Why Playing The Game Is Essential For Marketing Leaders
This was my first addition for a passion project I have running with fellow CMOs called Marketing Unfiltered. Enjoy.
This is Jess
Jess is a “fictional” CMO, an award-winning marketer, she loves her team, and loves being creative & doing Marketing, BUT hates conflict, constantly battling for Product feature builds and the lack of development is negatively impacting the business. Jess struggles to influence her company despite her impressive background and the CEO isn’t convinced Jess is the person for the job so skips their 1-2-1.
Q: Does Jess sound like you at all?
I hear Marketing leaders say the following all the time;
I don’t play the game.
I’m not political.
I just leave them to that.
I just want to do good work.
If you have ever felt like you have been thrown under the bus by a colleague, if you have felt attacked in a senior leadership meeting or if you struggle to calm down after a leadership team meeting it's likely you haven’t been playing the game while others have and are still playing.
I have been there too, I have battle scars like many of you.
My industry friends often will talk through their frustrations and it is often because we haven’t understood the role of an executive.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of my coaching clients hear me say:
If you don’t play the game, others are
The game plays on whether you play or not
The colleague you are constantly battling with has the trust and ear of your peers and boss, it appears you don’t, why is that?
We should not have to play the game, BUT we do…
You were never prepared, coached or taught what it meant to be on an executive team but it doesn’t mean you aren’t ready to be.
The New Q - Political Intelligence
I call playing the game - PQ, political intelligence. PQ is knowing you are in a game, knowing when to play the game harder, knowing when to step in, step out or step up in important situations and understanding how to teach others around them about PQ.
The 3Q’s - IQ, EQ & PQ:
IQ 🧠: We should all have a good level of work IQ - being good at what we do and having confidence in our abilities as Marketing leaders
EQ ❤️: We should have a good level of EQ - emotional intelligence - knowing when to apply more empathy, knowing when our team members might need the arm around them and what to ramp up to motivate our team members and our Marketing Management Team)
PQ 🎮: involves recognising the skills necessary for facilitating change, effectively applying pressure to colleagues or our teams, and navigating challenging interactions with colleagues and executives to drive performance forward.
Low PQ: If you have ever worked under a CMO who’s struggled with influence and continuously had to adjust their department, constantly having to amend their forecasts and conceding to other departments on requests most likely for Product features or Sales Team, it is almost certain they have no to low PQ.
High PQ: Some of the most successful CMOs are those who communicate well, navigate C-Suite politics smartly and know when to play their chips even when their departments' performance has dropped or not hit targets.
Lost PQ
I have experienced it several times whilst consulting - their most senior Marketer (or Growth Lead) has low influence over the exec team, feels backed into a corner again and goes into what I call “defend and over-explain mode”- over-explaining the issues and being defensive about the actions taken, this is while the rest of the leadership team looks around, giving that knowing nod from one to another, maybe an eye roll or two and the CEO pushes to move on in the workshop or leadership meeting to move away from the Marketing rant again.
This feels brutal, and lonely and is incredibly stressful! But help is at hand…
Real Executive Work
A mentor told me just over a decade ago, “being an executive is hard work, it is constant work, it takes smarts and getting used to conflicts, it is, however, executive work”.
This has stuck with me ever since and is why I am passionate about helping Marketing leaders.
Become A Strategic Operator
You were never taught the rules of the game or how to play it
You were never coached on how to be political
You are unaware of the tell-tell signs that you’re falling behind.
This is not your fault, nevertheless, it is time to become a strategic operator and actively decide you want to become the executive. Be deliberate, understand the current status games, work through the power dynamics, create your own onboarding and understand how the company works.
Show, Tell & Know You’re Being Tested: Whether you are in a fractional leadership role, an interim or in a full-time CMO role or just stepped up onto the S Team/ELT/SLT team you need to develop your “executive presence”, you will need to demonstrate your leadership style and understand when you are being tested or needing to test colleagues in the leadership team.
Show your most important actions, show your results connect back to the company metrics and (tell) call out good and bad behaviours with your peers.
Time To Be An Executive?
Being an executive isn’t just being an expert in your field or being seen as a good manager, it is navigating the status games and inherent power dynamics embedded into your business while driving the team and company performance forward.
Here Are 8 Actionable Ways To Improve Your PQ
Start Small - start by creating an overview, map out how decisions are made and see who holds the official & unofficial power. Who influences how things get moving. Create a 5-step plan to understand how they make decisions, what they are driven by and how you connect in to the system
Build Strong C-Suite Relationships - Your peers are your best friends or can feel like your biggest enemies. Your peers - support or criticise you (publically or away from your ears), build these relationships and help your team(s) leads to do the same.
A big hint; the CFO or FD is often the person who ultimately says yes or no, so definitely make a real effort to build a relationship with themUnderstand The Leadership Landscape - who makes the decisions, who influences them (is it the COO, CFO, CPO, HR etc), what drives their decisions, what causes celebration and what creates fear and chaos in the business. By understanding the dynamics of the C-Suite and the real role of HR, “get” the leadership landscape and can start to positively influence it
Understand What Wins The Internal Battles - is it passion, is it departmental performance, is it who is willing to step up, who battles hardest, who battles smartest, and who’s trusted by the CEO/founder? Get under the hood and work this out to play well with others and sway battles towards success
Create Communication Flow - On many C-Suites and leadership teams it can feel disorganised, the most organised or the most operationally savvy leads communication flow and actions for others. If you can be savvy and improve communications is an easy way to win
Connect Marketing To Company Goals - yes the most obvious is the tactic you have to implement, if you are not demonstrating how Marketing is laddering into the company goals and being the driver of success on these goals you will struggle to have considerable influence or have any sway. If you are struggling to make an impact consider how you collaborate to improve these or how you make that big step change into showing Marketing is the force in your business
Money Follows Attention, Then Performance - if you are not grabbing the right attention, investment into your budget will not follow. When you are asking for more budget without the right attention budgets won’t be unlocked, performance is the carrot you have to dangle, however, often attention is the big unbreakable stick that wins first and wins out budget battles. Be better at grabbing the right attention and buy-in from colleagues and ensuring performance is there to back it up.
Remember: Large Teams + “Poor Performance" = Distrust & Becomes An Easy Target - Marketing leaders are often told they have large teams and questioned where the performance is, whether that's metrics like ROI, ROAS or if that's MQLs, generating sales through specific channels or how they are converting sign ups to customers. By connecting back to the goals, and celebrating cross-functional wins you are building more trust and becoming less of a target.
In the short term and planning for 2025, you are most likely to be operating in “more with less”, you will need to learn to play with what you have and embrace your new skillset (political intelligence) to influence how Marketing is seen and felt within your business while driving the business forward.
You may just keep that excellent Marketer who always seems to be on the brink of leaving, you might win an extra headcount where you probably would have lost before and that budget increase might just come off.
In the mid to long term when you operate effectively as an executive with PQ, you can confidently go against the grain, go against the data, fight against the constant pivoting and undo the long-term plan agreed upon in a hotel basement in the middle of last year, you can build the strategic way forward while convincing your leadership peers this is how we grow, how we leverage more word of mouth, double down on PLG or effectively move away from a sales first approach.
Or… will it give you the confidence you can move on to another company and positively change their business and propel it forward.