Career Success Factors of Marketing Leaders 1 …...Career Success Factors of Marketing Leaders 2 ABSTRACT “The marketing manager must have the attitude of a purchasing agent, an

Career Success Factors of Marketing Leaders 1

Career Success Factors of Leaders in the Corporate Marketing Function

By

Thomas Barta

Executive Masters in Consulting and Coaching for Change

INSEAD Business School

May 22, 2013


ABSTRACT

“The marketing manager must have the attitude of a purchasing agent,

an investor, and a horse-trader all at the same time, if he is ever to achieve

the overall control that marketing operations so urgently need” (Cox, 1957).

Today, the overall control that Cox aspired to seems as far away as ever for

marketing leaders. Many experience their role to be at the periphery of

organizations. The marketing position is often described as a “revolving door”

with a disproportionate churn of leaders.

This study, perhaps the largest of its kind to date, examines current

career success of marketing leaders and tries to understand leadership

behaviors associated with career progress in a marketing role. In analyzing

the profiles of over 12,000 leaders, the study confirms the problem: marketing

leaders are indeed enjoying less career progress compared with their peers.

Superiors believe marketing leaders don’t excel at building high performing

teams, don’t create sufficient business alignment, and don’t stand out for

innovation and transformational impact. In a way, marketing leaders are

struggling in both the creative (innovative) world, and the rational world of

business.

But this study demonstrates that marketing leaders can change their

game. Firstly, they need to broaden their (rather narrow and functional)

described role and take on the development of high performing teams. Strong

teams will also help them fulfill their aspired systemic role within

organizations: “creating market breakthroughs”. Secondly, marketing leaders

need to change their assumptions about other leaders’ understanding of


marketing impact (which is limited) and start to communicate and translate

their relevance better. Finally, marketing leaders must realize that they have

perhaps been trying for too long to “copy” the behaviors of more rational

leaders (who dominate organizations) by “managing from the office” rather

than being out and about with customers. This path has led to “cookie-cutting”

approaches to innovation and limited transformational impact internally.

Instead, marketing leaders must refocus on their creative strengths and dare

to innovate more. They also need to find new ways to inspire a rational

organizational environment that may not always value creativity – something

perhaps best described as a “marketing challenge”.

KEY WORDS

Marketing leadership; leadership behavior; career success; Eros;

Logos; transformational leadership

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of my investigation is to understand the perceived

career success of senior corporate marketing executives and to identify

specific changes in leadership behavior that would help these leaders

be more successful in their careers.

Having been a marketing leader myself for almost a decade, my

curiosity is driven by a desire to understand aspects of my own career and by

my aspiration to be a helpful coach to marketing executives in the future. The

focus of this study is to inform leaders and coaches about the career

challenges of marketers, underlying reasons and routes to overcome these


challenges from a clinical perspective. I put less emphasis on, for example,

actual coaching interventions with leaders based on these findings.

What is a marketing leader anyway? Broadly, it’s the person concerned

with managing the marketing mix of an organization: Product, Pricing,

Branding, Distribution, Selling, Advertising, Promotions, Packaging, Display,

Servicing, Supply Chain and Research (Borden, 1964). In reality, scope varies

widely. While some leaders are indeed concerned with much of the above,

some own just a small subset (e.g. communication). My study focuses on the

former definition. Today, many terms and titles exist for leaders of the

marketing function. CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is often used – especially if

these leaders are part of the company’s board. Other titles include Marketing

Director, Marketing Leader, (Senior) Vice President of Marketing, or Head of

Marketing. For simplicity, I will use the terms marketing leader and CMO in

this study.

This investigation would be unnecessary had Drucker (1954) been right

when he postulated: “Because the purpose of business is to create a

customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions:

marketing and innovation”. If this were true, the role of marketing and

innovation leaders would be central in an organization.

However organizational reality is different today. Marketing leaders

struggle to be recognized as “core”. “Are CMOs irrelevant?” is the title of a

widely read article by consultants Booz Allen Hamilton (2004), suggesting that

senior marketing executives are receding further away from the centers of

power in their organizations. A recent study of 200 top marketing leaders by

Forrester Research and search firm Heidrick & Struggles (2012) concludes


that – while they are slowly “moving from the outskirts to the core of the

enterprise”, much needs to be done to “change the mindset of their executive

peers regarding the role of marketing”. Unsurprisingly, the same study also

found that almost 80% of marketing executives want to increase their

organizational influence.

Often corporate leaders struggle to understand how marketing costs

relate to specific business achievements. When being asked about their

greatest challenge, 53% of CMOs in a study among high-tech marketing

leaders pointed to non-departmental, intra-organizational issues. Too often

they need: “to educate the entire organization, including senior management,

with regard to the role and/or value of the marketing function relative to the

achievement of their company’s strategic vision” (Koleszar & Bernhardt,

2009). This challenge is old. Already in 1948, Culliton summarized: “The

difficulty arises not just because of the incomplete understanding of the

general concept of marketing, but also and particularly, because of the

confusion about what specific items of expenditure a business should count

as marketing cost”.

A lively debate exists as to whether companies should have Chief

Marketing Officers in the first place – or whether the CEO, the COO1 or the

Head of Sales can carry out this function. US professors Pravin Nath and

Vijay Mahajan (2009), wanted to know if firms with CMOs perform better than

firms without CMOs. The results of their study in the Journal of Marketing sent

a shockwave through the marketing community: the presence of a CMO on

the management team in the observed organizations had no effect on the

1 Chief Operating Officer


company’s commercial success. Along those lines, Groysberg, Kelly &

MacDonald (2011) suggest that, in the future, the marketing and sales roles

will merge, giving way to a new role, that of the Chief Marketing and Sales

Officer.

Not surprisingly, leading marketing is seen as risky. The Chief

Marketing Officer (CMO) position is often a “revolving door” (Spencer Stuart,

2004, 2010). Average CMO tenure2 was as low as 35 months in 2009 –

compared with 48 months for other executives. Although tenure has risen to

about 43 months in 2011, only time will tell if this tenure improvement will last

(Spencer Stuart, 2011). These observations are in line with my personal

experience in working with CMOs. Marketing clients often complain about

their slower career progress, compared to other C-suite3 peers. Many are also

unsure what it takes to advance: hard work or simply luck (Linton, 2009).

These challenges explain perhaps why CMOs want to become better

leaders. In a large global study among CMOs by technology firm IBM (2012),

“leadership abilities” ranked first among the most important capabilities for

personal success over the next three to five years - 65% mentioned it.

The aim of this research is to establish new insights into the

leadership behaviors of marketing leaders and the impact of these

behaviors on career progress, specifically the following three questions:

1. Are the careers of marketing leaders in corporate roles

indeed perceived to be progressing less well compared to

those of other functional and generalist leaders?

2 Defined as the number of months executives stay in their role. 3 Term commonly describing board level executives


2. Which leadership behaviors are associated with career

progression for marketing leaders? And:

a. How do superiors view marketing leaders (in

comparison to other leaders) with regard to the top

dimensions for career success - are there specific

factors that influence careers negatively?

b. How do marketing leaders perceive themselves in

comparison to what their superiors see with regard to

the top dimensions for career success (how aware are

marketing leaders about any differences)?

c. What are the differentiating leadership behaviors of

marketing leaders (what brand are marketing leaders

creating today – independent of how relevant these

behaviors are for career success)?

3. What are the underlying reasons for the observed

leadership behaviors that may prevent marketing leaders

from having thriving careers?

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

Finding the appropriate leadership model for marketing leaders is not

trivial for two reasons. Firstly, a myriad of leadership models exists. Secondly,

very little research has been carried out about leadership of the marketing

function itself (Scott, 2012). In order to identify the most relevant leadership

dimensions for marketing leaders, a short review of existing leadership


models is helpful, followed by an assessment of specific aspects for the

marketing role.

Early leadership theories are often associated with the trait approach

(Stodgill, 1974). These more personality-focused theories follow the belief that

some individuals have a certain “inner characteristic” that makes them

leaders.

During the 1960s and 1970s, contingency leadership theories gained

more influence, suggesting there is no “one way” to lead an organization and

much depends on the context. A prominent theory within this group is path-

goal theory (Evans, 1970; House, 1971), whereby a leader adjusts his or her

leadership style according to the motivation and performance of his or her

subordinates.

Max Weber’s (1922) concept of charismatic leadership re-emerged

around the 1970s and 1980s. This school suggests that leaders possess

natural or supernatural powers (charisma), which make them leaders in the

eyes of their followers. Several authors have developed and contemporized

Weber’s ideas by either bringing them closer to the reality of today’s

organizations, or by factoring in the effects of charismatic leadership on the

motivation of followers (House, 1977; Sashkin, 1988; Shamir, House & Arthur,

1993). A lively debate exists among researchers as to whether the charisma

of leaders leads to better organizational performance. A recent study by Agle,

Nagarajan, Sonnenefeld & Srinivasan (2006), for example, found that

“organizational performance was associated with subsequent perceptions of

CEO charisma but that perceptions of CEO charisma were not associated

with subsequent organizational performance”.


Closely related to the charismatic theory is the school of

transformational leadership. Here a leader “transforms” the values, beliefs and

actions of followers (e.g. Bass & Avolio, 1994). Transformational leadership

can be seen as the opposing model to transactional leadership by where a

leader rewards or punishes subordinates based on their performance - which

Burns (1978) also describes as “selfish” leadership. Transformational

leadership models gain more importance today where matrix reporting lines,

workforce mobility and fast-changing market trends are becoming the norm.

Current conditions don’t lend themselves to binary control methods. Instead,

indirect influence becomes more important. Kets de Vries, Virgnaud and

Florent-Treacy (2004) concluded: “charismatic leadership models are far more

in tune with contemporary reality … than are models offered by previous

research”.

Authentic Leadership is another contemporary school, which places

more importance on the leader’s ability to connect with his or her own self in

the way he or she leads – rather than following any particular style. Authentic

leaders hence possess high levels of self-awareness and are transparent in

their relationships with others (Burke & Cooper, 2006).

Many contemporary leadership models combine aspects of more than

one leadership school, trying to reflect as much as possible the corporate

reality. Kets de Vries’ (2006) model for “Leadership in a Digital age”, for

example, asserts that leaders must play a charismatic role and an

architectural role. They must also possess certain leadership traits, emotional

stability, task-relevant knowledge, plus a number of skills he groupes under


“skills in a digital age” (e.g. self-management, cultural relativity, team

management or trust building).

How do these models apply to leadership in marketing?

As mentioned before, marketing is a rather untapped field in leadership

research (Scott, 2012). This is surprising, as the success of corporations is

often highly related to their ability to develop and market products. Existing

marketing leadership theories broadly fit into three categories:

1. contingency (mainly how a leader “fits in”)

2. task-relevant knowledge (marketing skills)

3. transformational leadership

McGovern and Quelch (2004) highlight aspects of the contingency

school in their research of career success factors for CMOs. They found

(among others) three aspects of “fit” between the CMO and the organization

to be extremely relevant for success4:

a) fit of the role with the marketing culture and structure (e.g. a central

CMO may not fit a decentralized organization)

b) fit of the CMO with the CEO

c) fit of the CMO with the required skills for the particular role (often “no

tolerance for on-the-job training”).

Much of the current marketing debate revolves around the impact of

digital media on the skills required for CMOs (Harter, Landry & Tipping, 2007;

Spencer Stuart, 2010; Advertising Age 2011). A large study by technology

firm IBM (2012) with over 1700 CMOs worldwide highlighted that data

explosion, social media, channel proliferation and changing consumer

4 Though it can be questioned if this is specific to the CMO role or true for all leaders.


demographics pose a significant challenge to the task-relevant skills of CMOs.

Generations of marketing leaders will have to add a whole host of new task-

relevant skills (e.g. social media deployment) to their repertoire in order to

lead the function successfully in the future.

Scott (2012) discovered in a study of over 1,000 US executives that

leaders of the marketing function must first and foremost display charisma,

intelligence, vision and integrity – traits closely associated with

transformational leadership. Several other authors highlight the

transformational character of the marketing role, especially the focus on

fostering company growth (Spencer Stuart, 2010). This is a view strongly

supported by Aaker (2008), who suggests in his book Spanning Silos that “the

central marketing group must engage the whole organization”. Along these

lines, a study of over 5,000 leaders by search firm Egon Zehnder International

and consultancy McKinsey & Company (2012) found a strong correlation5

between companies’ revenue growth and their top executives’ effectiveness at

customer impact. Having the voice of the customer present in the leadership

team seems to be important. Many organizations have a way to go before true

customer focus becomes reality – a transformational challenge and a sweet

spot for CMOs.

In summary, the theory review suggests that in order to understand the

career success of marketing leaders in this study, a broad leadership model is

required, covering aspects of a) “fit” with the organization b) skills, and c)

transformational leadership.

5 Coefficient: 0.64


RESULTS

The basis of this study is the quantitative analysis of a rich database of

360-degree surveys: the “Global Executive Leadership Inventory” (or “GELI”),

at the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre. In a second step, the quantitative

findings are examined in more depth through 21 qualitative interviews with

marketing leaders, CEOs and HR specialists.

Quantitative sample and data collection

The “Global Executive Leadership Inventory” (GELI) contains over

120,000 surveys 6 , typically of senior managers. The GELI measures

leadership behaviors as perceived by participants and their observers7. It

consists of a basic socio-demographic part, 88 questions around leadership

traits and behaviors (e.g. “I show my enthusiasm for projects”) and 12

questions about lifestyle-influencing factors or implications (e.g. “My

relationship with one or more close family members is a source of stress”).

The 88 questions relate to 12 leadership dimensions (see Table 1). Questions

can be rated on a scale from 1 – “Does not describe me at all” to 7 – “Does

describe me completely”. Responses were collected from those observed

(participants), and from their superiors, co-workers, direct reports and others

(observers). On average, there were about 9 surveys per participant (1 self

and 8 observers).

Table 1 shows the GELI leadership dimensions and their fit with

dimensions for CMO success from the theory review. It confirms that the GELI

does cover many CMO-relevant leadership aspects. However marketing skills

6 I had access to responses collected between 2004 and 2012 7 It includes traits that are building on the big five personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1992)


and organizational fit, are not part of the GELI assessment. This is not

problematic for skills, where the status of CMOs is extensively covered by

current theory (as shown before). Fit however will need to be explored further

in the second stage of this research.

TABLE 1 FIT OF INSEAD ‘GELI’ INSTRUMENT WITH IMPORTANT DIMENSIONS

FOR CMO CAREER SUCSSS

“GELI” dimensions

Relevance for the CMO Role

Envisioning √ *** Empowering √ *** Energizing √ *** Designing √ Rewarding √ Team-Building √ Outside Orientation √ Global Mindset √ Tenacity √ Emotional Intelligence √ *** Life Balance √ Resilience to Stress √ √ Not covered by the ‘GELI’ – instrument

‘Fit’ with the organization (and the CEO) √ *** Marketing skills (especially digital media) √ *** Notes √ Relevant for marketing leaders based on theory review *** Very relevant for marketing leaders based on theory review

Two GELI variables are related to career progress: a) “I feel that my

career is not progressing the way I would like it to”, and b) “I feel that I have

not been managing my career in an effective manner”. For the purpose of this

study, I have decided to focus on statement a), since it assesses career

progress directly.

Several steps were necessary to prepare the dataset for this analysis:

Firstly elimination of cases and secondly labeling of functional roles (the GELI


does not categorize functional roles, e.g.: marketing). As my focus is on

marketing leaders in corporate roles, I have first eliminated participants from 8

industries which tend to have less typical marketing functions (agencies,

business associations, education, foundations, healthcare, public service and

academic institutions)8, leaving a sample of 12,574 participants and 99,576

observers.

In a second step, I have identified the functional roles of participants –

a major challenge, as respondents didn’t indicate their functional role but

simply recorded their job title. I have applied a two-step process to identify

functions. Firstly, I have run automated scripts that labeled participants’

functions based on key words (e.g. marketing). In a second step, I have

reviewed these labels manually. Of the 12,754 participants, I was able to

clearly label 7,314.

The final decision was to choose the best observer groups for the

assessment: superior, co-worker, direct reports or ‘other’. Several statistical

tests (comparing means and correlations with the target variable) showed that

answers by a) participants, and b) their superiors, were the most homogenous

and predictive for career success (high correlations). In contrast to this,

answers of direct reports, co-workers and “other” showed a very broad range

of perceptions within one function, less variation between functions and a

subsequently lower correlation with career success. These findings also

coincide with my hypothesis that both the leader and their superiors are likely

to have the most relevant read on career progress. I have therefore selected

the participants and their superiors for the analysis, leading to a total sample

8 I have also eliminated observers without associated participants, participants with no

industry indication, and spouses as observers.


of 12,574 participants and 14,928 observers (superiors) across all functions

(Table 2). The final sample covers respondents from 53 industries, where only

4 industries have a higher share than 5% (banking: 18.3%, pharmaceuticals:

9.6%, energy 5.8%, food & drink: 5.6%). Of these, 14.8% were female, 85.2%

male. Participants also had diverse nationalities: Europe: 60.9%, Asia: 14.8%,

North America: 8.3%, Pacific 4.9%, Middle East: 4.4%, Latin America: 3.4%,

and Africa 3.3%. Only five nationalities represented more than 5% of the

sample (French: 11.2%, British: 11.0%, Dutch: 8.0%, German: 7.3%, US

American: 6.8%). While not perfectly representative, the sample provides both

an outstanding industry representation and a unique geographic diversity of

participants. Marketing leaders represent about 5% of the sample (628

participant marketing leaders and 778 superiors of marketing leaders).

This is most likely the largest sample used to date to understand

leadership behaviors of senior marketing leaders.


TABLE 2 DISTRIBUTION OF SAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS

Number of cases

Function Participants Superiors Finance 1121 1385 General Manager 2612 2819 HR 406 501 IT 202 221 Marketing 628 778 Marketing & Sales 111 118 Operations 1029 1263 Sales 792 1005 Legal 197 250 Procurement 88 112 R&D 111 144 Strategy 17 20 Other 5260 6312 Total

12574

14928

Findings from the quantitative analysis

Are marketing leaders less satisfied with their careers? To explore

this issue, I carried out paired sample t-tests on the item “I feel that my career

is not progressing the way I would like it to”, comparing the answers of

marketing leaders and their superiors with those for all other leaders.

TABLE 3

RATING OF DISSATISFACTION WITH CAREER SUCCESS

Paired sample t-test on the item: “I feel that my career is not progressing the way I would like it to” Marketing leaders

Mean All other leaders

Mean

t-value Participants (self) 3.15 2.91 3.258 ** Superiors 3.23 3.03 2.980 * Notes * Significant at 0.05 ** Significant at 0.01


The mean score for marketing leaders on the career statement is 3.15

versus 2.91 for other leaders. This means they are less satisfied with how

their careers are going (14% have even scored 6 or 7 on the 7-point

agreement scale – meaning they are very dissatisfied). Looking at the scores

of superiors, a similar picture emerges: 3.23 is the mean for how superiors

rate marketing leaders vs. 3.03 for other leaders. The differences are

statistically significant. We can therefore conclude that marketing leaders are

significantly less satisfied with their career progress compared to other

leaders - and their superiors agree.

Which leaders have a higher career success compared to

marketing leaders? To understand this, I have calculated the differences in

the mean score between marketing leaders and main other functions in the

sample, considering both the leaders’ and their superiors’ views.

TABLE 4 CAREER SUCCESS IN OTHER MAIN FUNCTIONS VS. MARKETING

Mean difference of scores in paired samples t-test (function vs. marketing) on item: ‘I feel that my career is not progressing the way I would like it to’ Function (largest 7 only) Participants view

Superiors view

Finance + 0.293 *** + 0.227 ** General Manager + 0.459 *** + 0.357 *** HR + 0.450 *** + 0.466 *** IT + 0.234 + 0.146 Operations + 0.318 ** + 0.307 ** Sales + 0.118 - 0.075 R&D + 0.506 ** + 0.481 ** Notes * Significant at 0.05 ** Significant at 0.01 *** Significant at 0.001


This analysis clearly confirms that almost all other leaders, including

finance, general management, HR, operations and R&D are significantly

happier with their career success compared to marketing leaders9.

But what leads to this lower career success? Which leadership

behaviors matter for career progression? In the next step of the analysis, I

have first isolated the key drivers for career success. I then wanted to find out

how marketing leaders are behaving with regard to these dimensions –

compared to other leaders. These differences will be helpful in understanding

why the careers of marketing leaders are progressing more slowly.

In addition I also looked at the behaviors that represent distinctive

characteristics for marketing leaders (independent of whether they matter for

success or not), to understand how “self” and “observers” perceptions differ.

Drivers for career success. In order to isolate the drivers for the

career success of marketing leaders, I first ran a correlation analysis of the

answers of superiors to the 88 leadership statements in the GELI with the

same variable “I feel that my career is not progressing the way I would like it

to”10. It yielded correlations for 81 of the remaining 99 variables at >95%

confidence level. To best serve the study objectives, I have decided to focus

on the “top 15” items correlated with career success11. A subsequent principal

components factoring of these 15 items 12 yielded five factors for career

9 An exception is the superiors’ view of sales leaders, but the difference is marginal and not

significant. 10 As perceived by the superiors or marketing leaders 11 These items also showed the strongest variation in perception versus other leaders as

demonstrated later in this analysis. 12 With varimax rotation and Eigenvariable rule >1.0


success of marketing leaders. I have labeled these emotional maturity, team

development, team performance management, big picture communication

and aligning (Table 5).

TABLE 5 TOP 15 DRIVERS OF CAREER SUCCESS FOR MARKETING LEADERS

Correlation of items with statement: “I feel that my career is not progressing the way I would like it to”, sig. < 0.05, ratings of superiors of marketing leaders. Factor loadings for 5-factor model. Correlation,

r2 5-factor model, loadings

Emotional maturity I analyze my mistakes in order to learn from them 0.39 0.687 I make sure that my behavior is appropriate to the situation 0.31 0.750 Team development I make a great effort to earn the trust of other team members 0.34 0.700 … serious effort to ensure that, when a decision is made, everyone stands behind it

0.34 0.447

When on a team, I put the interest of the group before my own personal goals

0.33 0.700

I build on team members' individual strengths 0.30 0.704 I encourage team members to build collaborative relationships with one another

0.30 0.778

Team performance management I set clear performance standards and goals for my people 0.37 0.812 I make sure that our management systems facilitate effective behavior 0.30 0.683 Big picture communication I find ways to simplify complex situations for my employees 0.32 0.764 I convey my ideas in a clear and understandable way 0.30 0.767 ... I always consider the whole situation rather than the details only 0.30 0.702 Aligning I do everything in my power to create commitment to the organization 0.32 0.807 I try to be a role model for my people 0.31 0.480 … all employees have a clear idea of where the organization is going 0.30 0.564

At the top of the list appear two aspects related to emotional maturity,

namely the leaders’ ability to “learn from mistakes” and to “behave

appropriately”. These represent the rather broad abilities of a leader to act

“intelligently” in a corporate environment. The second group of items

describes the ability to develop and align teams behind decisions. The third

block is team performance management, a basic leadership skill. The

capacity to think and communicate in a big picture way appears as a fourth


essential factor. Considering the broad scope of the marketing role, the high

importance of big picture thinking appears sensible. Last of the top five is

aligning - the ability to create commitment and clarity about the direction.

The analysis reveals that career success for marketing leaders

requires mastering dimensions associated with four leadership schools13:

1. trait (emotional maturity)

2. contingency (team orientation)

3. transformational (big picture communication, aligning)

4. transactional (team performance management).

These results are - in parts - surprising. Previous marketing leadership

research paid a lot of attention to transformational leadership (specifically

charisma and visioning), skills and fit. It appears however that emotional

maturity, team development and performance management play even more

important roles for the success of marketing leaders.

How do superiors view marketing leaders versus other leaders

with regard to the top dimensions for career success? This is interesting,

as differences in perception would hint to reasons for the lower career

success of marketing leaders. A further paired samples t-test on the top 15

items for career success helped to understand this question better.

13 Associations as defined by Scott, 2012


TABLE 5 SUPERIORS’ PERCEPTION OF MARKETING LEADERS VS. SAMPLE

AVERAGE, WITH REGARD TO THE TOP 15 DIMENSIONS CORRELATED WITH CAREER SUCCESS

Paired samples t-test, only items sig. >0.05, mean difference14 Items with significance >0.05 shown as “0”

Superiors’ ratings for marketing leaders in this analysis are overall

lower than for their peers with regard to most top leadership dimensions for

career success. This is expected as these are the top factors correlated with

career success, and marketing leaders display a lower perceived success.

The detailed analysis reveals:

1. Superiors perceive marketing leaders to behave less emotionally

mature compared to their peers in other functions. This could indicate an

overall disconnect between the leader’s behavior and the superior’s

expectations. Do superiors at times simply struggle to understand marketing

leaders’ behavior?

2. Team development shows a rather interesting result. Scores for

building team trust and collaboration are actually not significantly different

14 Non-significant scores shown as “0”

Emotional maturity I analyze my mistakes in order to learn from them I make sure that my behavior is appropriate to the situation Team development I make a great effort to earn the trust of other team members … serious effort to ensure that, when a decision is made, everyone stands behind it When on a team, I put the interest of the group before my own personal goals I build on team members' individual strengths I encourage team members to build collaborative relationships with one another Performance management I set clear performance standards and goals for my people I make sure that our management systems facilitate effective behavior Big picture communication I find ways to simplify complex situations for my employees I convey my ideas in a clear and understandable way ... I always consider the whole situation rather than the details only Aligning I do everything in my power to create commitment to the organization I try to be a role model for my people … all employees have a clear idea of where the organization is going

Marketing leaders score… Less positive More positive!


from those of their peers. However putting the group interests ahead of their

own interests and the ability to build strength-based teams show up as areas

of concern for superiors. Are marketing leaders seen as “too selfish”, or as

doing their own thing? Perhaps caring less about building a powerful team,

but collaborating well with the team they have?

3. The biggest gap exists in team performance management. Superiors

rate marketing leaders lowest on their ability to set clear performance

standards for their teams. The scores suggest a clear dissatisfaction with how

marketing leaders define, rate and enforce performance. This could hint at

another major “show stopper” for marketing careers.

4. When it comes to big picture communication, superiors believe

marketing leaders are as able as their peers to “think big” and to communicate

their points clearly. However a statistically significant gap exists when it

comes to the ability to simplify issues for others. Are marketing leaders good

technical communicators who nevertheless fail to communicate the big picture

to others? This could be a very important insight. Outsiders often perceive

marketing as a “black box”. In one of my own recent studies of over 1,500

marketing leaders, 46% of respondents claimed that outsiders “don’t

understand marketing”15 . Perhaps this poses an obligation on marketing

leaders to help others understand marketing issues better. At least to date,

superiors believe marketing leaders still have a way to go when it comes to

simplifying messages.

5. The last dimension, aligning, shows that superiors do not believe

that marketing leaders align people in the organization behind common goals

15 Own quantitative assessment of >1200 marketing leaders by the author in Q4/2012.

Results not yet published.


or act as role models (for the organizational goals). More worryingly, and

perhaps in line with the low performance management scores, superiors

question whether marketing leaders understand (or are aligned with) where

the organization is going. Perhaps this is a reflection of the more ambivalent

nature of the role (many things in marketing cannot be easily measured and

proven, such as creative execution and innovation). Or could marketing

leaders do a better job at articulating what marketing actually does?

Are marketing leaders aware of their superior’s perception? Or is

there a gap? Understanding this would show if their superior’s perceptions

are a surprise to marketing leaders – or not. To evaluate this, I have

computed the difference in top box agreement of leaders and superiors to the

top 15 items associated with career success.


TABLE 6

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MARKETING LEADER’S AND SUPERIOR’S RATINGS WITH REGARD TO TOP 15 DIMENSIONS CORRELATED WITH

CAREER SATISFACTION

Differences in means, paired samples t-test of all items, only items sig. >0.0516

This analysis produces some very interesting findings. For most items

of emotional maturity, team development, big picture communication and

aligning, marketing leaders rate themselves higher than their superiors would

do. This is an often-observed fact in self-assessments, linked to social

desirability and narcissism (Kets de Vries et al., 2004).

There are two notable exceptions. The first is: superiors rate marketing

leaders higher than marketing leaders themselves on “clarity of

communication”. This obviously points to an area of particular strength.

Second exception: both marketing leaders and their superiors agree on the

(low) scores for the transactional leadership dimensions: “setting targets”,

“designing systems” and “ensuring adherence”. Marketing leaders appear to

16 Non-significant scores shown as “0”

Emotional maturity I analyze my mistakes in order to learn from them I make sure that my behavior is appropriate to the situation Team development I make a great effort to earn the trust of other team members … serious effort to ensure that, when a decision is made, everyone stands behind it When on a team, I put the interest of the group before my own personal goals I build on team members' individual strengths I encourage team members to build collaborative relationships with one another Performance management I set clear performance standards and goals for my people I make sure that our management systems facilitate effective behavior Big picture communication I find ways to simplify complex situations for my employees I convey my ideas in a clear and understandable way ... I always consider the whole situation rather than the details only Aligning I do everything in my power to create commitment to the organization I try to be a role model for my people … all employees have a clear idea of where the organization is going

Compared with ‘self’, superior’s view is … Less positive More positive!


agree with their superiors that team performance management is not an area

of strength. As managing performance is however crucial for career success,

the qualitative investigation of this phenomenon will be central.

What are the differentiating leadership behaviors of marketing

leaders – independent of how relevant these behaviors are for career

success? This analysis will reveal the “brand” that marketing leaders create

in their own view and in the view of their superiors. While some of these

dimensions may not correlate directly with career success, they show what a

person stands for and if self-perception and the superior’s perceptions differ.

In order to understand this, I have carried out paired samples t-test of all GELI

items comparing the participant scores (marketing vs. all other leaders) with

the scores of superiors (marketing vs. all other leaders). Table 7 shows all

items where perception of marketing leaders is significantly higher compared

to those of all other leaders in the sample. Or expressed more simply: where

marketing leaders stand apart.


TABLE 7 ITEMS WITH SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER POSITIVE MEAN:

MARKETING VERSUS OTHER LEADERS

Paired samples t-test of all items, only items sig. >0.05, (Mean difference marketing leaders versus other leaders) Items where marketing leaders have significantly higher scores Participant’s view

Superior’s view

I have at least one close friend with whom I can talk about very personal issues (0.28)

I am actively involved in defining strategy (0.23)

I am actively involved in defining strategy (0.28) I never seem to be able to complete all the work I have to do (0.22)

I feel that my career is not progressing the way I would like it to (0.25)

I feel that my career is not progressing the way I would like it to (0.20)

I enjoy learning and speaking foreign languages (0.21)

The pressure at work has become excessively stressful (0.20)

I enjoy working on multicultural teams (0.18) My workload is too heavy (0.17) I include people from different regional/national cultures and genders in teams I create (0.18)

I am physically active (regular exercise) (0.14)

I am comfortable in situations where the culture is unfamiliar to me (0.17)

I actively encourage new business opportunities (0.13)

I look for opportunities to learn more about myself (0.17)

I make cross-cultural experiences into learning opportunities for myself (0.17)

I assume that no culture is better than another (0.14)

I actively look for new ideas and learning opportunities outside of my specific field of expertise (0.12)

I actively encourage new business opportunities (0.12)

I frequently spend time with my spouse/partner and/or other close family members (0.11)

I have caring and trusting relationships with my spouse/partner and/or other close family members (0.11)

I show my enthusiasm for projects (0.09) If necessary, I try to change the opinion of others (0.08)

This analysis adds another very rich layer to the overall picture. The

self-perception of marketing leaders shows the high importance of

connectedness (e.g. close friends, spouse, family). There is also a high

degree of openness to inspiration from other cultures, ideas and experiences

– and the interest to learn about themselves (curiosity) - items often


associated with innovation. Marketing leaders also see themselves as

“change agents”, driving strategy, showing enthusiasm and trying to change

other people’s minds when it’s necessary.

Superiors don’t see the marketing leaders as innovative change

agents. On the positive side, marketing leaders excel in strategy involvement,

search for business opportunities and physical activities. However superiors

don’t see marketing leaders standing out on attributes associated with

innovation (openness to new ideas and cultures) and change (enthusiasm,

trying to change the opinions of others). Instead, they come across as busy,

stressed and not able to cope with their workload17, perhaps creating the

brand of someone that’s “willing but struggling”.

It appears that the overall brand marketing leaders create is not aligned

with their own perception as open and innovative change leaders. The

transformational character of the marketing role (as described in marketing

leadership theory) does not currently translate into reality in terms of

superiors’ perceptions.

This detailed analysis of the GELI 360-degree surveys has clearly

highlighted the lower-than-desired career performance of marketing leaders.

Marketing leaders seem to demonstrate less strong leadership behaviors

(compared with their peers) in three areas of importance for career

development:

17 The latter group of statements only appears in the list as they were asked negatively (high

scores are the agreement to a problem).


1. organizational alignment,

2. team development and performance management,

3. transformational impact.

These shortfalls explain the slower career progress statistically. The

question is: why these phenomena exist and what marketing leaders can do

in order to have more successful careers?

Qualitative sample and data collection

Based on the quantitative analysis, I have developed three questions,

which I plan to validate through the qualitative part of this research:

1. Why do marketing leaders appear to be less aligned with the

rest of the organization when compared with other leaders?

2. Why are marketing leaders less good team developers and

team performance managers compared to other leaders?

3. Why don’t marketing leaders stand out as transformational

leaders?

To explore these questions, I have carried out an in-depth qualitative

study with marketing leaders, superiors and experts.

Study participants: Between early January 2012 and May 2013, I

interviewed 21 current or previous CMOs18, 2 CEOs and 2 HR leaders, to

better understand success factors for marketing leaders.

18 The actual number of interviews was 41. However the first 20 focused more on personal

success stories, making them less directly usable for this part of the study.


Interview process: The interviews were carried out over 60 minutes

(either in person or by telephone). Transcripts are available for all interviews.

The interviews were semi-structured and split into three parts:

a) open questions about the role scope, responsibility and current

challenges,

b) open questions about 1-3 examples of major personal impact and

factors contributing to success,

c) structured review of 50 draft leadership dimensions, where I asked

interviewees to indicate 1) the top three, 2) the least important three,

and 3) the top three “typically missing” in marketing leaders. The

interview concluded with a summary of their advice on how marketing

leaders could “up” their career prospects.

Data analysis process: The data analysis consisted of two steps.

Firstly, I summarized the views about the most important, least important and

missing leadership characteristics quantitatively, to understand if and where

views converge – and where they don’t converge. I then coded the transcripts

for each of the three hypotheses, creating a repository of views that I could

then distill further. In line with the scope of this thesis I have not applied more

complex coding techniques like “pattern matching” or “deconstructive text

interpretation techniques” (Lee, Mitchell & Sabylnski, 1999).

Findings from the qualitative analysis

Before describing the specific results from this qualitative analysis, I

would like to highlight two observations.


Firstly, all interviewees showed a very strong interest in the topic of

career success factors for marketing leaders. Even the most senior and

tenured CMOs of large global corporations readily agreed to an interview. A

fairly representative quote from one CMO was: “You know, you never think

about this stuff. This is really insightful”.

Secondly, many CMOs saw themselves as being “different from the

rest”. They felt they had cracked the success formula and were keen to

explain the shortfalls of peers and give advice. I noticed a pretty low desire for

self-criticism (perhaps this is a consequence of my sample of active CMOs of

large multinational corporations - who, by definition, “make it” today).

1. Why do marketing leaders appear to be less aligned with the

rest of the organization when compared with other leaders? A large

amount of the interview time was spent discussing how marketing

performance and priorities were aligned with the rest of the organization. This

area was raised as a major challenge by 7 interviewees (most mentions) while

8 saw it as a “top 3” item for CMO success. During the discussions, three

overarching themes appeared, shedding more light on why marketing leaders

are perhaps not the best at aligning marketing with the rest of the company:

a) Measuring and aligning marketing is complicated. Often, the

effect of campaigns and other activities is simply not easy to prove and

understand, as one CMO summarizes: “I think the Holy Grail in marketing is

being able to demonstrate how things that are not linked directly to promotion

work … because often the benefit is very long term and, with so many


influencing factors along the way, it is incredibly hard to normalize that base in

order to understand the actual results”.

b) Marketing leaders don’t translate marketing into business-

impact language. About one third of the comments were around marketing

leaders’ “inability” to translate their work into other business indicators. One

CMO highlighted: “It’s basically understanding the numbers and making sense

out of them for business”. A HR leader observed: “So the really successful

marketing leaders are the ones that translate their numbers into business

numbers. They are not ‘fluffy’. They have clear criteria; clear values, clear

targets and basically, you know, translate this to the bottom line for the senior

management”. One CMO offered this explanation: “Many times the marketing

folks are more strategic and less practical.” And another CMO suggested that

right brain bias might explain why some marketing leaders struggle with return

orientation: “… today you have a kind of left brain or a right brain marketer.

It’s very difficult to get the combination ... I’ve not found a lot of creative

people who are great at conscientiousness or rather great creative people

who are great at results or return-orientation.”

c) Marketing leaders don’t realize that they have to prove and

communicate their impact and align it. Most interviewees made the point

that marketing leaders sometimes simply “forget” that others do not

automatically trust the impact of marketing. They hence fail to explain

proactively how their activities are aligned with business success. As one

CMO put it: “So I think that if I would have taken the one thing which is the

weak spot of the marketing functions across companies it’s the ability to

connect what we do to driving the business interests and to the shareholder


value. It’s assuming that people understand that connection, or that if they

don’t, then that’s their problem”. Another CMO summarized: “I mean

marketing just needs to prove itself, much more than many other functions. So

it’s important to understand this.” One CMO had this advice for marketing

leaders: “… make sure you communicate often and to the right people and

develop strong alliances with the leaders in the organization so that they’re

not just seeing you as a tool to use for communication, but as a partner in

making the company better and bringing true values to the organization.”

2. Why are marketing leaders less good team developers and

team performance managers compared to other leaders? The items team

development and team performance management received (surprisingly - or

perhaps not surprisingly) no unprompted mentions by any CMO. CEOs and

HR leaders instead raised it as a concern. This clearly confirms that team

management is not top of the agenda for marketing leaders – and others see

it. When digging deeper, two very interesting themes appeared, helping to

understand why marketing leaders are perhaps the weaker team developers.

a) Narrow understanding of own functional role: Five interviewees

suggested that marketing leaders have a very strong focus on mastering their

functional skills. Current trends like new media, the emergence of big data

and changing consumer behaviors put a lot of strain on the functional skills of

many marketing leaders. This functional focus, paired with the need to acquire

new skills, leads to a de-prioritization of team management. One HR leader

suggested: “Surprisingly enough there is a certain lack in organizational

development. Organizational development means creating a high


performance team, developing a team in the most stringent way. Marketing

leaders are sometimes lacking this particular element of leadership. There are

various reasons for this happening… this is due to the fact that most

marketing leaders have a silo career, so all they know about is marketing.”

And another HR leader said: “I would give them the advice to have very broad

interests, to not just focus their own interests and perspectives on marketing

alone”.

b) Too much focus on the “big picture”: Three interviewees

highlighted that marketing leaders sometimes have their “head in the clouds”,

thinking about the “silver bullet” for their market but forgetting the day-to-day

management of their teams. As one CMO admits: “I would say I would benefit

from more structure and specific direction amongst my own team. So I’m not a

command and control leader. I’m very much a kind of ‘big picture, that’s the

destination and here we go leader’ and so I don’t like to get involved in a lot of

these, you know, more granular arts of problem solving… but I’d do better

spending more energy with my own team.” Another CMO underlines his own

future aspiration: “… you know you probably will have to be a role model, as

you put it, and yet energize your team, just empower them to do their work

and you have to be able to hire experts within your team to do the detail…”

3. Why don’t marketing leaders stand out as transformational

leaders? It is important for marketing leaders to play a transformational

leadership role across the organization (Scott 2012). The quantitative analysis

highlighted before that superiors do not perceive marketing leaders as

transformational leaders. Thirteen (more than half) of the interviewees


highlighted the importance of innovating and creating a vision for the business

as one of their “top 3” items for success. It also received by far the highest

attention during the discussion (every interviewee mentioned it). The

interviews helped reveal several root causes why marketing leaders today

struggle to “cut through” as change agents:

a) Not being close enough to customers. Rather surprisingly, five

CMOs are concerned that their peers spend too much time in the office and

not enough time understanding consumers and products, resulting in less

innovation. One CMO said: “Too many guys manage the market from the

office. They don’t get out much. This is crazy”. An HR leader observed: “Well,

they fail if they lack product engagement, if they don’t understand the

products well enough and if they don’t understand the portfolio, if they don’t

understand the customer”. Another CMO concluded: “Don’t get too bogged

down in internal things, just get out. See what’s going on outside”.

b) Too much “cookie-cutting” – too few bold creative innovations.

Six CMOs observed a tendency of their peers to look backward and not dare

to innovate or shape the future. One CMO suggested: “Marketing leaders

need to break the rules. They need to come out with creative ideas and really

break the rules. If you just follow the rules you know you’ll get nice ideas but if

you break the rules, this is when the real opportunities come in.” Another

CMO of a large global consumer goods firm offered his explanation for the

cautious CMO behavior: “I find marketing leaders … are always searching for

the perfect answer and I think it is sort of like waiting for 100% and it never

comes and it paralyses people… , get it eighty-five percent right, make the

decision, and get on with it. If it doesn’t work too bad, learn from it, fix it and


keep moving, keep moving.” One CMO suggested: “… clearly people need to

get away from the fixed formula thinking and maybe my second weak point is,

you know, connected with the first one which is creativity. Marketing leaders

need to be significantly more creative.” Or as the CMO of another large

consumer goods company summarized: “I think it’s about leaving a legacy.

What people, I believe, need to do is to design their work in a way that they

can leave a positive legacy in ten or twenty years from now. I think that’s the

thinking people need to have and with this mindset you can actually shape

things in marketing.”

c) Failure to demonstrate and communicate passion. The fourth

theme evolved around how marketing leaders communicate their passion for

ideas. Two interviewees explicitly talked about how important simple and

persuasive messaging is – and that marketing leaders often fail to tell “their

story” in a passionate way. One CMO believes: “…you know you need to

show your passion, you need to demonstrate your passion and this is the way

you are going to convince other people to make progress.” The CMO of a

large global automaker summarized in his own polarizing way: “<storytelling>

It’s the most important skill I have. Growing up in an Irish family, where most

people were drunk, we had to tell good stories because that’s all we had. We

had no money and all we had was music and storytelling to keep each other

entertained, and storytelling is so important, you only engage people in ideas,

which is my job.”


DISCUSSION

The qualitative analysis has revealed very important details about

marketing leaders’ behaviors, which explain their less satisfying career

progress. In this section, I summarize the findings from the quantitative and

qualitative analyses and provide suggestions for how marketing leaders can

“up” their career prospects:

Organizational alignment

Alignment is clearly essential for the career success of marketing

leaders. It’s also where marketing leaders are perceived to have gaps versus

all other leaders in the quantitative analysis. One point made by several

CMOs is that marketing results are sometimes hard to measure or to

anticipate. Often, the number of factors involved makes measurement a

pseudo-science, and marketing leaders and C-suite peers know this.

However, marketing leaders still do not put enough effort into translating

marketing numbers into business numbers and assume that other leaders will

understand the impact of marketing indicators. This could, for example,

include a model that explains in simple terms how marketing metrics like

“awareness” or “preference” translate into “sales” and “revenue” based on

historic trends. Another route would be simply reducing the number of

communicated marketing metrics to a handful, which the organization can

understand and adopt over time. Instead, the marketing community has a

tendency to use insider terms like “OTS” (Opportunities To See), “GRP”

(Gross Rating Point – both advertising measures) or “CUT” (Consumer Usage

Test). As one CMO puts it: “Marketing leaders love jargon”.


Kegan and Lahey (2001) describe the concept of the big assumption

as the worldview that colors what people see. Assumptions are helpful, as

they allow for faster decision-making and simplified interaction with others.

They become a problem when they are not accurate in the eye of the person

we are relating them to. When this happens, miscommunication is likely and

behaviors of others can easily be interpreted wrongly.

The analysis has identified three big assumptions marketing leaders

make that hinder their career success:

1. Many marketing leaders assume that all C-suite executives

can understand marketing terms. But while certainly most have

heard these terms in university, they may not be familiar with

them nowadays (and will not admit it).

2. The second assumption is that other executives can

translate these terms into relevant KPIs for them. But a head

of finance, for example, instead of hearing how a campaign has

changed people’s perceptions, may be more interested to learn

how this perception connects to potential growth.

3. The third big assumption of many CMOs is that all other

leaders know about (and agree on) the importance of

marketing. The interviews however have highlighted that some

C-suite executives actually challenge the importance and

effectiveness of marketing as a function - an idea considered as

“unthinkable” within the marketing community. This assumption

leads marketing leaders to ignore the need to “prove” their

performance in the C-suite. The qualitative analysis together with


the interviews has proven that this assumption is wrong. In reality,

superiors simply see marketing leaders as not aligning well,

leading to a negative impact on their careers.

Conclusion 1: To improve career prospects, marketing leaders need

to make stronger efforts to translate and align marketing performance

measurement into accepted key indicators for the business. Marketing leaders

must also invest more into explaining the impact their function on the business

as a whole (“prove their worth”). This will require marketing leaders to change

their assumption about other leaders’ knowledge of (and agreement with) the

marketing function. Specifically, marketing leaders should assume:

1. Most other leaders do not fully understand marketing terms. It is

therefore important to simplify the language marketers are using when

talking about marketing impact. Jargon may be appropriate within the

marketing function – but externally the focus must be on being clearly

understood be people who don’t know marketing well.

2. Non-marketing leaders struggle to translate marketing indicators

into relevant business indicators for them – and hence find them

less relevant. Marketing leaders must therefore investigate which

indicators matter for other leaders and find ways to relate marketing

impact to these indicators.

3. The effectiveness of marketing is not seen as a given by other

leaders and requires proof. Communicating the impact of marketing

is therefore not an exceptional exercise but a continuous necessity.


In order to change these assumptions, marketing leaders need to

engage in more dialogue with the other leaders in the organization about the

role of marketing and its impact. The purpose of these interactions must be

two-fold: 1. creating a better understanding of the other party’s assumptions

about marketing, 2. starting a dialogue with the aim of finding a more common

language between marketing leaders and other leaders in the organization

(either on their own or with the help of a coach).

Changing assumptions and improving the translation of their impact to

the company P&L will allow marketing leaders to gain more credibility as

performance managers, which is essential for career progress.

Team leadership and performance management

Superiors believe marketing leaders are less good at building teams

based on strengths. They are also seen as putting their own interests ahead

of those of the team. And they don’t manage team performance well. The

qualitative analysis highlighted two (perhaps connected root causes):

1. Marketing leaders often see their role very narrowly as functional

experts, and not so much as the developer of teams.

2. Marketing leaders are often so distracted with looking for the “bigger

answer” to marketing questions that they simply forget team

development.

The issue was also confirmed by the interviews (no CMO has even

mentioned team development as important without prompting). The reality is

perhaps less black and white, however team development is – for various

reasons – less on the radar screen of marketing leaders. This goes along with


the finding that marketing leaders agree with the lower-than-average team

development and team performance management perception of their

superiors.

So what’s wrong? Borwick’s (2005) systems perspective on roles within

organizations provides a very interesting lens to the issue observed. He

differentiates defined role (what the job description says), described role (what

people say the role owner does) and the systemic role (what the role owner

does to make things work in his context). Understanding these roles (and

potential mismatches) allows a better understanding of leaders’ behaviors –

and potential interventions that help improve organizational performance.

The defined role of a marketing leader is often rather functional,

focused on brands, products or market impact. McGovern & Quelch (WARC

2013) define it as “creating differentiated and strengthened brands, integrated

communication campaigns, while transforming the companies’ capabilities to

deal with new emerging media” – ideally at lower costs. During the interviews,

CMOs used terms like “Chief Revenue Officer”, “Brand Guardian”, or

“Advocate of the Customer”. While functional, these role descriptions are also

inherently broad (“creating a brand”, for example, requires engaging almost all

functions of a company).

The described role of marketing leaders appears to be different.

“Fighting at all fronts”, “satisfying many stakeholders”, “trying not to miss any

trend” are closer to the perceived reality admitted by many CMOs during the

interviews. In the quantitative analysis, marketing leaders stood out in the

views of their superiors as “stressed” and “not coping with the workload”.


The systemic role: So why would someone take on a role that is – by

definition – functionally narrow, hopelessly over-scoped and a day-to-day

fight? The answers lie perhaps in the systemic role many CMOs see: to find a

“silver bullet”. The “one billion dollar idea” that changes markets forever.

Clearly, during the interviews, many CMOs gave the impression that they are

on to something “bigger”, even though it’s not yet clear what this is. Quotes

like “we have some really cool stuff in the pipeline” or “we’ll completely

change customer engagement with our new…” suggest that many see more

things to come. This appears to be a price worth the hassle.

The current role understanding is creating issues. On one hand, the

search for “something big” is still on. Of all the CMOs in this sample (mostly

from large global businesses), only two could recall truly transformational

market successes.19 Instead, all are very “busy”. On the other hand, the

narrow described role combined with an idealistic systemic role lead to

neglecting key tasks like team development.

But taking the creation of high performing teams too lightly would not

be wise. Organizations are notoriously resistant to learning innovative new

things. Innovative individuals often need to find creative ways to get things

agreed or developed. Teams are often better able to overcome organizational

pressures and get innovative things implemented in an organization (Coutu,

2002). Building strong teams would therefore not only “up” the career

prospects in the eyes of their superiors. It would also help marketing leaders

make “breakthrough ideas” happen in the organization.

19 The invention of pre-paid telephony and the establishing of the LG brand in the USA.


Conclusion 2: In order to “up” their career prospects, marketing

leaders need to pay significantly more attention to developing and managing

strong teams, even if this means putting the team’s interests ahead of their

own. This will require a revision of how marketing leaders define their role.

Marketing leaders must take on the development of high performing

marketing teams as part of their defined role. This will include understanding

the team’s needs, strength and weaknesses. It will also require leaders to set

clear targets and spend sufficient time to help members develop and perform

to their best. Focus on team development will also improve described reality,

as more team capacity should reduce the amount of fire fighting required for

the leader. It will also help leaders to make innovations happen within in the

organization. On a systemic level, marketing leaders need to start making

their team part of the force that helps find the “market-changing” innovation

one day. A joint effort to find new innovations could ultimately increase the

prospect of success.

Changing role definition may not be trivial for all leaders. While simple

awareness will do the trick for many, others may struggle. Some CMOs could,

for example, simply enjoy being the “expert”, and having a low desire for

taking on a broader role. Others may find it hard to let go of the “single

hunter’s chase” for the “big idea”. Leaders (and their coaches) will therefore

have to look at this issue rather broadly. This includes understanding the

current role definitions, how they align with company expectations and how

different roles would fit with the desires and talents of the leaders.


Transformational role

Marketing leaders today fall short of the expectation to act as change

agents, aligning and uniting the organization behind a new direction. This

study has unearthed multiple reasons for this. On the one hand, CEOs and

CMOs alike complain about the lack of real customer focus and the fact that

most marketing leaders apply “cookie-cutter approaches” rather then coming

up with real innovation. On the other hand (and perhaps connected with this),

people perceive less passion, energy and transformational impact than is

expected from marketing leaders. In a way, this is surprising. Throughout all

the interviews, the tone of voice used by CMOs has been very engaging,

inspiring and passionate. It’s also the image of marketing leaders displayed in

society. They are often described as passionate, creative and innovative.

CMO’s own perceptions in the quantitative analysis concur with that

innovative image (open, enthusiastic, willing to change other people’s views).

But what prevents marketing leaders from “cutting through” in

the eyes of their superiors? A deeper understanding of the marketing

leader’s personality may shed more light on their current performance in

organizations. The quantitative analysis has shown that marketing leaders

possess many intrinsic qualities of successful innovators. They have a deep

desire for connectedness and place high importance on strong relationships

with their spouse, family, friends and others. At the same time, marketing

leaders display openness, the willingness to embrace other cultures and new

situations - attributes associated with creativity, innovation.

So why are these transformational attributes not showing? Perhaps

marketing leaders often operate in a world of systems and processes, which


typically stifles creativity. Bowles (1993) describes how the two poles Logos

and Eros (derived from Greek mythology) interact in today’s organizations.

Logos, the masculine psychological energy is associated with structuring,

measuring and competition in today’s organizations. Eros, the feminine

psychological energy, relates closer to connectedness, instinct and creativity.

A lively debate exists as to what exactly describes the contrasting engines

Eros and Logos, which it would be impractical and unnecessary to summarize

here within the scope of this paper.

Looking at marketing leaders’ self-perception in the quantitative part,

the top two differentiating items are connectedness and openness (creativity).

These relate closely to descriptions of Eros, the female psychological energy.

Bowles also concludes that Logos properties dominate today’s organizations

while Eros properties “have suffered”. Hanna (1985) suggests, “Many

organizations claim they foster innovation … yet their structures, managerial

styles, and reward systems actually inhibit the utilization of the inner

connectedness that underlies creativity”.

The Logos and Eros theory shows parallels to the findings of this study:

that (creative) marketing leaders often feel that they are not understood or on

the outskirts of the organization (Heidrick & Struggles, 2012). Goffee & Jones

(2000) found that women avoid the stereotyping in organizations by

“disappearing” (dressing more male, talking tough). Interestingly, marketing

has a higher share of women in the quantitative sample compared to other

functions (35.5% vs. 19.6%). Perhaps marketing leaders are finding

themselves in the same trap. Are marketing leaders trying to behave rationally

(as this is expected) while toning down their creativity?


If marketing leaders are indeed the Eros in a Logos world (which the

results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate), how could they

fulfill their role expectation as transformational leaders? Could Eros be the

change leader for Logos? Would Logos ever listen? This is tricky.

Today’s Eros operates in a space where his/her key strength of

connectedness and creativity is stifled and where the Logos forces of

structure and measurement dominate (Hanna, 1985). Bowles (1993) is not

hopeful that organizations will soon discover the different qualities of Eros and

Logos and create spaces where both strengths are leveraged. Instead, Eros

leaders will likely have to learn how to operate more effectively in a Logos

environment, firstly by accepting that reality and secondly by finding ways to

focus more on their strength while communicating better with Logos.

Being more Eros while working well with Logos? The task looks like a

paradoxical challenge. In reality, mastering both will be a major stretch for an

individual. Perhaps it’s exactly what happens today: marketing leaders (Eros)

try to behave in a Logos fashion – and fail to convince. Instead of trying to

satisfy both roles, the better route is perhaps to focus on the distinctiveness of

their Eros skills while finding other ways to deal with Logos demands.

One route could be to “team up” with a Logos-type marketing leader

and to conquer the organization together. The idea is not far fetched.

Advertising agencies typically have a creative lead and a commercial lead for

each client. The creative mind faces fewer limitations in the creation process

and the business-focused mind will help adjust and translate the results for

the business reality of clients. The concept is powerful. But it’s questionable

how realistic installing different marketing roles would be in today’s


organizations. Also, the creative minds in advertising agencies take less of a

client-facing and leading role. Would today’s Eros marketing leaders accept a

back seat in top-table discussions?

A better method of translation is the alternative option. Marketing

leaders could learn how to translate their ideas and propositions into Logos

language. It should not be too difficult to find out what makes Logos tick - and

how to press these buttons more often. Isn’t target-group communication part

of a marketing leader’s job description anyway? Why not apply these

principles internally? Where possible, translation appears to be the more

preferable of the two options.

No matter which path marketing leaders choose, overcoming their

isolation will ultimately lead to more creativity and alignment within the

organization. Or as Ulrich (2002) concluded: “As soon as our attention can

expand to embrace these opposing, alternating forces <Eros and Logos> -

our passionate longing and our disciplined intent - we come into a greater

alignment, activating our creative energies and attracting a new quality of

heightened being”.

Conclusion 3: In order to achieve more career progress, marketing

leaders must dare to use their creative potential for innovations, and to

communicate in a much more engaging way, adjusted to the different target

groups in an organization. This will require marketing leaders to:

1. realize they work (most likely) in a Logos environment and that

other leaders may struggle to understand and value Eros-skills and

behaviors;


2. dare to fully leverage their creative and innovative skills, even if

this counters their previous organizational conditioning. This includes

forging much closer relationships with customers, as well as using

more intuition and allowing themselves to think bold – even if proof is

not immediately evident;

3. communicate their ideas more actively and in a more engaging

language (stories) that their Logos counterparts understand (simple,

logical).

The development into a transformational leader is more complex for

some leaders than for others. Like for team development, the leader must

become very clear about his/her desire to take on a transformational role. It

will be very hard to inspire others if the leader is not inspired by his/her role. In

some cases, it may be required to gather confidential input into the - currently

perceived or expected – role of the leader in the organization. Some

companies, for example want CMOs to help transform their organization;

others may have much lower expectations. In some cases, the “brand” a

leader has created over time is so strong that “rebranding” could simply prove

to be too hard. Some may even be in a downward spiral or “set up to fail”

because of the current perception (Manzoni & Barsoux, 2002). A rigorous

assessment of the current perception is therefore essential as part of the

change process. For new leaders, aligning own and superiors’ expectations

for the role early on is particularly important. One way to achieve this are

explicit “onboarding programs”, where a coach helps the leader and the

organization to align expectations during the first couple of months in the role.


Marketing leaders must dare to be different in order to have

transformational impact and to inspire others (Goffee & Jones, 2000). In many

cases, this will mean “unlearning” to copy rational leaders and instead

focusing on real innovations for the market while finding a way to engage a

rational internal audience. This may not be easy, but it starts with awareness

of the environment marketing leaders operate in. Marketers can then perhaps

better apply their functional skills (e.g. defining benefits for target groups,

tailoring communication) to convince more “internal clients”.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

This study attempts to research the factors for the career success of

marketing leaders in the corporate environment. Its nature is exploratory and

more work is required to fully understand career success for marketing

leaders. A major asset for the study is the INSEAD GELI database, which

covers insights about over 12,000 leaders, including over 1400 marketing

leaders and their superiors from across different industries, making this the

largest assessment of the behavior of marketing leaders to date. However the

database has (among others) a smaller US representation and is therefore

not fully representative from a socio-demographic perspective. Also, the GELI

was not designed to understand career success. It is therefore likely to miss

leadership aspects that might explain the success of marketing leaders more

fully (r2 of a regression of all attributes with career success was > 0.6). For

example, the database does not consider the leaders’ environments (e.g.

marketing-focused organization or not). Furthermore, labeling of the functions

was done through a manual process, interpreting available titles. While only


clearly understandable role descriptions were labeled, a title could mean

different things in different organizations. Further quantitative research should

therefore broaden the number of tested attributes while identifying differences

in the scope of participants’ roles.

The second limitation is the selection of interviewees for the study. For

this study, only acting leaders of large global firms in the US, Europe and Asia

were chosen. As in every qualitative research study, sample selection can

significantly influence outcomes. This sample bias risk was perhaps

acceptable as the interviews were only used to give color to the quantitative

findings. Future research should also include views of “failed” leaders and

perhaps leaders of smaller organizations.

This study has shown that the factors for the success of marketing

leaders are complex and nuanced. The findings provide helpful directions for

the future development of leadership theory in two ways:

1. Singe-school models like transactional leadership or transformational

leadership are not sufficient to explain the key aspects for the success

of marketing leaders. In reality marketing leaders must master

dimensions associated with several schools of leadership: a) trait

(emotional maturity) b) contingency (team orientation) c)

transformational (big picture communication, aligning) d) transactional

(performance management). New research should therefore take the

direction of broadening these models in order to make them useful for

marketing leaders (and perhaps other functional leaders).

2. The emerging science of marketing leadership will benefit from

broadening the previous focus on transformational leadership


(specifically charisma and visioning) to include more aspects of

contingency theory (marketing leader in a Logos environment and

implications for situational management) and transactional theory

(managing and developing teams and their performance).

* * *

Marketing leaders are experiencing challenges to their career

development, but there are ways out of the dilemma. They must realize that

building stronger, high-performing teams will not only increase their chances

of career success. It will also help them achieve their systemic role desire:

making “market breakthroughs” happen. Marketing leaders must also change

their assumptions about how well other leaders understand marketing (they

don’t). Leaders must therefore translate and communicate their impact in a

much clearer way – a task they master well with external customers, but

surprisingly not internally. Finally, marketing leaders must realize that copying

the behavior of more rational leaders currently leads to mediocre innovation

and little internal transformational impact. Instead they need to rediscover

their core strengths (openness, curiosity, creativity) and become real

innovators again. Communicating these innovations in a rational business

world however will require an engaging but perhaps more simple language.

None of this will be easy or straightforward. But with progress along

these lines, marketing has a better chance to become what Drucker once

suggested: one of only two important functions in an organization.


References

Aaker, D. (2006). Spanning Silos, the new CMO imperative. Boston: Harvard

Business Press.

Advertising Age (2011). CMOs struggle to Acclimate to Changing Landscape.

Retrieved from: www.adage.com.

Agle, B., Nagarajan, N., Sonnenefeld, J., Srinivasan, D. (2006). Does CEO

Charisma Matter? An Empirical Analysis of the Relationships Among

Organizational Performance, Environmental Uncertainty, and Top

Management Team Perceptions of CEO Charisma. Academy of

Management Journal, vol. 49, number 1, pp. 161-174.

Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J. (1994). Increasing organizational effectiveness

through transformational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publications, Inc.

Booz Allen Hamilton (2004). Are CMOs Irrelevant? Booz Allen Hamilton:

Company publication.

Borden, N. (1964). The concept of the marketing mix, in Science in Marketing,

G. Schwartz ed., New York: Wiley

Borwick, I. (2005). Organizational Role Analysis: managing strategic change

in business settings, in Coaching In Depth, The Organizational Role

Analysis Approach. London, New York: Karnac.

Bowles, M. (1993), Logos and Eros: The Vital Syzygy for Understanding

Human Relations and Organizational Action. Human Relations, Nov 93.

Vol. 46 Issue 11, pp. 1271-1290. 20p.

Burke, R. J., Copper, C. L. (2006). Inspiring Leaders. Oxon: Routledge.

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.


Coutu, D. (2002). The Anxiety of Learning. Boston: Harvard Business Review,

March 2002.

Costa, P. T., McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory

(NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) manual.

Odessa. FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Cox, R. (1956). Three-in-One Marketing. Boston: Harvard Business Review,

November-December, 1956, pp. 61-68.

Culliton, J. (1948). The Management Challenge of Marketing Costs. Boston:

Harvard Business Review, January 1948, p. 74.

Drucker, P. F. (1954). The Practice of Management. London: William

Heinemann Limited.

Egon Zehnder International, McKinsey & Company, (2012). Return on

Leadership – Competencies that Generate Growth. Company

Publication.

Evans, Martin G. (1970). The effects of supervisory behavior on the path-goal

relationship. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 5, pp.

277–298.

Forrester Research, Heidrick & Struggles (2012). The Evolved CMO 2012.

Company publication.

Goffee, R., Jones G. (2000). Why should anyone be led by you? Boston:

Harvard Business Review, Sep-Oct 2000.

Groysberg, B., Kelly, L., MacDonald, B. (2011). The New Path To the C-Suite.

Boston: Harvard Business Review, March 2011, pp. 60-68


Hanna, R. (1985). Personal Meaning: Its loss and rediscovery. In

Tannenbaum R. et al. (Eds.), Human systems development. London:

Jossey Bass.

Harter, G., Landry, E., Tipping, A. (2007). The new complete marketer.

Strategy and Business, Issue 48. Booz & Co. company publication.

House, R. J. (1977). A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In J. G. Hunt, &

L. L. Larson (Eds.), Leadership: The cutting edge, pp. 189−207.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Inesi, M.E., Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Five Reasons Why it’s Lonely at the Top.

The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from www.wsj.com.

IBM, (2012). From Stretched to Strengthened. Insights from the Global Chief

Marketing Officer Study. IBM company publication.

Kets de Vries, M., Virgnaud, P., Forent-Treacy, E. (2004). The Global Life

Inventory: Development and Psychometric Properties of a 360-Degree

Feedback Instrument. The International Journal of Human Resource

Management, 15:3, May 2004, pp. 475-492.

Kets de Vries, M. (2006). The Leadership Mystique. Prentice Hall: Harlow.

Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R. & Sablynski, C. J. (1999). Qualitative research in

organizational and vocational psychology: 1979–1999. Journal of

Vocational Behavior, 55, pp. 161-187.

Linton. P., (2009). Why do chief marketing officers have a short shelf life?

Forbes CMO Calculus. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com.

Manzoni, J.-F., Barsoux, J.-L. (2002). The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome -

Overcoming the undertow of expectations. Boston: Harvard Business

School Press


McGovern G., Quelch J., (2004). The fall and rise of the CMO. Strategy and

Business, Issue 37. Booz & Co. company publication.

Nath. N., Mahajan. V. (2008). Chief Marketing Officers: A study of their

presence in firms’ top management teams. Journal of Marketing,

number 70.

Sashkin, M. (1988). The visionary leader. In J. A. Conger & R. N. Kanungo

(Eds.), Charismatic leadership: The elusive factor in organizational

effectiveness, pp. 122−160. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Scott, C. J. (2012). Leadership Perceptions in the Marketing Organization and

Technological Uncertainty. Journal of Marketing Development and

Competitiveness, 6(1), 2012.

Shamir, B., House, R., Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational effects of

charismatic leadership: A self-concept based theory. Organizational

Science, 4, pp. 577−594.

Spencer Stuart (2004). The Role of Today’s Chief Marketing Officer. Blue

Paper. New York: Company publication.

Spencer Stuart (2010). The Role of Today’s Chief Marketing Officer. Blue

Paper. New York: Company publication.

Spencer Stuart (2010). What do you want from me? How high performing

CMOs exceed expectations. New York: Company publication.

Spencer Stuart (2010). The rising CMO. New York: Company publication.

Stodgill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of Leadership: A Survey of Theory and

Research. New York: Free Press.

Ulrich, D. (2002). The Widening Stream – the Seven Stages of Creativity.

Hilsboro: Beyond Words Publishing.


Van de Loo, E. (2012). Leadership Paradigms. INSEAD Coaching and

Consulting for Change course material, p. 3.

WARC, (2013). WARC Trends Toolkit - How to respond to marketing’s

biggest challenges. London: WRAC (World Advertising Research

Center) company publication. Retrieved from: www.warc.com.

Weber, M. (1922). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden

Soziologie, part I: Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen

und Mächte, III. Die Typen der Herrschaft, 4. Charismatische

Herrschaft.


Appendices

TABLE A1 SAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS (FULL SAMPLE)

Number of responses

Function Participant Superior Co-Worker Direct Report

Others

Finance Leader 757 928 2037 2253 921 Finance Staff 364 457 1033 931 470 General Manager 2612 2819 5772 8951 3252 HR Leader 263 312 771 746 294 HR Staff 143 189 443 368 174 IT Leader 137 147 375 408 183 IT Staff 65 74 172 155 95 Legal Leader & Staff 197 250 602 469 218 Marketing Leader 315 353 958 975 317 Marketing Staff 313 425 1000 741 389 Marketing & Sales Leader

72 73 195 224 98

Marketing & Sales Staff

39 45 102 95 59

Operations Leader 647 763 1767 1997 739 Operations Staff 382 500 1101 1081 472 Procurement Leader 46 58 121 154 35 Procurement Staff 42 54 114 102 63 R&D Leader & Staff 111 144 323 317 141 Sales Leader 362 424 1030 1075 408 Sales Staff 430 581 1269 1021 501 Strategy Leader & Staff

17 20 52 38 20

Other Leader & Staff 5260 6312 14124 13886 6439 Total

12574

14928

33361

35987

15288


QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH (1/2)

INTRODUCTION (≈10 min)

1. To begin with we’ll discuss your role, your expectations and challenges

in day-to-day life as a marketing leader.

LEADING TO MARKETING SUCCESS (≈20 min)

2. Please share two or three great marketing successes that you created

by:

• following your passion/convincing others or

• truly understanding customers/consumers or

• applying excellent marketing skills (being highly productive) or

• using your power/network in the organization.

(This is the core of our discussion. Feel free to add examples and

details – even if the categories above do not apply)

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO WIN AS A MARKETING LEADER? (≈10

min)

3. For the items on the next page: which are the

o three most differentiating?

o three least relevant?

o three common weak spots for marketing leaders?

FINAL WORDS? (≈5 min)

4. What would make you an even more effective marketing leader?

5. What leadership advice would you give other marketing leaders?


QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH (2/2)

Factors(for(Marketing(Leaders'(successMost%differentiating

Least%important

Common%weak4spots

Competencies

·%%%%%%Surgency/risk(taking%–%assertiveness,%strong%will·%%%%%%Extroversion %–%being%“in%there”;%socializing%with%people·%%%%%%Conscientiousness/tenacity%–%discipline,%reliability,%follow4through·%%%%%%Analytic(ability·%%%%%%EQ(–%being%able%to%empathize%with%teams%and%customers·%%%%%%Agreeableness%–%being%liked%by%others·%%%%%%Creativity/%Openness(to%new%ideas%and%ways%of%working·%%%%%%Emotional(stability

Charisma(/(Inspiration

·((((((Purpose((knowing%what%she%stands%for&%what%she%wants)·%%%%%%Envisioning((communicating%a%vision,%instilling%pride)·%%%%%%Empowering%(...%others%to%act)·%%%%%%Energizing(others(to(act((role%modeling)

Ability(to(architect(change

·((((((Aligning(orgHstructure/targets/incentives(to(fit(goals

·%%%%%%Controlling(results((full%transparency%about%success)·%%%%%%Aligning(marketing(priorities(with(CEO(goals·%%%%%%Results(/(ROI(orientation((and%communication)·((((((Expectation(management%(...%about%realistic%outcomes)

Customer/consumer(orientation

Team(building((finding%and%motivating%the%best,%valuing%diversity)Cultural(relativity((ability%to%work%globally)Self(organization%(focus%on%important%things)Impression(management%(framing%things%positively)

Skills(/(insights

·%%%%%%Old(marketing(skills:(pricing,%product,%promo,%place·%%%%%%New(marketing(skills:(big%data,%social%media,%customer%%decision%·%%%%%%Leverage:(working%with%the%best%experts%in%thier%field·((((((BusinessHunderstanding%(industry%&%value%creation)

Favorable(external(factors((not%influenced%by%the%leader)·%%%%%%Industry((growth,%speed%of%change,%competitiveness)·%%%%%%Cultural(fit(with(company·((((((Clear(role(and(expectations(for(marketing(in(organization

·%%%%%%Ability(for(marketing(to(influence(results

Documents

Career Success Factors of Marketing Leaders 1 …...Career Success Factors of Marketing Leaders 2 ABSTRACT “The marketing manager must have the attitude of a purchasing agent, an