What Have You Done for Me Lately?

The third year.

By now, you've gone through two annual performance reviews (good ones, if you've done everything right), and you’re really in the groove. You know the markets, the competition, the product, the organization and you've learned what levers to pull to get things done.

This is your most dangerous time. But within the danger, there is also opportunity, if you recognize and seize it.

Now’s the time to “get out there, try something and learn from it – you’ll make mistakes, but you must learn from each one. The metrics available today allow learning in a real-time manner that was never possible before,” says Sandra Zoratti, Global VP Marketing, Ricoh. “Avoid paralysis and fear about trying a new way.”

The risk is complacency on your part and boredom on the part of the rest of the organization: your team, your peers, and your boss. Let’s take them one at a time.

1. Your team. You've done everything right, weeding out the chaff, selecting new talent and providing everyone with challenging opportunities. But they've now been doing the same thing for two years, and are starting to get restless. The stars (like you) are thinking about their next move and the good performers are falling into a routine. If you’re not careful, you’ll find a team that is quietly becoming dysfunctional.

2. Your peers.  What was once unique is now mundane. The good news is that they've now learned what marketing really is, are asking better questions and starting to develop a marketing mindset to everything they do. But they’re also starting to ask “what have you done for me lately?”

3. Your boss. Your most difficult – or easiest – challenge. His or her world has changed in the last two years – the success you've helped create has both positives and negatives. Of course, your boss is delighted with the results, because that helps with the board. But the board is starting to ask what next? and wondering if s/he can take the company to the next level. S/he is, in turn, wondering the same about you.

Never forget, says Eric Fletcher, CMO, McGlinchey Stafford, that “relationships trump everything – science, metric frameworks – it about connecting relationships and leveraging them. Make sure you have regular, frequent in-depth dialog with the CEO, COO, CFO, the rest of the c-suite and the governing board. Most marketers get into trouble because they are operating out of an island.”

Next: Setting the Agenda

Where Do You Start?

The first 90 days.

“The first thing you should do is read, or re-read, the book The First 90 Days*,” says Nigel Dessau, CMO of Stratus Technology and ex-CMO of both AMD and StorageTek.  “In the first 30 days of any new job I've taken, I gather data, qualitative and quantitative. I’m not choosy, at first. I meet with as many people as I can, and then review every night for what I've learned. From that I come up with six focus areas, two of which are most likely going to be people and budget. Then I sit with the leadership team and discuss. And then I discuss with my marketing team, to get alignment. What ensues becomes my plan for the next several years, which is the average tenure of a CMO."

Let’s go to the source: “The actions you take during your first three months in a new job will largely determine whether you succeed or fail, ” writes Harvard’s Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days. “The stakes are obviously high. Failure in a new assignment can spell the end of a promising career.”

Sobering.

Luckily for us, Watkins has researched the success and failure of new executives and offers a checklist of things you need to do :

1. Promote yourself. No, don’t hire a publicist. Mentally accept that you've been promoted into a new position that will require different skills than what’s made you successful in the past.
2. Accelerate your learning. Go into learning overdrive – spend as much time as you can reading about markets, product, technologies, systems and structures, and especially the company culture and politics.
3. Match your strategy to the situation. Start-ups are quite different than product line turnarounds which are quite different from new market entry situations
4. Secure early wins. This may be the most important thing you can do: nothing succeeds like success. It builds personal credibility.
5. Negotiate success. Your new boss thinks you’re the right person for the job, but isn't totally sure yet. Schedule time, weekly, to go over your assessment of the situation, his or her expectations, reporting style and the resources you will have available.
6. Achieve alignment. With each promotion, you’ll find that you “do” less and have to “get more done.” The only way to achieve this is to align, or re-align, the structure with the strategy
7. Build your team. Evaluate the team early and, if necessary, make tough calls. You can’t afford to depend on non-performers.
8. Create coalitions. More important jobs increasingly depend on your ability to influence people who don’t report to you. Make them your allies, and you succeed. Make them your enemies, and you fail.
9. Keep your balance. You’ll be drinking from a fire hose – you’ll find that the demands on your time are more than there are hours in the day. Find ways to keep your perspective and don’t be rushed into making risky decisions.
10. Expedite everyone. Bosses, peers and especially direct reports – the quicker you can get everyone up to speed, the better your performance will be.

Even - or maybe especially - if you've been in your job for some time, this is sound advice. Take some time to mentally promote yourself into that next position and contemplate what it would take to succeed. Then, follow these steps as if you were already in the position.

You may get that promotion faster than you think.

Next: Day 91

*Watkins, Michael, The First 90 Days, Harvard Business School Press, 2003

You're Not an Island

Cultivating the best talent.

To accomplish your objectives, you’ll need to rely on your team, which requires a combination of recruiting, training and leadership. “Your team is what makes matters most,” says Kristin Hambleton, VP Marketing, Neolane Communications, now part of Adobe. "You’re not an island – you need collaboration and leadership.”

Successful marketing executives recruit the best people they can. 

Kimberly Clark CMO Tony Palmer says, “the smartest thing I did when I started was to go out and hire four or five of the best people I could find in the disciplines. They were people who had a lot of weight in terms of skill set and experience, and that helped enormously. I think that very early on, the organization saw them as a skill set that they didn't recognize, and they tended to therefore be invited in more.”*  Adds Tony Wells, CMO of ADT Security Services, “surround yourself with good people – hire people better than you.”

Then, they build their team’s capabilities. 

Most importantly, says Ted Rubin, Chief Social Marketing Officer of Collective Bias, “teach mid-level marketing execs to speak to the c-suite in a way they understand – learn to speak their language – talk to me about sales / conversion.” Says Wells, “always look to develop people – make it possible for them do the best work of their career.” And Bloomberg CMO Maureen McGuire says “development of people is a daily task…It’s about coaching people through the process, helping them to understand the business and what’s good or bad about the work that they've done at the moment.”**

Finally, leadership is critical. 

“Know yourself, your job, your people, their strengths and weaknesses, says Tony Wells, CMO ADT Security Services. There should always be something exciting going on. Create energy.” Unfortunately, says Karen Masullo, EVP Social Media of Firestorm, “many marketers who move into executive positions tell their teams what to do without soliciting their input – allow your team to help you. Avoid being dictatorial.”

The management consulting firm Hay Group suggests using a variety of leadership styles,*** noting that a poor leader uses a single style, effective leaders use at least four and superb leaders can use six, and know when to use them:

Allies, Agnostics and Antagonists

First Things First discussed the first of five key things the CMO must do well*, getting the marketing mandate right. 

The second is building meaningful relationships with functional and business leaders.

After the CEO, the most important constituents for the CMO are his or her peers. Senior leaders look to the CMO to be a thought leader on the businesses’ critical issues. They want the CMO to learn how other functions and businesses work and what their challenges are and be willing to engage them early in the development of marketing plans.

“I want my CMO to be sincere about enabling cross-functional success; he’s in a position to tear down walls. Get out of the office and spend time with customers, at the factory, attend the national sales meeting. Take an interest in other functions,” said the president of US sales for a consumer products company.**

“As much as possible, try to understand where they’re coming from and make them the hero. Come in humbly and say, ‘You make great things. I can help you tell the world about them. Let’s figure out how our skills are complementary,’” said Andy Berndt, Head of Google’s Creative Lab.***

This is going to require all the political and networking skills you've acquired over the years. You’ll find allies, agnostics and antagonists:

First Things First

Congrats! You're a Marketing Exec - Now What??? listed the five things SpencerStuart* identified that CMOs must do well:

• Get the marketing mandate right
• Build meaningful relationships with functional and business leaders
• Agree on how to measure success
• Collaborate with external partners
• Cultivate the best talent 

Let's take these one at a time.

Surviving in the Marketing Jungle

Marketing is about survival in a jungle that has no mercy, particularly for members of one of the least understood clans in the corporate world.

If you play the game well, you’ll get additional opportunities. Many companies now have Chief Revenue Officers, which formally combine sales and marketing. You could eventually get IT: Gartner research VP Laura McLellan* predicts that by 2017 CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. And you might even have a shot at the top position, as did James White who become the CEO Jamba Juice.

Based on interviews and research, those who just focus on "marketing" are less likely to succeed. The successful CMO needs to think act like the CEO of a business – your business is the business of "understanding, attracting, and keeping valuable customers."** You need to become the CEO of Marketing™.

Most Growth Programs Fail - Part II

Most growth programs fail because they require changes to strategy. And changes to strategy nearly always require changes to the organization: new tasks must be defined, new skills built, a new culture must be nourished and leadership must be aligned up and down the hierarchy. Inattention to these increases the odds that a promising strategy delivers disappointing results.

In addition, many companies aren’t fully aware of how far they must go to differentiate new products or offerings. Effecting these changes requires building commitment on the part of those charged with driving the growth initiative.

Building the necessary commitment begins with the creation of a collective understanding of changes in marketplace dynamics: evolution of customer defined value, technology changes, channel shifts, and new competitive strategies. It strengthens as the team jointly assesses and selects the opportunities, builds a robust strategy and identifies the necessary organizational changes. It solidifies as the team identifies the key elements of a go-to-market plan that creates the platform for sustained performance. And the commitment becomes action through follow-up monitoring.

Why I'll go back

Despite arriving on time for our reservation, we were told we had to wait. A bit annoying, since we could see a couple of open tables. The host then directed us to the bar, where the bartender, of course, asked if we wanted a cocktail, which we declined. Within the space of a minute, our anticipated pleasant evening was going downhill - I'm thinking typical restaurant trick, trying to eke out an extra couple of dollars from a patron. But then my attitude changed.

Oh brave new world: Re-imagining EVERYTHING

"After 244 years, Encyclopedia Brittanica announced the end of print editions in 2012," notes Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker in what businessinsider.com terms an "incredibly insightful presentation."

While you may already know this, and that Kindle is replacing books, Pinterest is replacing scrapbooks, NetFlix and YouTube are replacing Blockbuster and, one of my personal favorites, Yelp is replacing the Yellow Pages, did you know about:

My parents, who both grew up in the depression, instilled two values in me: hard work, and thrift. While we never felt we wanted for much growing up, there was never a lot of money to spend either, something we were blissfully unaware of. One thing I remember is mom cooking healthy dinners every night, using fresh ingredients bought daily from the supermarket. She was a good bargain hunter, and knew how to stretch her food dollar. We'd splurge occasionally on a hamburger out at the local A&W (remember those?), washed down with a root beer float.

Thus, I was struck by a vignette early on in the film Food, Inc., where a working family of four stops by a fast food restaurant for a dollar meal. The mother explains that because they are so busy, she doesn't really have time to cook, but she does want to make sure her children get a 'good' meal to start the day... She goes on to say that because they don't have a lot of money, they have to look for bargain ways to feed their family. But then we find that the father is suffering from diabetes, for which he is spending $200 a month on prescription medicine...

Cracking the matrix code

Hay Group's research on the Fortune Most Admired Companies shows that those who make the matrix work get results: better and faster decisions. The seemingly simple trick is getting managers to act in the best interests of the company as a whole, not just maximizing their own results.

But this has implications for jobs, rewards, behaviors, culture and structure. Most critical: command-and-control management styles must give way to collaboration and cooperation. To crack the matrix code, organizations must: