Alignment of Organizational Effort

Alignment, the Killer of Initiatives: Abstract

The track record for organizations seeking strategic change initiatives is dismal.  One can identify many reasons for this failure including the promise of a silver bullet that will fix whatever is ailing the company.  However, at the heart of the problem is inertia that is inherent in the philosophy of functionally structured organizations.  In a world where customers exercise significant buying power and competition is fierce, can organizations afford to be slow in adopting change?  This white paper suggests that the alignment of effort is key to success/failure of change initiatives and offers an alternative format that is market focused.

Marketing & Sales Alignment: Abstract

This white paper explores the issues to taking a traditionally oriented sales and marketing organization and making it customer centric.  This may seem to be an oxymoron but the truth is that most sales and marketing organizations are indiscriminant in the acquisition and care of customers.

Budgeting for Marketing in a Soft Economy

We are currently experiencing a soft economy and therefore corporations will be faced with reduced or negative growth and will seek to adjust expenses to maintain profitability.  In an effort to avoid excessive reductions in headcount, senior management is likely to reduce spending in marketing and sales.  The rationale for this action tends to be multi-faceted but it gravitates to an inability of marketing and sales to credibly demonstrate a relationship of cause and effect (ROI) between spending and revenue/margins.  Given current events, there may be little that can be done to stave off these reductions; therefore, the issue becomes one of how to best manage this cycle.  Essentially, there are two alternatives: (1) hunker down and wait for better times or (2) proactively seek to establish cause and effect relationships that will ensure effective resource allocation in the future.  This white paper outlines the limitations of current budget processes and identifies areas that marketing and sales can unilaterally and/or collectively pursue to strengthen their rightful leadership position in the corporation.

The CMO/CIO Organizational Alignment Mandate

Chief information officer reporting relationships continue to be distanced from the strategy function.  The marketing function is experiencing this same distancing from strategy.  However, the two functions should be on the leading edge of strategy, rather than the receiving end.  This white paper identifies a number of common issues that these two “C” level executives could rally behind that would increase their rightful positions in the area of strategy development and competitive advantage.

A CMO Maturity Model

The thrust of the white paper is that the turnover in CMO positions is caused by a mismatch of expectations between the CMO, CEO, and other C level reports.  The reality is that few CMOs possess the complete requisite skill set required to address the complex set of issues of today’s marketplace.  Therefore, CMOs need to recognize the full range of skill sets and create a strategy for acquiring these capabilities along with a time table and measurable outcomes.  Central to this operational strategy is to create and leverage a marketing operations group that can provide the essential foundation and glue to maintain a cohesive face for marketing within the organization at the operational level.

Cracking the Marketing/Sales Alignment Code

How to end the CMO Revolving Door Syndrome

North American management has a history for popularizing new concepts and then demonizing them with the same energy when they appear to not deliver the spectacular results originally promised.  The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is becoming a poster child for this phenomenon and is in danger of becoming more road kill on the highway of discarded management ideas.  There is a pattern involved here, that must be broken to achieve the benefit that originally spawned the CMO idea.

Accelerating CMO Success

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