Why Is It Hard for CMOs to Transform Their Teams
Any sort of transformation is disruptive to business-as-usual (BAU) and any disruption to BAU also means that productivity is hampered. Amidst trying to meet business and marketing goals, targets and objectives, CMOs and their teams often find it hard to simply adhere to BAU and transform concurrently, and you cannot blame them.
CEOs and COOs simply have to first understand that the transformation journey is not a simple one where you can see the end of the tunnel right from the beginning of where you start. It’s more like a long winding road with hoops, turns and circles, depending on the complexity of the problems you are trying to unpack, the processes you need to overhaul to the skillset and mindsets of the people you need to enhance and change.
It throws a spanner into the works and takes time away from the CMOs and their one-downs to even try and formulate a plan swiftly while still carrying the major decisions they need to make to deliver their plans on time. Often times, they simply don’t know where or how to start without putting a halt to certain initiatives, campaigns or programs.
It is also a case of over familiarity and attachment to current processes, tools and scope of work that can build up an inertia for change of any sort that calls for an overhaul of the marketing department. While some companies choose to refresh their CMO leadership team, they find themselves in an even worse-off situation.
Why you may ask. Well, if you look at it objectively, a new CMO as in any new leadership person who just joins an organization will need to learn about the culture, processes, team capabilities from scratch. That is the so-called teething or onboarding period where the old team is likely to view the new leadership with suspicion and is less open to sharing information on how things actually work for fear of judgment.
Worse, you expect the CMO to already have a plan on how to transform while trying to settle into the organization without knowing the ins and outs of how things work. This journey itself will take at least 9 months to a year to complete before transformation can actually take place. It definitely cannot be a cookie-cutter approach that the CMO brings and applies from their previous company as every company is unique. Also, not all CMOs even have that approach they can rely on, which means even more time trying to plan or learn it from scratch.
In my experience working with various leadership and organizational structures, often I find that as marketing leaders, we are not given a lot of leeway and time to transform, resulting in having to look at quick and cheap wins, often at the expanse of people. This is not ideal nor is it sustainable even if you see initial positive results in terms of either business or marketing returns. These results are often not sustainable for longer term growth and retention of their key talents.
This is simply because good people who are working for something beyond just a pay check would not want to be associated with such an organizational culture. And that culture is often changed for the worse or established as a result of the hasty changes to be made.
It might be worth considering having independent third parties partnering with you and your CMO to help alleviate some of the pressure of planning for that change, so they can still focus 100% on the BAU to keep the engine running on full tank. After all, that is what you are paying your CMO for and not simply to do a once-off transformation. In other words, think bigger picture and longer term.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Leading Others, Managing Self
I believe that leadership is something that is attributed by others and not something that you bestowed upon yourself. Management on the other hand is given as a result of your title and official responsibility but leadership is earned and not given.
Having spent the last two decades both being managed under various types of leaders and managing others, I can safely say I have a pretty clear idea of the type of leadership that works for me. Alongside that, I also have a good idea of the type of leader I aspire to be.
I believe that leadership is something that is attributed by others and not something that you bestowed upon yourself. Management on the other hand is given as a result of your title and official responsibility but leadership is earned and not given.
I have met several outstanding managers who are inspiring leaders that command respect no matter where they go and what they do.
On deeper reflection, I have narrowed down to the following admirable traits that serve as a personal guide to me:
Knowing what you want and how to get it
Good leaders are decisive, confident in their decisions and not easily influenced and swayed without good and sound reasoning. They don’t let their emotions get the better of them, especially in times of extreme stress and pressure. Eagle-eyed in their target and end goal, they know the path to victory and though the course might change along the way, the end goal is crystal clear once their minds are made up.
Instead, they inspire others and ignite excitement in them to follow their vision and work jointly in their own ways to achieve success.
Good decisions are not always popular
If they are in only to be popular, they will never be a convincing leader that does the right thing. Leadership is not meant to be a popularity contest. The best leaders often make the most difficult and unpopular decisions if these are deemed to be for the greater good in the long run.
They are not afraid to face up to the judgment of the people especially those who don’t see the benefit of it from the onset. They know they cannot please everyone and their purpose is not to please everyone but to do what is right.
Empowerment, trust and impartiality
Everyone has a place and a role to fulfil within the organization in accordance to their expertise and talent. Good leaders know and appreciate that. They know they are not supposed to know everything and be able to do everything themselves. Instead, they empower and trust the people working with them to do exactly that and giving advice where needed along the way.
Importantly, they don’t let the politics get in the way of empowering and disempowering people to take on certain responsibilities for the common goal they set out to achieve. Micromanagement and favouritism have no place in good leadership.
Admitting to your own fallacies
We are not meant to be saints and good leaders know that. They don’t let their egos get in the way of admitting to their mistakes when certain wrong decisions have been made. Instead, they bite the bullet like everyone else, are not afraid to apologize and own up to it instead of throwing their employees under the bus.
Good leaders know as well that when mistakes are made, there is no time for finger pointing. They don’t get lost in their mistakes and wallow in them for too long. Instead, they quickly pivot to the right course of action, taking recommendations as well where needed from the people they have empowered.
Having your life together
It’s not about having the perfect life, if there is such a thing but keeping how you manage it in check. Everyone has their own issues to sort through but what’s more important is how you deal with your personal versus professional life.
Good leaders are not emotional rollercoasters and by that it doesn’t mean to be a cold and heartless person. Instead, it is to be able to compartmentalize and segregate the issues and whatever emotions you’re facing at the home front and the work front.
An easy way to do a sound check on yourself is when you observe people walking on tip toes around you and do ‘weather checks’ before they speak to you.
Being connected and seeing the bigger picture
Interpersonal connection doesn’t come naturally to most people. This has to do with the level of connectivity you have with the team on the ground and understanding their challenges and issues faced.
It’s only then that you can see the bigger picture of how it works and how your team can put their skills and talent to good use collectively. It involves looking beyond their background, what they have done on the surface and actually understanding them as a person, how they work and mentoring them to be better.
Good leaders should not find themselves so far removed from the ground that they no longer see the complete picture but a blurry mirage that will soon be out of their grasp of reality.
Personally good leaders and managers should not be mutually exclusive but the former is a lot harder to achieve. There is no golden rulebook or educational pathway to being a good leader.
Some people do have certain personality traits that put them in a more favourable position then others but all in all, it comes as part of our experience on the field and willingness to learn, adapt and improve.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Who rules - Preference or Performance Marketing?
Companies who are still keeping two separate team strategies between performance and preference marketing are setting themselves up for longer term failure
Such companies are failing to connect the dots between full funnel marketing and over simplifying the consumer decision making process and mindset.
This is especially in the digital ad space where borders are blurred or non-existent and privacy settings no longer allow for precision targeting the way we desire.
Preference and performance simply should go hand in hand as end day, we don’t simply blow marketing dollars for the sake of it. What’s awareness to someone is consideration to another and conversion to someone else, depending on the decision making journey your customer sits in relation to the product or service and your company.
This is certainly not that new, when I went through the Google certification course back in 2019 but am still surprised that some are only talking about this in recent years.
What’s more shocking is the way some companies are still insisting on measuring marketing returns on investment by not having attribution beyond vanity impressions, page views and clicks on pretext that it’s just for awareness. On the other end of the spectrum is insisting that if a certain ad doesn’t result in immediate conversion, then it’s a failed campaign on pretext it’s for performance.
Whatever happened to looking at the funnel, who you really are trying to target, where in the decision making funnel they are at, how compelling is whatever you are offering, and ensure you are connecting the dots on your messaging in different formats, in order to determine the right metrics to measure at each touchpoint?
Example – this week, you have an ad talking about how xx product will help solve xx issue that customers face today. A few days later, you have another ad referring to the same product promoted on a site that your target customers frequent. A few days later, you serve up another ad that has a tactical offer with a buy by xx date.
Companies who know who they are targeting and who are responding to their ads versus those who aren’t, will create segmented lists that differentiate the two. They will use one for remarketing with differentiated messaging to help catch their target customers along the funnel with the above messaging and offer so they maximize their media budget. This process should ideally be automated.
Another critical thing to do is to try to get target customers to sign up and start a relationship with you, by giving them reason to of course through insights, tips or deals that matter to them, especially critical with the sunsetting of cookies.
This goes hand in hand with understanding their digital footprint so you have a multi-dimensional view of your target customers as real people with interests, preferences and needs, beyond outdated attributes like age.
All in all, companies need to invest in the full funnel and have different measurements for each stage of the funnel.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Sandwiched Leadership
The majority of us who have been working for at least two decades and grown into people management roles can probably identify with what I’m about to say.
Not all of us are able to move into the C-Suite level at this point, meaning the bulk of us would be sitting somewhere in mid to upper mid management with direct and indirect reports.
Concurrently, we would also have both direct and indirect managers hovering above us and around us.
This makes us a sandwiched leadership as we constantly need to think about upwards and downwards management and best ways to manage both without tipping that intricate balance.
Team management is not something for everyone nor does having the title automatically makes you a ‘real’ manager.
Having been in roles where I have inherited teams and grown teams from scratch, each has its own unique challenges but also satisfaction when the team flourishes over time.
Team management is also not about micromanaging or throwing them into the pits and leaving them to their own demise. Again, it’s a fine line as it depends as well between individuals. One man’s meat is another man’s poison as we say.
It’s also not about talking down or talking up for that matter but about paving the way to enable your team’s success while managing your bosses’ expectations and enabling their own success.
We are not expected to know everything and be a specialist in every single area that we’re managing but rather, we need to have the strategic view, forward looking vision and appreciation of the ground up challenges and pitfalls to be addressed.
The majority of our time is spent anticipating issues and identifying ways to prevent or address them. We also need to balance the dynamics of the team’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, chemistry and expectations towards each other. The last part is simply shielding them from the upper management’s own expectations, pressures and politics so they can function seamlessly.
It’s not a walk in the park and one thing at least to me for sure is that one can never effectively lead a team to succeed without genuinely caring for them as people.
With that said, I think the sandwiched managers have it the hardest and it’s also not surprising that many have given up, especially when they don’t get the appreciation or support needed from their managers as well as their own teams.
Some simply decided to go back to being individual contributors while others might decide to just venture out to smaller companies where they can be the top management instead with a more manageable leadership structure.
There’s no right or wrong but companies who truly cherish talent and their people should pay more attention to the sandwiched managers before it’s too late.
In my upcoming post(s), I’ll highlight a few key challenges facing sandwiched managers, the impact they have on business continuity and culture, as well as how companies can better support them.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Dying Empathetic Leadership
Empathy is something not every senior management or leader has unfortunately and it’s very telling in their behind-the-scenes speech and actions.
In all my years of working, I have come across very few truly empathetic leaders who are genuine in their treatment of their employees and customers.
Some I wish I can work with them longer when I choose to move on for other reasons as I know they would have taught me a lot more than I know now in terms of thinking, doing and communicating with empathy.
Empathy is something not every senior management or leader has unfortunately and it’s very telling in their behind-the-scenes speech and actions.
It’s undervalued simply because leaders don’t really get rated on their ability to connect with their employees and treat them with empathy.
I have witnessed many failures in terms of leaders in 1) not communicating emphatically to their people, 2) not showing true empathy in trying to understand the challenges faced by their workforce and 3) not listening with empathy when their employees provide feedback through forums.
It ends up being lip service or more trying to appear to do what is expected of them to look good and not because they genuinely care.
Classic examples are when there are organizational layoffs or restructuring.
The onset of how decisions are made have nothing to do with empathy but rather the bottom line of cost, profitability and returns.
That is why things never really change for the better in the longer term for most organizations and their leaders that make decisions without empathy.
Over the years, I have been privy to how such decisions are made, sometimes callously and without even sound logic. Rather, it’s more a stop-gap and band-aid approach where true impact on the people are not even considered in the decision making process.
What is worse though is the way such changes are communicated or not communicated to the workforce.
They talk about stock prices, shareholders equity and customers but forget their employees, the backbone of the company carrying that mission on their shoulders and believing in the promises made during the town halls, leadership emails and pep talks.
Poorly worded communications, which is as clear as mud and clueless management sitting around trying to find the right things to say or lend some insights to their team doesn’t help either.
Good, solid, reliable and empathetic corporate communications is a dying art in this sense.
For any self respecting CEO, my advice is to at least make sure you have a solid and empathetic communications advisor if you, yourself are not empathetic by nature.
Empathy might not bring you immediate revenue but it will have longer term benefits to the organization as you will make decisions that actually solve problems for both your customers and employees for the longer term.
Less attrition, less churn and more sustainable growth.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.