Does a Company Need a Chief Engineer / Chief Software Architect / Chief Anything?

Interesting post by Scott Bellware on Toyota's Chief Engineer and the impact of the role on Toyota's planning and production.  With the recent talk of the new administration in the US appointing a CIO for the first time; it got me thinking about the importance of a single individual to the technical direction of an organization.  It's an interesting area for me as I spend a good amount of time speaking with Chiefs of all sorts and I work at a company that has a unique "Chief" position.

Before he left Microsoft, Bill Gates created the role of Chief Software Architect (way back in 2000 - time flies).  In 2006, he announced that he would phase out of an active role with the company and Ray Ozzie would take over the CSA role. Well, here we are at the end of 2008 and I wonder what difference having a CSA has made to Microsoft.  

To the public at large, most of what Mr. Ozzie does is internal to Microsoft and does not appear to have a direct affect on day-to-day operations.  He occasionally appears at key public venues (well, for the Microsoft-interested public) such as MIX and the Professional Developers Conference (PDC).  Notably, he usually announces very broad reaching and significant directions such as Surface, Silverlight, Live Services and most recently Azure (Uber Cloud Computing platform).  What is interesting about these announcements is that Mr. Ozzie is not just a mouthpiece for these initiatives but has actually provided some of the intellectual foundation and executive backing to bring these major efforts to fruition.  In that sense, he has been successful in marshalling the myriads of groups and projects within the company to bring about focused effort. 

At the end of the day that is what anyone in a "Chief" role does - provides focus and consolidation of effort on the most important things.  Sounds simple enough but in my albeit limited experience, incredibly difficult.  This is the essence of why you do need "a" Chief and not Chiefs.  Too many Chiefs quickly become a committee and serve as a bottleneck and impediment instead of the single point of focus and action.  Chiefs are owners and initiators.  They enable their staffs and departments to work with the confidence that what they do matters and if they are successful, all will benefit.  That's my view. What's yours?