BusinessWeek columnist, Marshall Goldsmith, is author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Succession: Are You Ready?" and the New York Times and WSJ bestseller, "What You Got Here Won't Get You There." He also pens a column for BusinessWeek called Marshall & Friends. This week, Goldsmith wrote about "Marketing in the Age of Turbulence," in which he interviewed well-known marketing guru and author Philip Kotler. Goldsmith did a great job setting up the interview and Kotler delivered great wisdom, but a real opportunity was missed. Neither gave credit to the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations as a way to navigate through the waves of change. That inspired me to post of comment on the BW site. I hope MO wins a few more evangelists as a result. But it woudl have been so much more powerful if the likes of Goldsmith and Kotler would have used their pulpit to give MO some love.
Here's the comment I posted:
Adding some left-brain people to the marketing department addresses just part of the problem. What about short CMO tenure? And what about a lack of operational focus? Interesting that early on in his article Marshall casually uses the term "marketing operations" to describe marketing departments, yet fails to mention the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations (MO), a key enabler to delivering the strategic and accountable marketing he envisions. We need CMOs and CEOs with the vision to invest in dedicated MO functions that effectively operate as the CMO's Chief of Staff. Especially in complex organizations, MO is integral to bridging strategy to execution, and aligning marketing with the C-suite and other stakeholders throughout the enterprise (such as sales, finance, IT, customer experience). Most organizations are missing the opportunity to change the MO of marketing by fully embracing MO. This is a shame because MO done right can hugely impact an enterprise's business intelligence, sales enablement, pipeline velocity, scalability, brand governance, customer experience, ability to demonstrate marketing ROI, and agility to navigate the winds of change.
Come on Marshall and Philip, start treating Marketing Operations as a beloved brother or sister of marketing, not an ugly stepsister or neglected orphan, locked in the parlor doing the chores no one else wants to touch. If you play your cards right, your Cinderella-in-waiting could evolve into your CMO's indispensable Chief of Staff.
Gary
