHN externally.
COO (Chief Operations Officer)	Marco Fretz, Markus Speth	Represent the Operational Business and how we are organized.	Operations is self-organized in teams, with standardized constructs like most teams having a Scrum Master and Product Owner. The Culture role drives clarity around organizational structure, practices, and proactively helps to cultivate work culture.
CTO (Chief Technology Officer)	Tobias Brunner, Marco Fretz	Represent our products, tech-strategy, and tech-related decisions.	Technology decisions can be made by any team and are aligned via the Tech Alignment Work Group. More strategic decisions are driven by the Strategist role, and product level decisions and documentation are handled by product roles (like Product Manager or Product Owner).
Exception (for completeness): CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)	Daniel Hauswirth	-	Exception: this role actually exists in VSHN and is used internally and externally. We might rename this role at some point for consistency.

Title

Possible VSHNeer

What it could mean

How it actually is

CEO
(Chief Executive Officer)

Markus Speth, Marco Fretz

Represent VSHN to authorities, customers, at events, and the like.

While anyone might drive decisions, members from Management, People Ops, Culture or Strategist roles often do. Depending on what it is, anyone might represent VSHN externally.

COO
(Chief Operations Officer)

Marco Fretz, Markus Speth

Represent the Operational Business and how we are organized.

Operations is self-organized in teams, with standardized constructs like most teams having a Scrum Master and Product Owner. The Culture role drives clarity around organizational structure, practices, and proactively helps to cultivate work culture.

CTO
(Chief Technology Officer)

Tobias Brunner, Marco Fretz

Represent our products, tech-strategy, and tech-related decisions.

Technology decisions can be made by any team and are aligned via the Tech Alignment Work Group. More strategic decisions are driven by the Strategist role, and product level decisions and documentation are handled by product roles (like Product Manager or Product Owner).

Exception
(for completeness):
CISO
(Chief Information Security Officer)

Daniel Hauswirth

Exception: this role actually exists in VSHN and is used internally and externally. We might rename this role at some point for consistency.