Data has shown over the years that the C-suite role with the shortest average tenure has been the chief marketing officer. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported the average tenure of a CMO slipped to 43 months, whereas the tenure of other C-suite executives is on average longer, with CEOs’ average tenure reported at 88.4 months and CFOs’ average tenure at 63 months.
Given the relatively short tenure of CMOs, it was not completely surprising to see data from Deloitte that found CMOs are the least confident members of the C-suite. Deloitte conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with 575 Fortune 500 C-suite executives to examine perceptions on “CMOs’ contribution to corporate decision making, why CMOs struggle to find their voice in strategic conversations and how they can achieve their place as enterprise wide strategic leaders.”
If on average turnover in the CMO role takes place every three and a half years, that can cause disruption or shifts to the organization’s overarching marketing strategy. As a result, CMOs aren’t then in a position to see the impact of their strategy over time.
The researchers offered some guidance to CMOs:
- Collaborate with other C-level executives – this can facilitate buy-in and help ensure those other executives know, understand and hopefully support the strategic initiatives the CMO is driving forward on behalf of the enterprise. This also offers an opportunity to validate the strategy and secure additional strategic input from other executives – leading to a more informed strategy.
- Leverage knowledge of customer journey and experience to help inform and guide peers on the executive team, who tend to lean on the CMO for their expertise. The CMO’s depth of knowledge of the customer can be instrumental in helping other C-level executives be successful in their roles. And by helping peers achieve success, CMOs can foster support across the executive team.
We, too, are strong advocates of securing buy-in and dedicated a chapter in our book, “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR,” to the topic. This section includes a side-bar interview with Bruce Patton, cofounder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and coauthor of the best-selling book “Getting to Yes.” Patton offers the following guidance:
“If you don’t have buy-in or agreement, people won’t be very enthusiastic, and their behavior won’t be consistent with your goals.”
He goes on to state:
“It’s a mark of a competent person to understand there are often multiple ways of looking at a situation and that each might have integrity. There’s a lot of ambiguity out there, and there may be more than one path that leads to success. It can also be profoundly unsettling to have doubt about whether we’ve got the right answer. Often, we want to feel certain there aren’t valid objections and that there’s no chance of making a mistake, and so we don’t want to hear different points of view. If you see the world this way, you’ll have a strong incentive to bully people into not raising objections, but you’ll also be hiding from the complexity of the real world.”
Collaborating, building consensus and leveraging expertise for the good of the executive team will help elevate the importance of the CMO and visibility within the organization, and ensures everyone is working toward the same strategic business objectives.