Thought Leadership

This is part six of a ten-part series that will share my Ten Habits of Highly Effective Chief Marketing Officers, based on my experience and what I have learned from others.  See my January 22 entry for Habit #5 — Champion innovation – especially disruptive innovation.

Habit #6:  Setting Your Standards High

The toughest feedback I ever got in a meeting, or from a boss, was that I was “capable of so much better.”   I learned early in my career that one of the most powerful levers we have as leaders, especially as CMOs, is where we set our standards.   And how we communicate these standards to all involved.   Setting your standards means answering questions like:  When is the work of my team good enough to move forward?   What level of performance is acceptable?   When do we say “yes” or “no” to important decisions?

The higher you go in an organization the more important it is that you are clear about your standards.   So when you are a CMO, where you set these standards is critical for your business and organization’s success.  And, believe me, the daily pressure of business will challenge you to compromise your standards, on what results get rewarded, what people get promoted, what innovation makes it to market.  Don’t do it.  Don’t compromise your standards. The great leaders don’t.  Leaders like Mary Dillon at McDonald’s,  Becky Saeger at Charles Schwab,  Michael Francis at Target,  Jim Farley at Ford,  Trevor Edwards at Nike.

I remember three leaders early in my career at P&G who taught me this.   Bob Goldstein, the CMO of P&G when I joined the company in the early 1980s,  always drilled me on my advertising program:  Was it memorable and persuasive enough?  Did I have an alternate campaign in test market?  Was I investing enough?  Neil Kreisberg, a Senior Account Executive at Grey Advertising in the 1980s,  set his standards for his group’s advertising even higher than I did as a junior brand manager on Jif peanut butter.   And Jurgen Hintz, a senior P&G German manager working in the U.S.,  never stopped pushing for discontinuous thinking.  No annual business plan or budget was accepted without a “how high is up” test.

I find in my consulting and in my research that CMOs do not leverage this simple but highly effective habit. And it is a habit that gets practiced every day, in every decision, which means you can make a big difference here immediately.  My advice is to pick a few areas that are very important to your business success,  like what new initiatives you approve,  what people you promote,  what goals you set,  what competitors or companies you benchmark.   Get clear in your own mind what YOUR standards are, and then begin communicating through your words and actions.   You will be amazed at how your organization will respond.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 9:25 am and is filed under Business, CMO Habits, Marketing, Speaking Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.