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Growth strategy | Advisory | Force multiplier

Leadership

Growth Leaders Love to Get Dirty

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“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you.” – Derek Jeter

Driving organizational growth is hard work.

It can be messy. Stressful. Full of uncertainty.

It is seldom easy. Nor is it ever free.

Leaders cannot just delegate growth. The best ones lead the charge, not from a cozy corner office, but out in the field.

I have found that the best growth leaders are the ones who dig in to the challenge right alongside their teams.

They get out of the building, and spend time in the market.

They also show up ready to do the work.

Put simply, they get dirty.

Leadership is Hard Work

There is no mistaking that growing an organization takes hard work, regardless of the industry or market.

Let’s be honest. If it were easy, then everybody would be doing it. Right?!

Peter Daland, the former USC and Olympic swimming coach put it this way, “The secret to swimming is not how far you swim, and it’s not how hard you swim. The secret to swimming is how far you are willing to swim hard.”

I think this same sentiment rings true for leadership. Great leaders are willing to work hard. They don’t give up. They keep going.

Many people mistakenly look for the easy way out. Unfortunately, it is very rare to find a single tactic or “hack” that drives organizational growth. As I shared in an earlier blog article, there is usually no silver bullet to growth.

Driving growth takes courage, commitment, perseverance, and an unwavering belief in your vision of the future.

Driving growth also takes a willingness to be make mistakes (and to learn from them!)

Even if you do the wrong thing, at least it is something. You will learn from it. Moreover, you can now cross it off the list of things to try! And, you will then be in a position to pivot towards a better solution.

A leader who does not do the work will not get the benefit of these lessons. They will eventually reach a point where they fail. However, a hard working leader who also works smart will eventually find a way to overcome whatever obstacle lies in their path.

One thing is as certain for businesses as it is for human beings: A sedentary life does not lead to healthy outcomes. You have to get out and move!

You have to get dirty.

Tips on How to Lead Smarter

In addition to hard work, the real secret is you also have to lead smart.

What do I mean by this?

Here are a few examples of great growth leader strategies and behaviors. I have witnessed them in practice and tried to exemplify them in my growth leadership roles:

  • Lead From the Front – Growth leaders are visible. They spend a lot of time with their teams, and out in the market. For example, the CEO participating in sales pitches. The CMO writing copy or dissecting web analytics. The Head of Sales carrying a quota and actively coaching their team in the field. The bottom line is you can’t credibly lead what you can’t (or won’t) do yourself.
  • Communicate Frequently and Clearly – Growth leaders are not only visible to their teams. They communicate with their teams frequently and clearly. The goal is not to just speak to be heard. For growth leaders it is always to speak to be understood.
  • Always Looking Over the Horizon – Growth leaders are always asking “what if” questions of their teams to stress test strategies and plans. Helping them to identify potentially adverse scenarios and thinking through the right approach.
  • Convert Ideas Into Executable Plans – In growth companies, ideas are cheap. Everything looks like an opportunity. However, it is a trap. Ideas are free. They are actually easy to find. It is execution that is difficult. Growth leaders focus on helping their teams convert great ideas into achievable plans. Execution is everything.
  • Push Hard, But Not Unrealistically – To drive growth you have to be aggressive, which includes setting aggressive goals and timelines. However, they must also be realistic. The quickest way to burn out a team is to push them to do something that is unachievable. Nobody likes being set up to fail.
  • Do It Right the First Time – There is an old expression that “haste makes waste.” This is an all too common outcome in growth initiatives. Remember the US Navy SEALS mantra that slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
  • Delegate, But Never Abdicate – Many leaders get this wrong. They think they are delegating a task or responsibility, but in reality, they are abdicating. What’s the difference? Abdicating is telling a team member to do something, but not making sure they know what to do and never following up. It is a cancer in any organization. Delegation, on the other hand, is telling a team member to do something, and then verifying they know what to do, offering insight or education as needed, providing encouragement, and following up to check on the status.
  • Provide Emotional Balance – When the team is stressed out, growth leaders demonstrate calm. When the team is out of energy, growth leaders share their passion. When the team doesn’t know what to do next, growth leaders show the way.
  • Provide Support – Growth leaders always focus on removing obstacles that prevent their teams from moving forward. Sometimes this translates into proving extra resources. Other times it might mean helping the team to solve problems. Sometimes it is literally lending a helping hand.Growth leaders never underestimate the team building and camaraderie that comes from an “all hands on deck” exercise to solve an urgent problem or meet a deadline.
  • Check Their Ego at the Door – Just because someone has a C-level title that does not automatically make him or her an effective leader. The quickest and easiest way to destroy any hope of achieving a growth strategy is to be so arrogant that you are unwilling to roll up your sleeves and get dirty.

Parting Thoughts on Getting Dirty

In my years of being a growth leader and member of a number of management teams, I have on more than one occasion witnessed individuals who think that once they ascend to a leadership role they don’t have to do “real work” anymore.

This dynamic inevitably leads to a rotten organization. Because even if the leader does not feel that way, you can be sure their team does!

Of course, growth leaders do have to take part in meetings with other executives and the board of directors. They also have to manage the functional departments to keep the organization running. However, the best growth leaders recognize that it is never a choice of doing one over the other, it is the decision to do both.

You cannot effectively lead an organization from the ivory tower…you have to be out in the market. In the dirt with your team.

There are no shortcuts.

In conclusion, there is one last important aspect to getting dirty. It is very gratifying, and is often the place where growth leaders find the most joy in their role. As a good friend of mine, and fellow growth leader, is fond of saying: the fun is in the mud!

-Onward

How to Navigate and Win Against VUCA Forces

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“Change is the only constant in life. One’s ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life.” – Benjamin Franklin

We live in an increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world. The winds of change are blowing in every direction, in every region, and across every industry.

At this point, there is only one safe conclusion: Current levels of disruption and unpredictability are likely not going away. Change is the only constant. So how best to move forward? How do you navigate through a VUCA environment and win?

In this challenging business climate, traditional strategic planning frameworks have proven to be distressingly inadequate. The speed and ferocity of the health and economic impacts caused by the pandemic caught many organizations flat-footed, and ill prepared to react quickly.

Faced with this uncertain and disruptive environment, a growing number of business leaders and growth strategists have been inspired to develop VUCA Strategic Plans to guide their organizations forward and better plan for an unknown future.

While VUCA has proven to be a valuable framework to visualize the disruptive environment we now operate in, it is not always easy to apply. This article will present some tactical remedies that business leaders and growth strategists can use to counter each of the VUCA forces.

VUCA Overview

As a quick reminder, the definition of VUCA:

  • Volatility – The tendency for things to change quickly and unpredictably, typically for the worse. These challenges are unexpected or unstable, and may be of unknown duration. However, they are not necessarily hard to understand – knowledge about them is often available. The more volatile the world is, the more change there is and the faster that change occurs.
  • Uncertainty – Situations where there is imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements, or to the unknown. Despite a lack of other information, we know the disruptive event’s basic cause and effect. Change is possible, but not a given. Uncertainty refers to the extent to which we can confidently predict the future, therefore the more uncertain the world is, the harder it is to predict.
  • Complexity – Refers to the number of factors that we need to take into account, their variety and the relationships between them. The more factors, the greater their variety and the more they are interconnected, the more complex an environment is. Some information is available, or predictable, but the volume or nature of it can be overwhelming to process. The more complex the world is, the harder it is to analyze and come to rational conclusions.
  • Ambiguity – A lack of clarity about how to interpret something. Situations where information is incomplete, contradicting or too inaccurate to draw clear conclusions. More generally, it refers to fuzziness and vagueness in ideas and terminology. The more ambiguous the world is, the harder it is to interpret. The causal relationships are completely unclear. No precedents exist and you often face many “unknown unknowns.”

Tactical Remedies for Each of the VUCA Forces

The VUCA model has great value as a strategic planning tool. By using it as a framework to interpret the current operating environment, business leaders and growth strategists can think creatively about new strategies for the organization, and begin planning for alternative scenarios.

One common question that many leaders ask is how do you counteract each of the four VUCA forces?

Great question, here is how…

We can describe the best VUCA leaders by their vision, understanding, clarity, and adaptability. These four leadership abilities become the opposing force to each element of the VUCA model.

It looks like this:

  • Vision counteracts Volatility
  • Understanding counteracts Uncertainty
  • Clarity counteracts Complexity
  • Adaptability counteracts Ambiguity

The key to managing in a VUCA environment is to break it down into its component parts. Once we identify volatile, uncertain, complex, or ambiguous situations then we can tackle them. Since each type of situation has its own causes and resolutions, so it is best to deal with them one at a time.

In the next sections, we will look at each of these forces.

Counter Volatility with Vision

Vision – You can counteract the first VUCA force (Volatility) with Vision.

In this context, vision is not referring to sight, or the ability to see. It is an acknowledgement that in turbulent times it is very easy to get distracted. Leaders need to rise above volatility by having a clear vision of the future for their organization.

Leaders with a clear long-term vision of where they want their organizations to be can better weather volatile shorter-term environmental changes such as economic downturns or new competition in their markets. Vision helps them see past the immediate chaos.

Some helpful tips:

  • It almost goes without saying, but leaders much acknowledge that change is the only constant. By embracing change, we can find opportunity. Accept and embrace change, and encourage your teams to do the same. Resistance is futile!
  • Begin with the end in mind. The US Army calls this the “Backward Planning Sequence”, where they plan a mission from the end first (actions on the objective) then work backwards, step-by-step, to the beginning of the operation.
  • Build all strategies and plans on the strong foundation of the organization’s Core Ideology (mission, values, purpose). This “true North” approach to navigating an organization is similar to using a compass instead of the map! It provides clarity and helps prevent external chaotic events from pulling them off course, or abandoning their mission.
  • Leaders should always be thinking, and communicating to their teams, from the perspective of the organization’s Envisioned Future (vision, long-term objectives). By painting a compelling picture of the future, and illuminating the path to get there, they will align people and resources, and provide the motivational push to get it done.
  • While long-term objectives should be solid, it is important that leaders allow their teams some flexibility in how they get there. This latitude allows them to react, in real-time, to changing market conditions.

Beat Uncertainty with Understanding

Understanding – You can counteract the second VUCA force (Uncertainty) with Understanding.

To be effective in a chaotic VUCA environment, leaders have to look and listen beyond their functional areas of expertise and span of control. To make sense of the volatility and to lead with vision they need broad Situational Awareness of their operating environment.

By deliberating practicing a “stop, look, and listen” approach, leaders will gain important decision-making information. To do this effectively requires leaders to communicate with all levels of employees in their organization and to develop and demonstrate teamwork and collaboration skills.

Some useful tips:

  1. When building situational awareness, many leaders make the mistake of only paying attention to information sources and opinions that reinforce their own views. This creates a huge risk of missing alternate viewpoints. Instead, leaders need to cast a wide net. They should get different points of view from many sources by engaging directly with their customers and employees to ensure they learn about changes in their markets. The best leaders wander around the office talking to their teams and get out of the building to spend time with clients, prospects and partners in the marketplace.
  2. Once the encounter uncertainty in their operating environment, leaders can gain an overview by evaluating the PESTEL factors: political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legislative.
  3. With broad situational awareness of their environment and their vision in mind, leaders also need to have an in-depth understanding of their organization’s strengths and weaknesses. The goal should always be to take advantage of rapidly changing circumstances by playing to strengths while minimizing weaknesses.
  4. Leaders should embrace Scenario Planning as a critical part of their strategic planning process. This useful tool helps leaders and their teams to anticipate future threats and begin preparing contingency plans to respond.

React to Complexity with Clarity

Clarity – You can counteract the third VUCA force (Complexity) with Clarity.

We all know that in a VUCA world, chaos comes quickly and hits you hard. Leaders who can react swiftly and tune out the noise will make better decisions.

To gain clarity effectively, leaders need to break problems down to the basics. By learning to simplify challenges down to their root causes, leaders and their teams can then begin to think creatively and make quick decisions on how to respond.

Some useful tips:

  • Make sure that everyone in the organization understands the vision and long-term objectives you are trying to reach. Leaders should communicate the organization’s vision, purpose, and values often. An emergency is not the ideal time to help your team understand the organization’s direction!
  • The best teams are creative and collaborate often. Leaders need to develop this capability across the organization. VUCA situations are usually too complicated for one person to handle on their own. It takes a team.

Overcome Ambiguity with Adaptability

Adaptability – You can counteract the fourth VUCA force (Ambiguity) with Adaptability.

This concept of adaptability applies perfectly to today’s chaotic VUCA environment. I believe those organizations (and leaders) who are best able to adapt to change will grow and thrive. Those who don’t, won’t!

By taking an agile approach, moving swiftly and adapting to circumstances, leaders and their teams can quickly make decisions and execute. This requires many of the skills and abilities discussed above plus a willingness to experiment, iterate, and figure out what works in the face of adversity. This is what I have

Some useful tips:

  • Effective leaders reinforce to their teams that the only way to make progress towards any objective is to take action. This deliberate effort in the face of hostile VUCA forces is not always easy, or pretty. When in doubt, move fast, and get stuff done!
  • Teams need to try hard, fail fast, and learn. Then rinse and repeat. This adaptation to changing market conditions is the key to competing and winning in any market. Leaders can promote agility and adaptability by encouraging their teams to plan, and consider alternative scenarios.
  • In many organizations, long-range plans are often obsolete by the time they are approved and funded. This does not mean the effort was wasted. Leaders should encourage continuous consideration of alternative strategies, that way there is always a plan B, in case the first strategy does not work out.
  • Leaders should encourage their teams to continuously be learning about themselves, the market, and their teammates. They also need the latitude and flexibility to experiment, without fear of making a mistake or failing.

Thriving in Turbulent Times

Many experts agree that VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) forces are only going to increase in frequency and intensity. However, that does not mean VUCA is a bad thing. It represents the changing environmental conditions most organizations must now operate within, and overcome if they want to be successful.

Since organizations are largely powerless to stop VUCA – leaders and their teams must learn how to live with, and effectively manage, these forces in their market environment. By learning how to counteract each VUCA force – with vision, understanding, clarity, and adaptability – we can thrive in these turbulent times.

-Onward

Is Your Organization Ready for Growth?

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“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

It is a safe bet that almost any leader you ask will say they want to grow their business.

That makes sense, right? Of course it does. Everyone wants to have a role in a thriving and growing business.

However, once you get past the desire for growth, I have noticed things tend to get a lot more challenging.

Not every leader is prepared for the hard work of developing a growth strategy, and not every organization is ready or equipped to execute. While there are a number of detailed tactical questions one could ask to help diagnose an organization’s readiness for growth, I have found it useful to start with some big picture, strategic questions first.

Change is the Only Constant

We can summarize the underlying challenge in this discussion with one word: change. High-end management consultants would use two words to describe the process: business transformation!

No matter your word choice, accelerating business growth inevitably requires change. This is the crux of the problem for many organizations. Not every leader, or organization, is prepared to disrupt themselves. To drive new growth they will have to change their old approach to the market. They cannot continue doing only what they have always done. They have to change their activities. Sometimes they may even have to change people, process, structure, or systems. This kind of change can be painful.

Change is the only constant in our disrupted VUCA world. Despite that fact, embracing change is hard work. The natural state of most people is to resist difficult or uncertain things. Many will choose to dig in and resist change, or run from it instead of running towards it.

Yet, business history teaches us that the only way to survive and thrive is to adapt. In fact, adaptability is a key ingredient for effectively dealing with change. The willingness and ability to pivot as new circumstances present themselves and embrace something different is vital for creating business growth and success. We also know that great teams are the ones that will show up and do the hard work required to adapt.

Fundamental Growth Strategy Questions

Once leaders have embraced change, they can begin to ask fundamental questions to assess the readiness of their organization for growth. Here are a few that I have been using:

  • Is the value proposition of the organization’s product/service sound? In other words, is your product or service any good, or is it crap? If it needs work (and it is okay to admit that it does) then do that before you invest in growth. Your customers, and your team, will thank you!
  • Is the leadership team, the board, and ownership aligned around the desire and need to grow the business? If not, then clearly this needs to be a priority conversation.
  • Are you prepared to invest time and money in growth?
  • Is there a growth leader who is able to rally the team and prepared lead the charge?
  • Is there a cultural willingness and ability to confront reality? In strategic planning exercises, it is a requirement to put everything on the table: the good…the bad…and the ugly. This can sometimes get very personal for leaders and their teams who take great pride in the business they have built. Are you willing to call your baby ugly?
  • Related to the questions around confronting reality – is there a willingness to challenge all assumptions? Are you willing to admit the old ways of doing things may be outdated? Are you willing to consider new approaches? To challenge sacred cows?
  • Asking questions like these can often quickly lead to difficult discussions around making structural changes to the business. Are you prepared to revisit and possibly make changes to the people, process, and technology that will help drive business growth?

Where Do You Go From Here?

Business growth is great to have, but never easy to deliver. It requires leadership, change, investment, and a lot of hard work. The questions in this article should provide some insight to the readiness of your organization for growth.

Now the hard work begins…

Strategic leaders who decide to proceed with a growth initiative should first focus on getting situational awareness about their marketplace. They will gain valuable insights by getting out of the building and making sure their teams do this important learning exercise. Some of these insights might lead to developing alternative strategies or plans to address other scenarios.

Casting a wide net of inquiry, asking questions, listening, challenging, and learning provides great perspective and becomes a critical foundation for creating a VUCA Strategic Plan for growth.

With growth strategy and plan in hand, it is time to execute. The most successful leaders will inspire their teams with a bias to action. In the growth mode, leaders need to quickly triage issues, make aligned decisions, and push forward.

Being a leader in times of transformation is challenging and difficult, but driving growth for the organization is a great reward.

-Onward

Should You Consider a Fractional CMO?

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese proverb.

Many leaders struggle when making marketing decisions for their organization.

The challenges are not only around marketing program spend, but also marketing leadership. The reality is marketing spend historically has a well-deserved bad reputation for lack of measurable ROI, and successfully leading marketing is…in a word…difficult for many CMOs.

Yet, the value of an experienced Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in defining and executing the growth plan for an organization can be significant. When the right CMO role archetype is hired, and given the budget and permission to do what is necessary, they can help propel a company to new heights of growth and profitability.

A proven bridge strategy to get from having no marketing leader to a full-time member of the leadership team is the concept of a fractional CMO. However, it is not always easy to know the optimal time to bring on a fractional CMO.

The Value of a Fractional CMO

A fractional CMO, essentially, is a part-time executive engaged by the organization, on some type of fixed or on-going contract basis, to lead the marketing effort.

A fractional CMO can provide all of the benefits of a full-time CMO. For those organizations with large growth aspirations but constrained budgets, a fractional CMO can deliver results at a lower cost and reduced risk. The value proposition for a fractional CMO can be very compelling.

Here are a few of the more common situations, or use cases, where a fractional CMO can make a lot of sense for your organization:

  • Emerging Growth Company – If you are a smaller organization but have big growth plans (annual revenue between $5-50M) you likely cannot afford or justify a full-time CMO. By engaging a fractional CMO you will free up cash allowing you to invest in marketing programs and to bring on experienced implementers.
  • Distracted Founder/CEO – In many startups or emerging growth companies it is not unusual for the founder/CEO to wear many hats. In addition to the proverbial “chief bottle washer” title, they may also be functioning as the head of marketing and sales. Obviously, as a company scales this becomes untenable, and relief must be found. Bringing on a fractional CMO enables the CEO to delegate their marketing leadership duties.
  • Leadership Vacuum – Perhaps because of an executive departure, or by virtue of rapid growth, the marketing group is suffering from a lack of vision or leadership. In many organizations, marketing is an after-thought behind sales and thus largely ignored, delegated to a well-intentioned but inexperienced staffer, or handed off to outside agencies who have their own agenda. In either case, the marketing function and potential for growth go sideways without a capable leader. An experienced fractional CMO can create or rebuild a marketing organization, and provide mentorship and growth opportunities to the team.
  • No Growth Strategy – The senior leadership team and board of directors want growth, but are not sure how to develop a strategy or plan to achieve it. This is a common situation where an experienced fractional CMO can come in, quickly assess the situation, and take the lead on developing and executing a growth strategy.
  • Marketing / Sales Divide – This is another common ailment found in many organizations who desire growth. When marketing and sales are misaligned, or entirely dysfunctional, an experienced fractional CMO can quickly get things back on track. It is a truism that in the best run go-to-market organizations, marketing enables sales.
  • Missed Market Opportunities – The organization consistently lags industry growth. New products or services have failed to launch effectively, and languish as a result. Aggressive competitors are consistently winning deals that the company used to win. These are all signs of a failed strategy (or the lack of a strategy at all!) A seasoned CMO is the answer.
  • Lack of ROMI Clarity – The company invests in marketing tactics like tradeshows and search engine ads, but can’t track marketing attribution and has no idea what drives new business. This lack of insight and metrics means the company has no clarity on marketing ROI (ROMI). An experienced CMO will ensure this gets fixed.
  • Transformation Required – There are cases where a CEO, board, or private equity company want to get an honest assessment so that they can affect change on the go-to-market organization. This change management process is a perfect use case for a fractional CMO to parachute in, triage, and rebuild the marketing (and sometimes sales) function.

Before making a decision on whether a fractional CMO is right for your organization there are some basic questions to answer first.

Do You Even Need a Head of Marketing?

Say what?!

I know, it is an odd question to ask in an article focused on CMO’s. However, it has to be asked.

The truth is, many organizations simply do not need a senior level head of marketing, nor can they afford the cost.

Here is a quick assessment you can use to help answer the question of whether your organization needs, and can justify having a CMO. Rate each of the following criteria for your organization, on a low-to-high (or, small-to-large) scale:

  • Size of company
  • Company growth ambitions
  • Product/service value to customers
  • Market size
  • Geographic scope
  • Market ecosystem complexity
  • Lead sources
  • Complexity of buyer’s journey
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Length of sales cycle
  • Sales channels
  • Size of go-to-market (marketing and sales) team
  • Marketing budget allocation
  • Industry competitiveness

Scoring: In general, the higher you rank your organization on most or all of the above criteria, the more you can justify and should consider having a CMO on your leadership team.

Once you have made the decision that you do need a CMO, the next task is to think about your business situation.

What Type of CMO Do You Need?

Perhaps the most important, yet often neglected, question is what type of CMO do you need? Much like every organization is different, so are marketing leaders.

CMOs are defined by their experience, temperament, and leadership style. There are a number of well-known archetypes for the CMO role, ranging from Growth Driver to Innovator to Renaissance Marketer. Which archetype you need in the CMO role will entirely depend on a number of factors unique to your organization. Carefully thinking about factors like your business model, competitive position, and company maturity, will help to point you in the right direction.

If you get this wrong, your new CMO will be severely handicapped from the start because they will not match what your organization needs. Get it right and you will enjoy a huge running start towards success. This requires an honest self-assessment by the CEO, the senior leadership team, and often the board of directions of an organization.

Unfortunately, very few organizations give the CMO archetype question the consideration it deserves.

Full-time or Fractional CMO?

After determining the need for a CMO, and thinking about the ideal archetype for the role, leaders have one final question to answer: Is this a full-time role, or should they consider a fractional CMO?

To be clear, there is no right answer, only the answer that is right for your company and your unique situation. While it is often driven by economics, that is not always the case. For every large organization that loves the flexibility and cost control of a fractional CMO, there is a small organization where a full-time CMO drives outsize value and is more than worth the investment.

Here are some additional considerations for strategic leaders to think about when making the decision about engaging a fractional CMO versus a full-time CMO:

  • How frustrated are you with your current go-to-market (marketing and sales) program? If you are spending money and not seeing results, could your current leadership and strategy be the problem? A fractional CMO can join your firm on a consulting basis to assess the current as-is situation, triage, and strategize a new approach.
  • How important is growth? Can you afford to wait? Or, do you need a comprehensive growth strategy quickly? A fractional CMO, can join your organization immediately, and add value from day one.
  • Can you comfortably afford a full-time CMO; along with an appropriate amount of marketing program spend? If not, a fractional CMO will free up budget that can be devoted to marketing programs.
  • Can you successfully recruit and retain the caliber of CMO you need, with the right experience, skillset, and leadership presence? Oftentimes you will be able to find more seasoned executives who want to work as fractional CMOs.
  • Has marketing, and/or sales oversight, become a distraction for the CEO? Is it time for a professional go-to-market leader to step in and relieve the company leader to focus on other priorities or areas of the business where they are stronger?
  • Is your organization, and company ownership, risk taking? Or, more risk averse? Engaging a fractional CMO can provide a high degree of flexibility and control, versus taking on the burden of a highly compensated executive.
  • How important is operating leverage and flexibility? If you are committed to running a lean organization, then a fractional CMO is a good option.

The final decision usually comes from a careful consideration of cost, potential impact, flexibility, and required expertise.

In balance, if there is any doubt it is always safe to go down the fractional CMO route. The CMO role is just too strategically important to leave vacant. You can always revisit the decision down the road, and you will find that many fractional CMOs would consider full-time roles if the opportunity is compelling enough.

Next Steps…

A fractional CMO is a part-time professional who can deliver incredibly strategic marketing results for your organization. As an experienced marketing leader, they will develop growth strategy and own execution of the plan, while building a robust go-to-market organization.

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this blog: when is the right time to engage a fractional CMO? The correct answer for most organizations who want to grow is “sooner rather than later.”

What are you waiting for?

If you are uncertain about next steps, or want to have a deeper discussion about your organization, give me a call.

-Onward

Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast

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“Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.” – Benjamin Franklin

The saying “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” originated in the US Special Forces, but the fundamental principle behind it has been around for much longer, often shared with the expression “haste makes waste.”

The underlying principle is that it is more efficient to do things right the first time. When we rush into doing something, we run the risk of making mistakes and producing inferior results. An added benefit of being deliberate is that with enough practice you can actually become quicker and more efficient at doing the task.

This is an important concept for leaders in any organization. There is a fine line when strategic planning between taking decisive action, and moving too fast. As it turns out, there is great benefit to taking enough time to think about the challenge first. This allows time to assess the situation, develop a strategy, plan, think of different scenarios, and then take purposeful action.

A risk in moving too fast is you do not think things through. You miss clues. Opportunities pass you by. Risks hit you head on because you never anticipated them. Sloppy execution exposes you to a better-prepared competitor.

Military Origins

Special Forces operators carefully prepare for military operations. For example, US Navy SEALs train for missions slowly at first. They walk through the plan and rehearse responses to different possible scenarios. They rinse and repeat until they have a smooth cadence. They practice at slow speeds to build up their comfort level and “muscle memory”, which allows them to execute quickly in combat.

When you consider that modern infantry combat centers around mobility, there is a lot of logic to this approach – there are four typical scenarios in urban combat:

  • Don’t move – you risk getting pinned down and surrounded.
  • Move too fast – risk of being exposed to enemy fire with no cover.
  • Move too slow – risk of being outflanked.
  • Move too hastily – risk of losing situational awareness and running into a trap.

Movement is very important. Clearly, nothing good happens if you are not moving. However, you cannot move too quickly or slowly, you must move with purpose. Of course, there are situations where moving fast is necessary and potentially lifesaving for soldiers – the goal is to move as quickly and perfectly as possible. This is where preparation, practice, and leadership comes in.

For military operators this is a critical way to prepare for difficult challenges, and ensure successful outcomes. With this diligent preparation behind them, they can then perform the operation quickly and efficiently out in the field.

This approach applies equally well to the world of work.

In the World of Work

We live in unprecedented times of unpredictability and disruption. This VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment can sometimes make it challenging to know what to do next.

Many business leaders fall victim to the dangerous assumption that the only way to win in this environment is by running full speed ahead at all times. This popular myth has been glorified by business media, and is magnified by our 24/7, always on, society.

Pick any field, and at the highest levels of achievement and performance, you will find professionals who have trained extensively using this principle to prepare. For example, even when they are moving incredibly fast, elite athletes do not look rushed – they appear relaxed, with purposeful but fluid movements. What we do not see without the benefit of slow motion and expert analysis is that their movements have been finely tuned and optimized through a lot of repetitions, hard work and coaching.

The same observation applies to professionals in any field you can think of – surgeons, master electricians, enterprise sales reps, marketing executives…they all reach the pinnacle of achievement through hard work, deliberate practice, and never rushing. They have a strategy, develop a plan, and then execute. Over time, they perfect their craft and become quicker and more efficient.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

A Sailing Example

When the skipper of a sailboat wants to change directions, it is called tacking the boat. During a race, this critical and carefully timed maneuver can cause the boat to gain or lose position depending on how well it is executed by the crew. There are many variables to consider, including boat speed, wind speed and direction, waves, crew, and proximity to other boats. If you turn too quickly, you shave off speed; turn too slowly and you lose momentum. The goal is a slow but steady, smooth turn with the wind catching the sail at the perfect moment and accelerating the boat out of the turn in the new direction.

Tacking is a skill practiced constantly by sailboat racing crews, and speed is the reward. They know races are often won or lost by a few seconds, and executing this crucial maneuver smoothly and quickly is a critical factor to winning.

Too Slow Can Be Fatal

While slow is smooth, too slow can be fatal.

Leaders must strike a delicate balance between being thoughtful and taking action. The downside to taking a slow approach is that in some organizations it can devolve to “paralysis by analysis.” Teams end up spending so much time thinking and planning that they lose momentum and opportunity passes them by.

A difficult part of leadership is properly designing the solution, but also instilling a sense of urgency to get it done. In this context, urgency does not mean being frantic or that it must be done immediately. Urgency means having a bias for action, but also doing it well.

Movement is the underlying force behind the “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” philosophy – movement that is thoughtful, with a purpose and proper planning, but also deliberate and unrelenting.

Conclusion

A hurried soldier makes a careless mistake and puts their life in harm’s way, an unprepared athlete loses a game against an inferior opponent, and a hard charging executive makes an ill-considered decision. While the stakes are different, the solution to preparing for each situation is the same.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

-Onward