Our enterprises are organised vertically, by function. Accounting, IT, HR, and so on, all vertically arranged to accommodate the leverage of resources that scaling of the output of those functions delivers.
Customers do not give a toss about your internal processes. Their only concern is the degree to which you can deliver the value they have paid for, the solution to the problem, the salve to their irritant, the mechanism to enable them to grow.
‘General management’ is a term that implies cross functional knowledge and accountability. Often however, the reality is different.
Functional expertise does not necessarily translate into cross functional effectiveness. Almost all ‘general managers’ irrespective of their title, are in that role because of functional skill and success.
Successful marketing by contrast relies on being able to assemble cross functional expertise and capacity in the absence of the functional power to do so. Marketers are the internal representatives of customers and potential customers, as well as being the custodians of the future cash flow initiatives of an enterprise.
Why is it that so few marketers make it to the ‘GM’ role? Why is it the tenure of senior marketing individuals is far shorter than the tenure of their senior functional peers?
Marketing, being about the future, requires foresight, an ability to deal with ambiguity, and a willingness to make decisions with less than complete information. Surely these are useful leadership skills?
It normally takes a while for the future to arrive, so success is hard to measure except with hindsight. It also make more obvious the inevitable mistakes that occur when a marketing function is seeking competitive advantage. Being wrong as you often will be when predicting the future, is rarely an ingredient in successful corporate pole-climbing.
Successful marketing requires horizontal skills as well as deep vertical ones concentrated on the tools to be used on the levers to be pulled. Of all of them available, the most important are in the hands of their functional peers, so horizontal, collaborative skill is an absolute requirement of successful marketers.
Often it is just called ‘leadership’
