We recommend this short interview with Mike Kitz, an instructor at Notre Dame and the former CMO of OfficeMax: "Why Are Firms Failing To Transform Marketing?" He highlights the issues involved in marketing-led transformations and the challenges faced in becoming a change agent.
At EMM Group, we have seen this up-close at many organizations. While change is hard, growth is getting pretty hard in today’s world too. So many companies are realizing that if they want to get growing, they must get really good at the growth drivers like marketing and innovation. Any leader that embarks on such a journey may want to keep a few things in mind:
- Change is a multi-speed scenario: While sustainable change in behaviors across the entire organization can be slow, if not glacial, that does not mean you cannot also get points on the board quickly. We have often deployed various techniques, such as project-based learning and decision accelerators, to help business teams quickly prove the value of the new way of marketing.
- Keep all aspects of the marketing capability in mind: Changing the marketing processes or introducing a new software to manage marketing campaigns are all important components but do not guarantee sustained change. Leaders of such transformations have to think of all aspects of the marketing capability including the strategy, structure, process, skills and incentives.
- To be effective, marketing has to speak the language of business: This means that the transformation program has to be judged based on the impact it will have on business-relevant metrics such as volume of orders or average sale margin. The transformation program has to be marketed internally based on the incremental and unique value it can add in impacting these business-relevant metrics.
- Market not just the successes of the program but also the success of the change agents that lead the initial efforts: This will create positive momentum and also attract others to join the program.
To read more about our experiences in leading marketing excellence programs, please read our White Paper: "On the Road to Marketing Excellence" or contact us for more information.
