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What could you create in 90 days?
Business life is a rat race. So many meetings, presentations, emails. Breakfast to go. Working lunch. Late dinner. It’s crazy. Then, all of a sudden, things grind to a halt. The meetings get...
Complete this sentence about the future
It all started in 2020. The world was just beginning to grapple with a pandemic. Shops and schools had to close. Events were cancelled. Firms asked people to work from home. Global travel ground to...
T-Systems CMO Katharyn White: “We Must Redefine The Chief Marketing Officer Role”
What makes a successful CMO? This time I spoke with Katharyn White, Senior Vice President and CMO of IT services giant, T-Systems.
The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader — Blockbuster Sale
If you love customers, leadership could easily be your biggest challenge. How to help customers, when others don’t care? How to convince people who don’t report to you? How to innovate, when...
Thrive, don’t fail
Who thrives? The people who have more than just ideas. The people who figure out how to make stuff happen, how to mobilize people, how to ship. A few days ago, I sat down with Rusty Pepper for a...
Look beyond performance
Fran Crippen loved the water. The US long-distance swimmer had beaten his competition many times. 7 medals in 6 years—one gold, four silver, two bronze. Olympic games in reach. Expectations were...
Five secrets of marketing career success
A few days ago, The Marketing Society asked me to share with their senior marketers the insights from the largest ever study on marketer success. Seats were arranged in a circle, so I could see...
Marketers need more sense to stem the tide of CMO firings
(From my Marketing Week column) When Marketing Week’s editor, Russell Parsons, asked me to write an article to accompany the launch of Marketing Week’s Top 100 Most Effective UK Marketers, I...
How to get promoted
Making it to the next level can be exciting. More responsibility, more options, more pay. But how to get promoted? Perhaps your firm has a fixed promotion schedule, and it’s either “up” or “out.”...
Do fewer things, well
For my Forbes column I sat down with Mika Yamamoto, who left her mark at firms like Amazon, Microsoft and Adobe, to talk about what matters for marketing leadership success. Here's a summary (you...
Do your numbers
When the numbers don’t add up, business dreams evaporate, change movements stall, projects die. Perhaps people love your idea. Perhaps no one asks if the numbers work out....
The hidden power of the marketing funnel
Last weekend, my partner and I took a bicycle tour to a small village near our home, called Adendorf. Each year, it hosts an iconic garden exhibition – a sales show with plenty of champagne and...
The CMO Fellowship is back
For the sixth year in a row, The Marketing Academy, McKinsey, Wisdom 8, and I will help 20 blue chip marketers on the way to CEO. This year - for the first time - we'll run a U.S.-based program in...
What makes a CMO successful? Lessons from over 300 Interviews
I thought I'll copy you in on this Forbes interview I recently did with Drew Neisser, author of the book The CMO’s Periodic Table and host of the CMO podcast Renegade Thinkers Unite....
Marketers: Don’t lose sight of the fact your job is to find customers
As a marketer, people are paying you for the firm’s most important job (next to innovation): finding customers – at the lowest possible cost. Finding customers is an art and a craft. The art is your...
For career success, being relevant trumps being cool
I love the Airbus A380. It’s an engineering masterpiece. The world’s largest airplane. Quiet. Spacious. Loved by passengers. Yet the A380 demonstrates what happens to businesses and careers when...
Ask customers for feed-forward, not feedback
Who’s the most powerful person in a firm? The CEO? No. The CFO? No. The head of sales? No. It’s the customer. When a customer complains, the CEO sits up. When a customer wants to leave, the head of...
To instigate change, first build credit
“You can help us build a love brand. I want to hire you,” the CEO said. Nina was thrilled. Her last years in consumer goods had been tough. Tight margins. Aggressive competitors. A firm, in which...
Make the middle manager cool again
Who wants to be a middle manager? Not many people. It’s nice to be the trainee – young and cool; it’s nice to be the CEO – with all the power. But the rest? Stuck in the sandwich’s middle. No longer...
Have more skin in the game
Everyone in the boardroom turned to me in anger. I spent much of my former career doing two jobs: leading large brands and running major marketing transformation programmes. I loved both. And in...
Don’t recruit yourself
We love the familiar, the recognisable, the known. And when it comes to picking a team member, many people are looking for a clone. Men recruit men. Creatives recruit creatives. Number crunchers...
Thrive in a matrix organisation
Do you thrive in a matrix organisation? In a matrix, everybody is in charge--and nobody has all the power. The person who can tell sales what to do, doesn't exist. The person who can tell product...
To make change happen, ditch your ego
Trust in politicians has evaporated. Consumer trust in brands is at an all-time low. And too many executives don’t trust their bosses. What’s the problem? Perhaps it’s professionalism? Brexit, for...
Beware the ‘binfluencer’
The internet is great. If you know something and you want to write a blog that 100,000 people read, you can. If you want to do a podcast that 100,000 people hear, you can. The internet is also great...
Three ways to be a bolder leader
Brave leaders change the world. Air traffic controller Anthonius Gunawan saved the 160 souls on board Batik Air 6231, by staying in the tower, so the plane could escape minutes before the earthquake...
To drive change, walk the halls
You are in the business of change. In fact, we are all in the business of change. We try to get customers to accept our offer. We try to get colleagues to support our cause. We try to get friends to...
Why marketers struggle in a rational world
Marketers are more emotional than many of their colleagues, which makes earning respect difficult, but they can gain influence by speaking the language of logic.
Tackle big issues
Hard work is appreciated. Or so people hope. That’s why they put in the long hours, go the extra mile, give their best. But then, things go nowhere. The big meeting gets cancelled, budgets get cut,...
Use the power of the bottom right-hand corner
To make change happen, shed light on the issue. Measure customer feedback, costs, time wasted – whatever your currency is. Make sure your data is solid. Praise those in the top left corner who are doing well; no need to shame those in the bottom right-hand corner – the chart will do it for you.
Build someone’s confidence
Tell people how you got to where you are. Talk about the hurdles. Share your tricks. Give hope. As a leader, the most precious thing you can help others build is confidence. And it’s free.
Set customers free
If you want dissatisfied customers, lock them in.
Have a good fight
For breakthrough results, harmony isn’t the recipe. Fighting is. Under one condition: the fight has to be constructive.
Make the middle seat wider
Tell customers it’s a middle seat upfront. Then, be generous. Give people a free drink, more air miles, a discount coupon, an extra report, your premium service package. Make the middle seat wider.If people feel good about your middle seat, they may come back. For sure, it’s fair.
Lean in, really
Sheryl Sandberg has a point. In her book ‘Lean In’, Facebook’s current COO asks women, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Sandberg is a public role model. Her book has empowered millions of...
Find your proper shoe size
“What’s the point of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)?” I asked Marketing Week readers that question. Why? Well, here is a baffling paradox: Each day, the world’s marketers create billions of cash...
Travel more
Use the power of travel for change. In organizations, get people to meet customers, switch departments, take on cross-functional work. Do the same yourself—and leave your country now and then. That one new perspective, that one new idea, that one new priority that you acquire can make all the difference.
Make something better
Elvis didn’t invent rock 'n' roll. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the smartphone.* Google didn't invent web search. All three took an idea, twisted it, made it better—and changed the world. People love...
Meet the skeptics
Reach out to three people who disagree. With your project. With your political perspective. With your moral view. Listen and say: “Thank you.” It’s not about making promises. It’s about genuinely learning what it will take to bridge the gaps.
The 12 Powers: Limited Time Bulk Deal
I've got good news. Until December 1st, our publisher, McGraw-Hill and 800-CEO-READ offer a 40% bulk discount for our marketing leadership book The 12 Powers of a...