The CAIO seat does not start with a longlist.
It starts with a brief.
Signed. Ninety days. Rights, stop, proof.
Without it you are shopping a title. With it you are hiring a bearer.
Christian Pobbig and Beyond Chiefs work from Hamburg on AI Executive Search in DACH. This page is the seat instrument — not a find-a-CAIO how-to and not a 100-day PortCo authority plan.
A signed brief for the CAIO seat.
It names what must be decided, stopped, and proven in the first ninety days.
It is not a job description.
It is not an onboarding calendar.
It is the operating instrument before you open the market.
If no one signs the brief, the mandate is not open yet.
Not “how to find a CAIO.”
Not the PE 100-day authority plan for portfolio companies.
Not mandate-brief-as-product and not board-brief-before-market as H1 clones.
One-line pointers are fine. The spine here is the 90-day seat brief for the CAIO.
Blur those boundaries and you buy the wrong product.
Rights: which yes-calls the CAIO owns in ninety days — and which stay elsewhere on purpose.
Stop: what they may kill without escalation theatre and without a silent line veto.
Proof: what the board will accept as evidence — measurable, dated, not slides.
Miss one axis and the title stays decorative.
The brief makes the axes public in the mandate — not only in the exit interview.
Because longlists without a brief substitute chemistry for judgment.
Because candidates without a brief import their own agenda.
Because boards without a brief say “still unclear” at day ninety — and burn the seat.
Because search without a brief is research, not a decision.
If the CAIO seat is real, retain the AI Executive Search mandate with a signed 90-day brief.
If you only posted a title, you are not search-ready.
No. Seat instrument before search. Onboarding comes after.
No. A JD markets. The brief is a signed mandate.
The CEO — or whoever owns the contested yes — not HR alone.
