Prince William and Princess Kate’s New CEO Hire Will \201cRuffle Feathers\201d Within the Firm’s Hierarchy

As Marie Claire reported yesterday, the Prince and Princess of Wales are looking to hire their own personal CEO rather than rely on private secretaries—a severe disruption to the Firm’s working order. Among other qualifications, the ideal candidate, per the job description, will have a “low ego,” be emotionally intelligent, and be “able to operate as a ‘servant’ leader, empowering the senior team.”

This hire is a bigger deal than it may seem on its face, especially in terms of the hierarchy within the Firm. In their effort to revamp the working core of the royal family, OK reports that William and Kate will “ruffle feathers,” and that it will take a certain type of individual to do this job: “Whoever this person is, they will have to be one tough cookie,” royal expert Charles Rae said. “They’ll be coming [at] it at a level of CEO and running it like a company.” 

William and Kate, OK reports, “are on a mission to streamline the British monarchy in time for William’s eventual accession to the throne.” (May it be in the far distant future.) This could be as long as 20 years from now, if King Charles’ lifespan is as long as his mother Queen Elizabeth’s; she died at 96 years old last year, and Charles is 74 currently.

That said, William and Kate are said to be laying the groundwork for their joint futures on the throne right now. “This is William and Kate setting out their stall for the future for when they take over the reins of the royal family,” Rae said.

And while Charles is well-known at this point for being a proponent of a “slimmed-down monarchy,” OK reports that “William and Kate wish to go even further with royal minimalism when they ascend the throne.” Most of these cost-cutting and trimming details, the outlet reports, will be seen within the numerous royal households that serve senior royals, doing away with “the pomp and pageantry that royalists expect to see,” OK reports.

“Britain’s royal court is still largely conducted as it was in the medieval era, with a bit less flummery and reverence as the modern era has taken hold,” the outlet reports. Both Charles and William wish to take the institution of the monarchy more firmly into the modern era “after decades of what they saw as stagnation under Queen Elizabeth II, whose motto was always, ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it,’” OK writes.

William and Kate’s plans for one CEO to steady the ship are already being hailed as “revolutionary” by those inside the Palace, who claim they are “overthrowing the traditional, hierarchical structure.”

Per The Daily Express, the CEO’s job description is unique: “‘Being emotionally intelligent’ and ‘having a low ego’ don’t seem to be commonly requested as qualities employers are looking for,” said Kate Palmer, human resources director at Peninsula (editor’s note: although maybe they should be). “Whether this will be something we see more of in the future, we will have to wait and see.”

Palmer continued that in the hiring process the couple need to tread carefully to ensure that “such requirements are not discriminatory,” adding “employers and hiring managers will also need to consider how they plan to assess whether an individual is, for example, ‘emotionally intelligent’ and of a ‘low ego’ given that these are subjective traits [and] styles of personality.”