Traveling the distance together: Reflections from a technology executive on her first year as chief marketing officer
Here’s to the wide-open road!
The only thing better than experiencing it on two wheels is doing so in the company of fellow travelers. As a motorcyclist, I’ve always enjoyed the thrill of discovery — new routes, new destinations, new riders along for the journey. A year ago, I wrote about motorcycling as a metaphor for a different kind of journey — the one I’d just begun as chief marketing officer for SAP Ariba, the world’s largest business network.
If I tap the brake long enough to glance at the rearview mirror, I can see reflections of an incredible journey gone by. Yet the technology business slows down for no one. It only accelerates. So if you strap in and fasten your helmet, I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve learned and where we’re headed.
When the opportunity arose for the CMO role, it forced me to consider: Was I ready for it? And did it fit with my personal goals? With my mind racing, I texted my mentor for advice and asked him to jump on a call to talk about it. He texted right back: “No need for a call. Do it.”
My spouse concurred but also urged me to search deep inside myself to determine whether I was comfortable with the challenges and self-discovery that would undoubtedly follow. I decided I was, went through the process, got the job and then took my fateful first steps. What followed was indeed an incredible journey into discovering not just “the job” but the kind of leader I wanted to become.
Managing leaders
Upon assuming the role a year ago, I inherited a highly effective team — not just a team of managers, but a team of leaders. Yet, for all their demonstrated abilities, these leaders were “inherited” all the same. Even though I knew them, what became clear was that the nature of our relationship had to change rapidly in order to succeed as a cohesive unit. There simply can be no replacement for the time needed to build up trust and rapport. It cannot be sped up. Yet the cloud business slows down for no one!
What I found most effective was to be as transparent as possible about my abilities and my limitations, showing a growth mindset and empowering my leaders while asking for visibility and for feedback. Which resulted in my reclaiming a tremendous amount of time to invest more strategically. I believe my wisest investment of time in the past year has involved our customers and our sales colleagues.
Defining the role of marketing
Earlier this year, SAP Ariba was pursuing significant business with one of the world’s largest beverage brands, yet a final deal remained elusive. The company’s requirements centered on marketing every bit as much as on procurement, so our sales team asked mine if we would lend our expertise (and our fluency in the customer’s marketing lingo), in hopes of narrowing the gaps. Over the next several weeks our sales and marketing teams worked together seamlessly, and we ended up winning the business. But just as importantly, the sales and marketing teams arrived at a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives and complementary skill sets.
The experience led me to rethink some of my own prior assumptions about what a marketing organization can and should deliver within a cloud business. We cannot serve the business effectively, let alone our customers, in isolation. To be a business-savvy cloud marketing organization, we need to align our skills and objectives with those of our sales and operational colleagues tasked with traditional profit-and-loss responsibilities.
Learning to prioritize and say no
This experience also served to remind me that certain business needs take priority over others. When customers require our attention, all else can wait. One of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of any newly-minted executive is also one of the easiest to wield: the word “no.” We can and must say no, politely whenever possible, to the low-value demands made on the finite hours in our day. And this was a learning experience for me.
I am naturally curious and empathetic. I make no mystery of it, and I willingly accept various inputs. This role, however, has made me realize the necessity to set up an organizational structure that helps filter such inputs based on the business priorities.
Making the tough calls
We also need to be willing to make tough calls when necessary. This is part of the job. If an investment or a partnership or even a hire fails to work out, despite best efforts at accommodation, difficult decisions may be required.
Natural people-pleasers may not fare well in making the tough calls necessary to serve the business responsibly. Occasionally, the right call can displease. But nevertheless, it remains the right call. And the longer we delay the inevitable, the harder it gets.
Resilience and support
It’s precisely because leaders face so many tough decisions that they need to have support systems in place and a well-developed sense of resilience. In my case, my spouse is my rock. I can always count on her wisdom in helping to navigate the many complexities and ambiguities that arise from managing a large organization of creative, talented marketing professionals. She also stands by me through the occasional failures inevitable to us all.
The unpleasantness that sometimes accompanies difficult decisions is nearly always temporary. So the crucial question becomes: Who are the permanent fixtures in our lives — whether family, friends or mentors — on whom we can call for reliable, generous counsel? None of us, no matter how gifted a leader, succeeds in isolation.
Finding your voice and values
Nor do any of us succeed, for long anyway, absent integrity. In my first year as CMO, I have found that staying true to oneself — one’s deepest-held values — is essential for leaders to remain credible.
Is it necessary for another person’s values to mirror my own in order to forge trust and work together effectively? Not at all. But it is imperative that they’re true to their word, honorable in their business affairs, and thoughtful in the way they treat others. These attributes contribute toward a consistency that other leaders value, as do subordinates. It’s how we develop — and keep! — a credible voice within our organizations.
With an eye toward the future
Speaking of credible voices, over the summer at an SAP Ariba customer events in Asia I heard Sam Walsh, the Australian business leader, articulate invaluable advice. He urged procurement professionals to view themselves as businesspeople working in procurement rather than as procurement professionals working in business.
I echo Walsh’s view entirely, but I’d add this corollary: Marketing professionals should see themselves as businesspeople working in marketing rather than as marketing professionals working in business. This insight captures the breadth of perspective necessary for marketing professionals to deliver maximum value to their organizations, particularly when they’re seated around a conference table alongside their peers from operations, finance, sales, legal, and other key parts of the business.
Put another way, marketers succeed in an organization when they adopt a holistic approach to carrying out their roles. The days when marketers could focus on the “forest,” so to speak, while their sales colleagues turn their attention to individual “trees,” may have propelled organizations forward years ago. But no longer. Not in the lightning-fast cloud business.
As I begin the second year of my tenure as CMO, the primary lesson from the preceding twelve months guiding me forward is the critical importance of aligning marketing, sales, operations and our partners in everything we do to help our customers digitally transform their organizations and achieve their unique goals.
That’s the road ahead, and I look forward to riding onward with my team and the wind at our backs.
The author is chief marketing officer of SAP Ariba, the world’s largest business network, linking together buyers and suppliers from 3.6 million companies in 190 countries.
